Teaching Art at Wirral Grammar School
Teaching Art at Wirral Grammar School for Boys
During my time volunteering at WGSB I helped develop a new brief four lesson course teaching students different drawing techniques. The students were looking at favelas at that time, I though it would be relevant to teach them a number of relatively simple techniques about drawing through two drawings.
I produced 4 example sheets to be used through out my classes and separated these drawings into two categories allowing each student to complete the tasks within their individual skill level
The first thing I spoke about seemed silly to say in an art class but I had to tell the students to actually look at what they were drawing. Since I live in the UK and there were no favelas for first hand experience each student chose two pictures to draw from.
Each drawing was separate tailored to teach them new methods. The left drawing was a simpler style foregoing and detailed shading, challenging the students to focus more on the subject they were drawing, the composition and organic layered structure of the favela.
The second drawing introduced simple or for more advanced more detailed shading methods with pen once they understood how to produce a drawing using ink.
We found these lessons to be very successful with each student positively engaging in the activity. With the positivity of my classes and success with work produced I was asked to redesign the structure of their final exam for the favela project. Previously students would construct a shoebox sized model of a favela house and paint, decorate and texture it accordingly. However with over 60 students to a year group this was rather taxing on the space requirements within the department.
Over lunch I created my interpretation of how to construct a favela using a Series of card reliefs stacked on top of each other which was a lot more space efficient and easier to construct for the students leaving them more time to focus on decoration and composition.
I created a series of steps to act as guidelines for students to follow how one would go about looking at a 2D image and produce a 3D artwork. Generally each student had a good grasp on the spacial awareness needed to do this.
With the positive reception of the change to the exam I was pleased to hear from my former art teachers after the term that every single student achieved or surpassed their target grade for this project, and I am happy to know it is a formula they will revisit for each year. I am eager to return to school and see with each iteration how it will have changed!
I also older students in sixth form with the curation of their work setup of their installations and assisted those students looking towards architecture specifically.