Lesson Plan (ART 265)

Student Teacher: Faith McCardle

Title of Lesson: Fishes and Plastics

Big Idea: Environment. Students will be more aware of the effects of plastics and how we can

reuse these to cut down on plastic pollution in oceans.

Concepts of Lesson/ Essential Questions:

A. Questions:

a. Who can tell me why people recycle?

b. What happens to our our trash when we do not recycle? Where does it go?

B. Concept: Students will be using plastics (bubble wrap and plastic bottles) to create fishes

to put in one ocean scene together once completed. Taking plastics and finding new uses,

such as painting for our project, will introduce the idea of reusing to cut down waste.

List of Concepts of Art, Artists, and Culture Involved in this Lesson: Washedashore.org is a

group that uses plastics found on the shore and creates giant, colorful animals that are affected by

plastic pollution in oceans. They then exhibit these in many areas to bring awareness to this

important issue.

List of Teaching Resources: Paints, Sponges (preferably can be cut in half for more and easier

to handle)?, paper, bubble wrap cut to size of papers, scissors, googly eyes, glue and/or tape,

large colored paper for collaborative background, and reused plastic bottles.

Note: students will have a letter sent home or a voicemail asking the parent to prepare them with

something to work as a smock (big old t-shirt) day before class lesson.

Class Information Grade Level: Kindergarten

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Number of Students: 9 Time available for this lesson: 70 minutes Teaching date: October 17th

1. Objectives: 1.1. Artistic Skill Objectives:

1.1.1. Coordination: be able to cut out the fins and tail for the fish 1.1.2. Participation: Be able to follow along with a class 1.1.3. Creativity: choose multiple colors of variety

1.2. Conceptual/Cognitive Objectives: 1.2.1. Consider the effects of pollution after the lesson and where throwing

things away go 1.2.2. Make efforts to recycle plastics along with other recyclable items

2. Assessment Criteria:

2.1. I will use images of faces to show grade and images to project what area I am grading

3 2.5 2 1.5 1

Cooperation Skills

1. Student was not willing to share supplies with table

2. Student shared but had moments not

3. Student successfully worked together with others

[insert face grade]

Participation

1. Student gave minimum effort

2. Student gave some but did not push

3. Student was very active and engaged

[insert face grade]

Application

1. Student was sloppy with work

2. Student showed potential

3. Student followed

[insert face grade]

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through well

3. Learner Characteristics:

3.1 Developmental Rationale: At the age of 5-6 years old, children are beginning to shape themselves after the

adults around them by what they are told. Instilling the importance of protecting our environment very early on helps the child continue using methods to reuse and recycle as they age.

3.2 Students with Special Needs: For students with disabilities, they may require

assistance in possibly cutting paper, applying the paint to the bubble, wrap, etc. The teacher in this case should pay attention to how the child is responding to the activity and assist when needed.

4. Literature and References Washed Ashore. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved from http://washedashore.org/ PRINT WITH BUBBLE WRAP | Fatema's Art Show. (2016, April 15). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82Pm6BS-FMQ West Virginia Department of Education. (2007, March 16). 21st Century Visual Art Content Standards and Objectives for West Virginia Schools. Retrieved from http://wvde.state.wv.us/policies/p2520.12.pdf

4.1 Rationale: Learning about our environment is essential to every person to be conscious of the decisions we make everyday as to where our trash goes. 4.2 Background of Topic: Reusing plastics along with other items is important in schools because it provides the foundation of starting healthy habits for our environment and setting goals for students to become more involved with making steps toward decreasing pollution. 4.3 Information on related Artist: Washed Ashore creates these huge sculptures of sea life affected by pollution to our oceans to highlight the issue of discarding and throwing away plastics and showing that our ways are hurting our environment. 4.4 Art Terms / Vocab: accompanied with images to better memorize for kindergarten

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Recycle to use an item again or turn into something else

Pollution bringing something into the environment that is harmful to it

Pattern A repeated design

Printmaking making art through printing from plates or blocks or other items

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4.5 Visual Examples: Above are a few of the sculptures that Washed Ashore have created and showcase around the country. They are fully made from trash found on the shores of Oregon, their home base.

5. Integration/Connecting Links 5.1 Daily objects used in this lesson plan include the bubble wrap and water bottles

6. Looking at and talking about ART 6.1 What do you see on the board? 6.2 How can you tell that it is a fish? 6.3 How do you think we can make the scales? 6.4 What can we do to make the tail? 6.5 Do you see any pattern here? Where is there pattern on the fish?

