In The Classroom: Natural Disasters

Stay with me through this post . . . It took me a while to really be one with this project. 

The third grade teachers met with me to see if I would help their students build dioramas relating to different natural disasters. I love collaboration. I wrote my thesis in graduate school on collaboration. So I was game for just about anything . . . But while I loved building dioramas when I was in elementary school, they are projects that everyone does. So I was wracking my brain trying to figure out how to make these pieces come to life in a progressive, new way. 

While I was frantically trying to figure out what supplies we would use--we placed a huge order in October and it will be delivered in February (go figure)--and whether the students would work together in teams or alone, I had them do some research. All artists know that projects do not come together without proper research, always looking at images and taking notes on everything.

I divided each of my six third grade classes into 3 big groups: tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquakes. (I lovingly referred to this last group of kiddos as my e-quakes.) In these larger, umbrella groups they had to research and find out two things for me before presenting it back to the class as a whole. 

1. Name 3 examples of your natural disaster, where they were/are located and what their name was/is (if there is one . . . )

2. What were the effects of your natural disaster on the surrounding community?

They used their iPads for the research and recorded their answers in their sketchbooks. As always, they could work on the table, on the floor, or in the gallery space just outside my classroom. You can see from the photo above that even laying on the table is an option . . . 

After their research presentations were complete, I had each student draw out a labeled preliminary sketch of their natural disaster and how they were going to create a sculptural piece: what materials would they need and what colors would they use. Each student was responsible for creating his or her own sketch, even though in the end some of them worked in groups of 3.

Materials. For this project, I had the students use a lot of cardboard and newspaper. Recyclables and found objects, things that we could easily hunt down around the school or bring in from home. Not unlike the machine project I worked on with my fourth graders.

Look up images of earthquakes online. Or Tsunamis. What you see are images of the aftermath: piles and piles of things that once belonged to someone, was important to someone but now resembles rubbish. Heartbreaking images, but the students and I agreed that cardboard, air dry clay, and newspaper would be the best way to represent natural disasters, the most aesthetically pleasing.

It took the students about 4 weeks to work on this project from start to finish. And they were incredibly inventive in their designs. The image above is the understructure of an earthquake. The open area in the middle is the earthquake and the thin piece on the top connecting the two buildings is a bridge. The layers and layers of cardboard that they stacked for the base really worked well and looked very realistic when they painted it. And when they displayed it, they kind of popped the middle area up a bit so that it looked like the earth had broken in two. 

The student below, also studying earthquakes, created an amazing contraption where she could pull strings from the base of her piece and make the building fold in on itself. I didn't show her how to do any of this. She had a vision, and with the materials provided she made it happen. 

The students above ended up making one giant wave for their tsunami project. This helped convey just how big and powerful seismic sea waves are.

Below, see how the earthquake from further up in this post is beginning to take shape with the addition of color.

 

What's great about using materials like these is that the students are then able to be more in control of their creativity: they choose how big or small they want their piece to be and they problem solve how to put things together in a way that when I walk past to test it by picking it up, it doesn't fall apart. This also becomes a lesson in using what you have, allowing imagination to go a bit further.

Without a doubt, exploding the volcanoes was the most fun of all. We experimented with 3 different combinations: Coke and Mentos, vinegar and baking soda, and Sprite and Alka-Seltzer. I had forgotten about Alka-Seltzer, my students surprised me with that one. 

The video above is a 6 second film I made on my new iPhone app, Vine. What's fun about Vine videos is that they loop (not in this blogpost, but on the actual app), so it's sort of like a gif. It plays the same 6 seconds over and over and over again. So the sounds repeat and the images repeat. They can be really funny sometimes.

You remember my third graders, right? My post from several months ago . . .  My third grade classes are completely boy heavy, some of my classes having as little as 6 girls in a class of 24. This project was actually the perfect fit for them. As long as I was able to batten down the paint throwing and keep the explosions under control, we were good! 

And they loved it: this project kept everyone--including me--excited and engaged. One of the best parts is that it completely related back to what the students were learning right then and there in their classrooms. And it brought me closer to my third graders, my third graders who are now some of my most fun and hilarious classes to see during the week. 

For the final part of the project, I had the students write process statements about what they made. They had to include either a video or a series of images with their paragraphs. 

Most of their process statements looked something like this:  "I started my project with a big square cardboard piece then I painted it green for grass. After that I covered it with bits and bobs and scraps of cardboard, then I made four little buildings out of cardboard. I painted it black and little white rectangles for windows. I made the buildings wobbly so it would look like an earthquake." Or like this, "Today in art we get to erupt a volcano! The materials were clay, cardboard, coke, and paint. It took about 2 weeks. It was fun making it. I think it will be a good volcano. This is my best volcano ever!"

Most of their videos looked like this:

My goal with including a writing portion is to get them used to thinking about their artwork as a finished piece, ready for showing. Writing a process or artist statement helps to finalize the work. It provides an item for their homeroom teacher to look over and a self-assesment of their completed work. 

Project perfection! Keep up the great work, third graders!