Up and running Year 9s Woo Hoo

We are up and running

I have been sharing my drawings and garden preoccupations

Year 9 students were guessing what this plant was, clues were:

you can eat it, you can eat the flower, you normally eat the flower before it turns yellow – the yellow is curled up inside the bud – the buds here are purple but often they are green. Students began guessing a variety of edible plants including asparagus and cabbage, before broccoli came up the winner – At least 2 students hands went up in the class when asked if they liked broccoli.

I have been watching my broccoli grow all summer and not picking it. It has grown into a massive environment for bees and it’s still buzzing. I’ve been following bees lines into the jungle, funnily enough I imagine it as a kind of futuristic New York City for bees. I have been taking photos.

These views go directly and indirectly into my drawings

Where I am creating invented landscapes, combining man made and natural elements and thinking about SPACE and SCALE, MOVEMENT, RHYTHM and (bee)LINEs! I describe it like being in a cinema watching a movie. Music is very important to me while I work, contributing to tone and rhythm as well as space in the drawing.

We have been creating resources for a combined drawing last week making rubbings from found objects. This week students remembering the object and trying to describe, using words, so I can guess what it is. Students writing words into sketch books. Then drawing the object while these words are fresh in their minds, then drawing using scissors to cut around the outline.

here is another image from my camera students wanted to draw, I went to the woods last weekend and felt rather observed.

I had some conversations with Bradley and Jason and Barney and Callum

We were testing the tools on the Collaborate whiteboard and drawing images of objects, I was guessing the object and helping with the tools.

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the princess who could see everything

We had one final hook up today, in honour of the Kids’ Own team coming to visit.
Students were sharing their evaluations with Jo and in the meantime we continued our whiteboard conversations.

This animation was prompted by Lara’s evaluation. Lara showed me her drawings of the day out at Mount Stewart, the costume she wore and a design of what the costume should have looked like – a princess in a bell shaped dress, complete with crown.
We thought she could be the princess from the Sea Hare story, and so we made an animation of her appearing and reappearing in the whiteboard layers looking for the boy, Andrew’s character who managed to stay hidden and reappear at the very end.


I am not at all sure about the last line of the story, the boy got a lot of help from his friends who were sacrificed along the way….. this image shows David Hockney’s illustration of the text, he has interpreted the story in a unique way, just as we have done.

Can you spot the boy hiding at centre? (with the help of his friends):

 

The princess getting lost in her search and Andrew’s avatar remaining hidden at centre of screen:

and that’s Andrew who appears in all frames in the top right
Blending in and Standing out

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Blending in and Standing out at Mount Stewart

Final Real Visit and culmination of  our project was a revisit to Mount Stewart. Another kind of layering, Spring superimposed on memories of our Autumn first visit, final meeting on first meeting.

Since our first visit in September of last year our whiteboard conversations have led us to the fabrication of fantastical costumes, we have drawn ourselves into Mount Stewart layering photos, drawings, observations and avatars. Our avatars have mutated in our drawings, they have been superimposed on images from our Autumn trip, they have turned up in collages and iPad drawings. Patterns and colours have informed our ideas and we have developed narratives using layers on the classroom/virtual whiteboard. We looked at David Hockneys exhibition in the Mac “I draw I do”  we took photos and experimented with layers on iPads. We read the story The Sea Hare, about the Princess who could see everything and the boy who had to hide. We looked at camouflage and thought about being visible and being invisible. We drew pictures that showed our ideas using layers. The avatars we have invented for ourselves have morphed through all of these drawing and research stages and have ended up being expressed in costumes:

We had a glorious day and loads of action Blending in and Standing out at Mount Stewart

 

blending in and standing out at Mount Stewart

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lara hiding

We are fully immersed in costume making right now and I’m dying to see what the students come up with. Our session today was full of the Techno Gremlins – we carried on without audible communications and students were all busy making costumes. Lara and I were communicating without sound via the whiteboard. Our concealing // revealing theme was enhanced by the T.G.s as communications became very much about guesswork and intuition… it seems there was a lot going on behind Lara with strange bodies appearing and disappearing in the depths of the classroom as she was visibly laughing while the Gremlins squawked gleefully over her voice sending bleep songs to my end for the duration of the session – I tried to record these strange sounds but my phone just registered hum.

laraHiding from Mainly Kids at Mixadacat on Vimeo.

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