visual art – Bau Teacher Adventures

St Dominic’s Day

bauteacheradventures Random thoughts, visual art August 8, 2018August 12, 2018Collaboration, education, Sarah Bau 0 Comment

It really does take a Village to raise a child!

I’ve often mentioned in my blog posts in passing that I teach in a ‘Village’. This year, my Village consists of 66 learners and 3 Educators. I’ve never really explained just what that actually means though. My activity from St. Dominic’s Day this year gives me the perfect opportunity.

At Our Lady of Grace School, we teach in Villages. I teach in the Year 4/5 Village – currently the highest year level at our school. There’s also a Village for Year 2/3 learners, and one for R/1 learners (R stands for Reception – a uniquely South Australian term for what other states call ‘prep’ or ‘foundation’.)

Working in a Village is a wonderful experience. I get to work closely with two other Educators, and we can rely on each other when we’re having a bad day, off sick, to bounce ideas off, to have each other’s backs – basically to look out for each other. Teaching can be an isolating job. Between teaching and yard duties, I used to be able to go an entire day with barely a word to another adult. There’s nothing better than being able to catch the eye of a colleague across the room and grin when something goes well!

The benefits aren’t just for the adults in the room though. Our learners benefit too. Educator off sick? That’s ok – there’s still going to be two other Educators in the room that understand individuals, learning needs, social needs, friendship worries and family concerns. Haven’t really connected with one of the Educators yet? That’s ok – there are two other different personalities in the room too. Need a bit of extra support/ extension? There are three adults to go around!

We maintain strong links between Villages too. Buddies, Junior Primary Fitness, Junior Primary Reading, Minecraft Club, Whole School Circle Time – all are Inter-Village events.

In honour of the Feast of St Dominic we had whole school rotations. I teamed up with an Educator from the R/1 Village. We began each rotation with a rendition of Bruno Mars’ “You Can Count on Me,” and then split the group in half. Half added musical instruments to the song, and half came next door with me to add their hand to our school tree, before swapping. I’m pretty pleased with the overall result of the tree – if I do say so myself.

It takes a Village to raise a child – and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Living Kaurna and Warriparinga Wetlands Excursion

bauteacheradventures Aboriginal culture, religion, visual art November 17, 2017August 11, 2018colour chip, education, excursion, history, Kaurna, OneNote, photography, poetry, Warriparinga, wetlands 0 Comment

This week, we took our 4/5 Village to the Warriparinga Wetlands for a Living Kaurna tour and workshop. Here’s the website info Living Kaurna Cultural Centre. For those of you not local to the Adelaide region, the Kaurna people are the traditional Indigenous owners of the Adelaide plains.

We organised the tour as part of our work that we’re doing this term on Pope Francis’ Laudato Si – On Care of our Common Home.

We integrated this learning with the history and culture of the Kaurna people, poetry and photography. It was absolutely brilliant! The weather was a bit drizzly, but nobody melted and it wasn’t cold. Our tour guide was brilliant – his passion and knowledge of his culture was contagious, and even some of our more reluctant learners were enthralled.

As well as the guided tour, we had a booklet of activities for the students to do, and we took along iPad minis for photography purposes. My favourite activity by far (aside from the actualtour) was the colour-chip photography. Learners worked in pairs to find natural items that matched their colour chips as closely as possible, and then photographed them together. The next day, they uploaded their photos into their OneNotes, and then used the colour-chip names as inspiration in their poetry.

A great day out, and we can recommend it to anyone in the Southern Adelaide region.

Getting My Art On

bauteacheradventures English, visual art October 22, 2017August 11, 2018art, canvas, education, painting, procedure writing 1 Comment

There are many things that I can do well, and a few that I even excel at. But, art isn’t one of them. I enjoy art. I like looking at art in galleries, and I even have a few pieces that we’ve bought over the years that bring me joy whenever I see them. But to create art? That’s a whole different ball game!

Of course, I do teach art, since I’m a generalist primary teacher. I really enjoy teaching art. I’ve been blessed to travel to some very famous art galleries across Europe, and I’m enthusiastic about artists such as Picasso, Da Vinci, Monet, Van Gogh, Dali and Warhol.

But, this time, I was way out of my comfort zone.

You see, it was Spring Fair time at Our Lady of Grace School, and all of the Villages had been asked to create a piece of artwork to be sold at the Fair. We were asked to create an individual artwork per student, and a collaborative piece per year level. On canvas. Yes, that’s right, ON CANVAS! I have never, never, painted on canvas, or taught anyone to paint on canvas. Help! I devoted an entire Saturday to searching the internet. Thank goodness for YouTube, and thank goodness for my new art hero, The Art Sherpa. I was instantly mesmerised by her hair and hats, and her simple, but beautiful paintings. This, I could do! This, a classroom full of 9-11 year olds could do too. Since we have several sets of siblings in the Village, we had the Year 4s do the dandelions, and the Year 5s do the Lilacs (I chose flowers since it was the SPRING Fair. You see what I did there?)

It was harder to find something collaborative. I got some great ideas for the future, but since I was restricted to a canvas for this year, I had to make it work. Eventually, I came across a couple of artworks by the same artist that looked like it had potential. (Seriously, how did teachers survive before Pinterest and YouTube?) Here’s the original…

https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/76587519/large-wall-art-original-tree-painting

And here are our versions. I’m happy to say, that they both sold at auction on the day!

Of course, it felt as though we did nothing but art in the lead up to the Spring Fair, much to the delight of the learners. But, I got the last laugh, as I managed to get an art assessment, reflection and procedure writing out of them! Since the collaborative pieces didn’t come with instructions – we were simply going off a picture, we had lots of great discussion about how to build the artwork up in layers (we learned all about layers by doing the individual artwork). Here’s a sample of one of the Year 4’s efforts. (Just in case you want to have a go at painting it in the future!)

Turn your canvas landscape and get out all of your paint tools and your canvas.
Paint the bottom third of your canvas red.
Paint a third of the canvas yellow above the red you just painted and make sure you blend the two colours together to get an orange colour.
Now paint the last third of your canvas green and also blend it with the yellow like you did before.
Now let the coat of paint you just painted dry for 1-2 hours.
Now get a black permanent marker and outline a tree that takes up almost the whole canvas. (Just draw on the thin branches on to your tree.)
Now get out your black paint and paint in-between the black outline of the tree to make a fully black tree.
Now you’ll need to let your tree dry for 1-2 hours before you can continue.
Once your painting has dried you can paint on a two coloured swirl that looks like the swirls in the image above, also you can do this in any colour of your choice. (Keep doing this until nearly your whole canvas is full.)

Happy painting!