7.West Virginia State Goals Write out the State Goal(s) Goal # VA.O.K.1.01 identify differences between tools, techniques, and processes in two-dimensional media, such as drawing, painting, or printmaking, e.g., crayons, paints and prints. In this lesson: Students will be guided as to what tools we are using throughout and how we will be using them, along with also have previous knowledge of tools as they are reusing plastics seen in daily life. Goal # VA.O.K.2.01 use the primary, secondary, and neutral colors, e.g., red, yellow, blue, green, orange, violet, black, white, and brown; color wheel; common line types, e.g., straight, diagonal, curved, zigzag, and broken. In this lesson: Students will be provided multiple colors and encouraged to use at least 3 different ones. They will also be practicing line and pattern printing using the straight lines of a water bottle and bubble texture of bubble wrap.

8. Media/Art Materials Needed and Organization of Supplies 8.1 Day One:

Supplies: Table covering, assorted colors of acrylic paint, egg cartons, sponges, bubble wrap, colored paper, scissors, cardboard head, fins, and tail templates, glue

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Distribution: A table will share the egg cartons of paint and glue and have a stack of 4-6 bubble wrap cut to paper size. Each child receives their own templates, paper, scissors.

9. Instructional Procedure with Time Frame 9.1 Day One

9.1.1 Introduction: (5 Minutes) Topic Questions:

- Who can tell me why we recycle? (to help the earth) (it’s good for the planet) Association Questions:

- What do you think happens when we do not recycle? Where does our trash go? (in the garbage truck) (in the ocean) (in landfills)

Visualization Questions: - How do you think the fish feel about having plastics in the ocean? - All this plastic in these pictures [on the visualization board] don’t have to be

polluting the oceans. Does anyone have ideas as to what we can do with the plastics here today?

Transition: - Well, what we can do today is instead of throwing away plastics, we can reuse

them to keep them out of the ocean, and we’re going to reuse them by letting it help us make our own fish.

9.1.2 Demonstration and Art Making Activities (55 Minutes)

Teacher Activities Student Activities

Step 1 Teacher asks kids to put on aprons or oversized shirts to protect clothes

Students put on protective clothing and return to seats

Step 2 Teacher goes around the room and hands out color paper to students

Student picks color for base of fish body

Step 3 Teacher guides to take 1st bubble wrap cut and dab 1st paint choice onto it, then to align and print onto paper. Teacher then instructs 2nd and 3rd color choice

Students follow through and print colors onto papers

Step 4 Teacher goes around the room and makes sure everyone has completed bubble wrap step or is almost done

Students finish up printing and await new instruction

Step 5 Teacher shows students how to fold paper in half and to then grab head, tail, and fin stencils and another paper of color choice on table

Students fold paper and grab materials stated

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Step 6 Teacher instructs to trace and cut out 2 fins, a head, and tail for fish

Students follow through and count to make sure they have all the right parts

Step 7 Teacher instructs where to dab paint onto water bottles and where to put hand to roll onto cutouts

Students choose paint colors and roll water bottle prints onto front and back of fins and tails

Step 8 Teacher shows how to glue all stencils onto the body. Teacher also hands out a couple googly eyes onto each table at this point

Students glue a small part of the parts to the inside of the folded bubble wrap print paper and then glue shut that, creating a full fish body and gluing googly eyes onto the fish. It is then optional that they can add additional features such as smiley faces, eyelashes, etc.

Step 9 Teacher pulls out two giant papers to be used as background and separates the class into two groups to go to each paper. They are asked to bring their water bottles.

