As a starting point we were given the title of 'Structures' that we would need to base our projects around, this at first made me nervous as I had noooooooo idea's, however once I started mind mapping the idea's soon came flooding in.
I knew I wanted to base my project on something very relevant to the time, so what better topic to pick than the 2012 Olympics?! I was inspired by the big Olympic rings they have outside of the city hall in Cardiff, this was a starting point for me.
I took the topic of 'Structures' as quite literal, I wanted to make a structure/sculpture that would commemorate the 2012 Olympics. So this is where my project would birth. I went into Heronsbridge and out forth to the learners the notion that they would imagine they have all just come back from the Olympics, representing 'Team Heronsbridge', and of course they won gold! And now their city wanted to build a sculpture in memory of their triumph right in the heart of the city so everyone could see it.
As a final piece the learners would be building miniature items with Play Doh that were personal to them and would place them on a big letter 'H'. All of the classes I taught would be combined at the end. Before learners could go in and start creating the final piece, there was a series of design processes they needed to do first of all. Some worked better than others...........
Learners in each class were given this letter 'H' as a template for drawing their objects on. On this 'H' they would have to draw all of their favourite things, this ranging from their favourite food to their favourite TV programme. However, I gave this template and found it did not work, it was too broad for the learners, they could draw anything but this daunted majority of the group. I guess that was the first thing i learnt about the learners with special needs, everything needed to be broken down and they needed a lot more prompting and direction.
I went back and revised my template, I set out these six boxes to help prompt the learners. This template worked a lot better! Learners had a starting point, the majority of learners were able to fill in all of the boxes and create their own on the back. For the learners who were unable to draw due to their disabilities, they were helped by myself and any LSA staff.
Here is an example of one of the templates filled out by a member of my leavers class, the templates turned out really well!
The learners at work!
After learners had completed their templates, they were then introduced to Play Doh, this is the material they would use to build their objects off their templates. Before learners just dove into making their objects I wanted them to get used to the material first. I did a series of short modelling exercises and colour mixing tasks. I found this to be the easiest part to the project as the majority of the learners were very tactile, playing around with the Play Doh textures and colours was a lot of fun to them.
Here is the work from my leavers class laid out together. There were quite a lot of food based objects made, a lot of burgers and chips!
Here are some photo's of the work in progress. I really enjoyed this part of the project and learners seemed to as well. It developed a lot of communication skills across the board as everyone was talking about their favourite things. Hearing some of the reasons as to why they were making those specific objects was very interesting!
As learners were continuing to build their pieces at the end of each lesson I would begin sticking their pieces to the wire 'H' frame, so that at the start of each lesson after that learners could see how the structure was progressing. As at times getting the learners to concentrate was extremely difficult it was good to show this as it again reinforced why they were doing this.
Learners were due to carry on building their pieces for the duration of my stay at Heronsbridge but I was finding it difficult to keep learners on task for any lengthy time. Therefore, I made the decision to stop the build and begin making some decorative pieces to go alongside this sculpture, and again to remind learners that this was for the Olympics.
In my younger year classes learners designed masks that could be worn to go with the sculpture. Learners could either make up their own flag to replicate onto it, or could use an existing one.
Learners were given a balloon taped to a baking tin, they would layer up tissue paper onto these balloons to create a paper mache type mask. Learners would pick the relevant colours to the flag they were copying in, they would use lots and lots of layers of tissue paper and PVA glue, so that overnight this would harden, the balloon could then be popped leaving behind the mask shape.
The learner in the above photo was basing his mask on the french flag.
Some more photo's of the masks in progress. This was a very messy process, but a welcomed one by the learners!
For my leavers class instead of having them create masks I had them design their own flags for their own fictional country. Again these flags would be created by learners drawing on personal things to them. I felt this was a suitable challenge for the leavers class as they did not really have any trouble with not having a prompt.
This was the template given to the leavers class, it seemed to work really well.
Once learners had created their flag templates they were given an A5 piece of cotton that they would then transfer their design onto.
I had quite a lot of spare material left over......and I hate waste so I had the idea of this class creating one big flag. I had to begin thinking of how I would show this work off in an exhibition at my university a few weeks later. I was thinking of it as a multi layered piece. The letter 'H sculpture could be in the foreground, the masks and flags could be behind it, along with some of the learners design work.
And here is the big class flag. Learners had a lot of fun doing this, they were able to go a bit 'crazy' with paint on their hands and really make it their own.
Here are all of the pieces that were made during my time at Heronsbridge, I really had to then think of how I could display the learners work in my exhibition.
I really enjoyed my time at Heronsbridge. It was an emotional rollarcoaster to say the least, no day was the same, and everyday was so unpredictable! I learnt not to beat yourself up too much if your lesson plan does not go to plan as there were a lot of things that you could not have planned for going on during the lesson. In my first week at Heronsbridge I felt really drained and sometimes did not know how to feel but as my time progressed and I could see how Art was effecting a lot of the learners it became very rewarding! Art was a massive release for a lot of the learners and I was happy to be a part of that. By the end of the 4 weeks I did not want to leave and as a result I definitely would not rule out working with learners with severe learning difficulties in the future!
It was now onto producing my exhibition, I came out of Heronsbridge with a lot of work I wanted to show off, but obviously I had to be selective.........less is more! Here is a quick sketch of how my exhibition could of looked like. It did not really turn out like this in the end as in reality this layout did the work no favours.
Getting real now............here is the poster advertising the AiR exhibition!
Excuse the picture quality, but here is my AiR exhibition in all it's 'glory'. I think it turned out quite well, I was proud to call it mine :).
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