Acadia
I worked with this Kindergarten - Grade Six school over a one month period. Fifteen plywood panels with old murals on them were taken off the wall to be repainted by the students. A math focus was decided on and the new murals were designed to be relevant to the classes working on them, as well as to serve as a "third teacher" for exploration by many classes for different reasons. The title of the project is How Many Ways?
Teachers provided information regarding which math concepts were difficult for students at each grade level. I used this information and the provincial curriculum to create designs for the boards. I prepped the boards and applied background colours using acrylic paint.
A board was moved into a classroom for students to use brushes, texturing tools, masking techniques, printing materials and sponges to apply acrylic paint.
Student decisions in the mark making process related to the mathematical concept they were representing. For example, grade ones were working on five sections with 20 dots per section. Grade one students considered placement, colour and size of the dots on each section. These choices present potential addition and subtraction statements. Each board has 100 dots which provide potential addition and subtraction statements for older students, as well as percentage and decimal point representation.
I added text, and referents on some of the panels before sealing them with Varathane.
I wrote an article about this project that will be published in the 2022 InSEA (International Society for Education through Art) book entitled Learning Through Art: International Pictures of Practice.
Click the thumbnail below for full-size image.
Kindergarten - ten Students textured the background of this mural using a piece of bubble wrap that had 10 bubbles on it.
Grade Six - 100 triangles and circles. Students rolled a die to determine if they would paint a circles or triangles. They also determined the angles required in the triangles and placement of their shapes before beginning painting.
Grade One - one hundred. Three boards are displayed in this coat area and the backgrounds of the panels demonstrate the movement of colour around the colour wheel. Colour mixing is a grade one science topic.
Grade Four - ten thousand. This two board painting required extra time and support from parent volunteers (students did the work) to be completed.
Grade Five - one hundred. In this area of the school students created murals representing 10, 100, 1000 and 10,000. On each mural students placed yellow circles as 20% of the shapes.