Students divide and await instruction with their materials

Step 10 Teacher instructs both groups: Group 1 will make the sea with bubbles printing with white and darker blue. Group 2 will make the sea floor with seaweed printing with greens

Group 1 will print with the bottom of the bottle and the bottle cap to make bubbles Group 2 will print with the stripes of the bottles, rolling vertically on the paper

Step 11 Teacher will collect the backgrounds and hang them and the fishes

Students will follow with their fishes and give to the teacher to hang

Step 12 Teacher will ask students about their fish and their artistic choices and conclude on the importance of recycling

Students will respond on their colors, patterns, etc and how reusing plastics are good for fish

Step 13 Teacher will conclude with having kids help throw all plastics into the recycling bin instead of trash

Students help recycle

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9.1.3 Clean Up (5 Minutes) Students will recycle all bubble wrap and bottles as this helps enforce the lesson of

recycling. Then they can put all templates into a box I carry around, and same with the scissors, glue, etc. They will leave the paints on the table so I can clean them myself and avoid possible spilling of paint. 9.1.4 Lesson Closure/Concluding Activities (5 Minutes)

As a closing activity we hang all our fish on the decorated background with thumbtacks in the corners of the bodies so they can take them home later on. Then ask them again how we can reuse plastics and how their fish would feel if we kept plastic out the ocean. 10. Teaching Tips list at least five tips that are written by and received from teachers and peers

10.1 “examples were on visual board. Would help to point them out.” 10.2 “Closing could’ve been more organized. College students are easy to wrangle, but 5 year olds aren’t so easy.” 10.3 “Loved that she used students as examples to help guide the class in a creative, relative, and productive way.” 10.4 “A+ for getting your own supplies. Great organization but have all supplies on the tables (including scissors.)” 10.5 “Faith was really good at getting students to interact and answer questions. She took it step by step and made the whole activity really smooth”

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11. Critical Reflections

Teaching this lesson has taught me a lot about my strengths and weaknesses in my

education journey so far, and the steps I will need to take to better my techniques. Overall, I was

very proud in this lesson and my ability to teach a kindergarten lesson to my participants. The

lesson itself I am very happy with as it is very important to teach children the effects of pollution

as early as possible, but even more important to give them the education and abilities to take

recycling into their own hands. The big picture of my lesson was that you can reuse items for a

purpose such as art rather than throwing away so quickly.

The lesson went really well with the participants. My questions seemed very age

appropriate to five or six year old students. Most kids in this day are already very exposed to

being environmentally conscious through media around them, such as billboards or television,

and have general guesses and understandings of pollution at such an early age. My questions

seemed very good at guiding them into connecting the dots of information they already had, such

as where the plastics may end up if not recycled. This may bring them to connect images they’ve

seen or even experienced in real life of seeing plastic in water as these being areas that plastics

end up, and that it is not good for fish. My participants responded well to my questions and gave

great responses to my introduction.

The activity itself went much better than expected. Everyone was very task oriented with

this project and they were all very creative with their fish. One thing I did not expect is for my

participants to alter the project and become more creative with it. Some students added ombres to

their bubble print layers or to their fins. Some also while waiting for others to catch up made

extra parts for their fish, such as a horn turning it into a narwhal or a back fin. I made sure to

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point out to the class when someone added something unexpected to the project as a way to

promote others to think outside the box, but to also congratulate and promote the student who

was very engaged and proud of their work so far. I also made sure however to interact with

everyone in my group to make sure they were all doing well and if they needed anything.

One thing I did not expect was to have some time left after completing the fish. I already

had the idea for putting them all together in the end but scratched it as I believed we wouldn’t get

to it. If I redid the lesson I would have prepared the background anyway for if we had time or

not.

I would change a few things to my lesson plan to better fit it to a kindergarten class. One

thing is that because I did this with a class of college students, they were able to complete this

within the time I had to present. However, doing this with an actual kindergarten class would

require more time and days spent on this project. If I had an actual class, this would be good to

make into an Earth Day centered week of learning about recycling and avoiding pollution.

Overall I believe this lesson was a success, especially for being the first one to go. There

are of course things I would change to more be more fitted to the kindergarten class such as time

it takes them to complete this, but this lesson plan activity has given me the ability to practise

this for future use. This has also given me an idea on what I feel confident in in my education

path so far and what I will need to work on for the future. I’m very proud of this lesson and thin

it’s a unique approach to my topic.

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12. Recommendations for Future Use 12.1 The lesson could be done close to Earth Day to further highlight the issue of pollution as the whole school would typically also be involved in conservation lessons. 12.2 This lesson could be altered to fit different grades, such as making the fish out of found plastics for older grades. It could be turned into a project that an entire school could be taking part in in different forms. 12.3 This lesson would be paired with a book about recycling or sea life

13. Attachments: Student Examples:

Visual Board. Water bottles were glued on where the white areas are in the middle.

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Student Artwork Example

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In class progress photos

Printing the tail and fins with water bottles

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The background for the fish

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