Day 8

Today I worked with Mrs. T discussing the lesson that I would be teaching later this week. She had wanted to incorporate a soft sculpture mural into her curriculum. The students had already studied and made fish, and she wanted to have another project where the students created a mural that the fish would hang in front of. Together we brainstormed how to go about teaching the lesson and what materials would be needed.  Mrs. T said she was completely open as to whatever directed I wanted to take this project, which was nice because I didn't have any parameters or restrictions.

Mrs. T asked if I had any ideas of how I wanted to approach the lesson. There are 3 long tables in Mrs. T's classroom and I had thought that each table could work on a different part of the mural. Mrs. T suggested I make a small power point that briefly went over the different parts that make up a salt water habitat, which would be the kind of mural the kids would be creating. We agreed that it was best to not get too detailed with the power point, and introduce only the parts of the habitat that I wanted the students to create. I decided that the students would work on coral, plants and rocks. Originally I had thought it would be a good idea to have each of the 3 tables work on a different part of the habitat (plants, coral or rocks) but Mrs. T suggested that I could have the students rotate instead, so that they can each get a turn making all of the parts.

Then we talked about what kind of materials I could use. Mrs. T said she was open to anything that I wanted to try, but to keep in mind that it couldn't get too heavy otherwise it wouldn't hold up and pieces could fall off. Even though Mrs. T was calling it a mural, I didn't want to have the students paint at all, at least not for the days that I would be teaching. I felt that if there were too many materials to work with, they each wouldn't be given enough attention and it would also create more of a mess. Together we came up with a list of materials that I could use. I came up with the majority of the list and if I forgot anything Mrs. T would suggest it, but never told me I had to use something or go about it in a certain way. I thought that using tissue paper, butcher paper, colored cellophane, different kinds of glue, scissors, and packaging peanuts. Then while Mrs. T went to work with her ELL student, I got all of the materials ready, cut the mural paper to the exact size of the tables so they would be ready for class, and put the materials onto specific boxes for each of the groups, coral, plants and rocks.

When I left Mrs. T advised me to take some of the materials home with me and play around with them to see which kinds of glue worked best with the different materials. Mrs. T had O-Glue, Elmer's Glue and tacky glue and she said it would be a good idea to work with each of them and see which would stick best.