Teaching Snapshot: From Play to Clay

Class: Year 7
School: Oamaru Intermediate School
Teacher: Sue Mclean
Category: Teaching strategy

As visitors to Oamaru stroll down the track from town to harbour they will appreciate the colourful border tiles, art work which also celebrates collaboration between school and community. Oamaru Intermediate School (OIS) Art Technology teacher Sue McLean developed a pilot Year 7 unit – From Play to Clay – in which students developed tiles to gift to the local community. The unit, planned as part of a community initiative to engage youth, was designed to meet the requirements of the Art and Technology curricula.

Sue, together with her colleagues in the Technology department, did extensive PLD in 2009-2010 on understanding and implementing the Technology curriculum. [See the Techlink Case Study Implementing the Technology Curriculum] Although Art at OIS has for many years been incorporated with Technology, it is only recently that it has been taught as Technology. Sue's challenge has been to implement the Technology curriculum within her Art programme but this hasn't had to be forced because, she says, "Once I got used to thinking about Technology and Art as a partnership the two just fitted together naturally". Students learn the requisite Art skills and knowledge and work through the technological process as they develop their outcomes.

During their PLD the team planned a programme of learning in which each term all teachers would focus on the same Components of the Technological Practice strand. Students coming to a new Technology area would then bring with them the same Technology knowledge regardless of the context they had worked in. Students would have one Technology workbook and take it to each Technology rotation, which would also help reinforce the idea of Technology as one subject. The new programme worked well in 2010 and has been repeated in 2011 with the addition of Characteristics of Technology.

Following the success of the trial programme of learning, a timetable change is being trialled over 2011-2012. Instead of taking six 10-hour Technology rotations followed by a school option module in Term 4, the intermediate students now have 14 hours in each of three rotations – Art, Hard Materials and Fabrics. Food Technology will replace Fabrics in 2012 and the two will continue to alternate annually. At the end of Term 3 students will select one of these Technology areas as a 20-hour option subject for Term 4, a process which allows teachers and students the opportunity to work together to cement and extend learning and skills within the chosen area.

In late-2010, Sue was approached to participate in a North Otago Youth Initiative programme aimed at bringing community groups together to involve youth creatively within their community. This led to the idea of an arts project in which Year 7 students would create ceramic tiles to be installed around Oamaru, with the objective that in the process of learning through play they would gain respect for themselves, others and the environment. In designing a unit around this scheme, Sue would involve local artists who could share their knowledge. It was hoped that if the pilot scheme proved successful then other schools might also take it on.

Sue discussed the proposed unit with Principal Mary Healey who noted that it fitted well with OIS strategy –'to prepare students to be active participants who will contribute to their community and to celebrate diversity of culture' and offered funding for materials, bus trips and to employ outside experts. Sue decided that because she was trialling the unit, only the intermediate classes would do it and the client school classes would continue with their usual programme.

The unit started with a class discussion of the brief – 'To design and produce a personalised ceramic tile which is durable and visually appealing. [Students in Rotation 1 would focus on Brief Development – see, Indicators of Technological Practice] On Exploration Day students, armed with a school or family digital camera, explored Oamaru and took photos of scenes or objects that inspired or had a personal significance for them. (Finding parents able to spend a whole day on a school trip is always difficult and Sue recruited another teacher and two teacher aides to help). During the day the class visited:

Waitaki Community Gardens – students in Rotation 1 painted stones which were placed in the garden
Oamaru Public Garden –the Chinese garden was another opportunity to celebrate cultural diversity within the school and the community, and some students were particularly enthusiastic about learning the botanical aspects of the plants
North Otago Museum –students looked at exhibits of Māori tools and art
iSite – the class watched a DVD about Oamaru history
The Forrester Gallery – artist Burns Pollock discussed various art techniques such as perspective, and later in the year the tiles were displayed as part of the Burns Memorial Schools Art Exhibition
Victorian precinct – students were encouraged to look at the architecture and detailing of the old buildings and local artists shared their knowledge and enthusiasm for art. Ceramicist Vaughan Tessier-Varlet, for example, discussed his work and showed students his sketchbook of design ideas, something that directly linked to student practice at school
Steampunk HQ – students were fascinated by Steampunk (science fiction set in Victorian times) exhibits and interested that the ban on taking photos inside the building was an IP issue because people had sometimes taken photos, returned overseas and then copied the designs.

