Classroom Tales

Today I’ve finished my amazing week at the National Gallery on their ITE ‘cultural placement’ programme.  A blog post with my thoughts on the week etc will be along later tonight as I have a lot to share (!) but thought I’d share some of the work we presented today.

One of the tasks we had over the week was to plan an outline scheme of work for paintings selected by our mentors.  We had to design these using a ‘ladder’ method (which I alluded to in an earlier post) so that it built upon itself over time.   Below are the outline schemes we created-  the scheme was created in under an hour, so we didn’t have time to develop detailed lesson plans but hopefully the intention should be clear!

Any comments on the scheme are of course welcome!

[I better just say- whilst we did these at the National Gallery, and positive feedback was given, theseare not approved by the gallery for publication etc in any way!]

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Scheme 1- The Coronation of the Virgin Mary- Lorenzo

Notes on the painting can be found here on the National Galleries website

Run 1- R.E- Symbols/symbolism

We decided to start of the scheme with RE, as the links to RE should hopefully be obvious ffrom the painting. In the painting, all the saints are holding objects which symbolise them.  We thought this would be a great link into the symbols work that many schools deliver, perhaps starting of with non-religious symbols (McDonalds Logo, road signs etc!) and then perhaps looking at why some of the saints could be holding the items they are.  This could then be extended into looking at religious symbols ‘as per usual’

Run 2- Literacy and Drama- My Symbol

Next, we would start with a common drama activity which works really well in the classroom- ‘Magic Putty’- where the teacher hands round an (imaginary) blob of magic putty, which can be turned into anything they want.  We would ask the children to think of an object that would symbolise/represent them (could be something they enjoy doing, something that is important to them etc) and to take turns to ‘make’ it out of the magic putty for the group (by miming etc).

We would then look at words that can be used to describe objects (adjusting for the year group etc) and ask the children to write a ‘who am I’ style descriptive piece about the object- where they describe the object in as much details as possible (including things like what it feels like, makes them feel etc) without ever telling the reader what the object is.   You could then get the children to read out their pieces and try and guess their object.

Run 3- Drama- Freeze Frame

We would then ask the children to bring in an object that symbolises them.  Looking at the painting, we would ask the children to work out the different positions/gestures they could be in to replicate the painting.

We would then try and re-create the painting, with the children holding their objects faced towards a central focus. We would get children to help arrange the scene, and take digital photographs for immediate review on the IWB before making any changes to the scene and re-posing etc.

Run 4- Art- Collage

The finished product of this activity is a class collage, re-creating the painting.  This could be achieved in a number of ways.

First take individual photographs of the children in their position from the previous activity.  The you could either a) give the children their photo or get them to edit it using photo editing software (changing colours, adding effects etc) and then print and cut them out (A4) or b) print out an A3 copy of each photo (Black and white) and get the children to collage over their image, making robes etc.   Then arrange the different pieces around a central, unifying item (School building/school logo etc) and display!
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Hopefully this has given an idea of what the sort of things we were looking at over the past week!

More about the experience coming later!

TH