The students took lots of photos and back at school selected six as inspiration for their design ideas. Sue notes that this was a good idea but wasn't always feasible – some students found it difficult to decide which six to keep and others left their cameras at home. On the second Exploration Day she downloaded all the photos and deleted the "duds" so that students who hadn't taken the time to prepare their photos had a selection of design ideas they could use.

The personal significance of their chosen image was an important part of the brief, so students were expected to explain why they had chosen to develop it for their tile. A few students asked to design their tile around something at home rather than from the trip, such as the student whose inspiration was a tree planted by his great-grandfather with a seed brought back from Gallipoli during World War I. Students in later rotations were more likely to choose images from other sources than Exploration Day although most still worked from their photos. After sketching some design ideas, students developed their conceptual design and key attributes.

Students made tiles during one "very rushed" session. Sue taught basic clay manipulation techniques while Vaughan helped groups of six make tiles (he wasn't available for every session so there was a lot more classroom management required on those occasions). Vaughan fired the tiles in his kiln but because they take six weeks to dry made 36 for the first classes to decorate, their tiles in turn went to students in the next rotation which, Sue says, added another 'giving and receiving' aspect to the unit.

In the next lesson, the classes worked on decorating their tiles which were then fired again. After finishing their outcomes students went back to their brief and evaluated how well they had answered it. After delivering the unit to the first classes, Sue made some changes to encourage students to think about their design work in more depth which helped focus students more on their process. She also decided to incorporate functional modelling, discussing with students how this fitted with Planning for Practice – to check whether the design will work and providing an opportunity to reflect on 'Do I still like it? Is it pertinent? Is it practical? Is it feasible? The students created their functional models by painting their design on paper which allowed them to see how well it worked in colour before they started painting their tile.

Subsequent Exploration Day activities were shortened so that the group could walk around the harbour and also visit two of the artisans who work there. During their meeting with a woodworker students had turns at using his hand lathe and were quite surprised at the sorts of products that could be made using old technology. They also visited a stoneworker and saw a variety of his installations. Sue notes that in her role as teacher she chats with the artists and draws them out so that they explain the process they follow to the students.

The unit was very successful and the students enjoyed their work. The Oamaru Mail and the Otago Daily Times featured the project and Exploration Day:

www.oamarumail.co.nz/news/aspiring-artists-let-loose-in-town/1043540/

The media exposure had an unexpected spin-off. Where Sue would usually have only three or four parents in her room on Parents' Night she had lots more following the newspaper articles. They were interested in seeing what their children had been doing and asked questions about Art and Technology. The client schools were also interested in the unit and keen for their students to participate but as they only have eight hours in the Art rotation Sue would need to adapt the unit to suit them, possibly by having the client school teachers take the students out to explore the town.

As Sue reflects on the unit she comments on the importance of the collaborative aspect, "the fact that one person can do something but lots of people doing it can make it really amazing". The North Otago Youth Initiative received two grants from Creative NZ, one to help fund the cost of making the tiles and one to install them (on a pathway going from the Community Gardens through the Botanic Garden down to the harbour). A small group of interested students will collaborate on the design, materials, location and construction of the installation. Those involved in planning the Play to Clay project hope it has created an increased feeling of ownership, that teenagers who have contributed and appreciate the hard work involved in creating such things will be more likely to protect rather than misuse or abuse community assets.

Given the success of the unit, Sue will repeat it in 2012 and is considering other sources of inspiration, possibly stories of the Waitaha, the original iwi in the area. If it continues to a third year she might work around the centennial of the Robert Scott Antarctic expedition departure from Oamaru in 1912, something which would also fit with the school's biennial study of Antarctica. The Year 8s, having already worked on the clay tiles, would do something different but Sue is considering ideas for something that would again be suitable to create as a gift for the community.