Presentation: 8 th March 2007 : Jane Ostler : “Water colour worlds”
The intelligent citizen uses water wisely.
Hula Hooping: The Big Hula on June
17 - World Day to Combat Desertification
Drawing
Painting with water colour
Website: Content gathering: Text, images.
Further study: seeing a wider context for this project.
Hula Hooping: The Big Hula
Day One/
Idea: With talk of changes in our climate, and more possibilities of flooding we need to find ways to face this in a positive way and to present it to children in a non-threatening, positive way.
Hula Hooping ( http://www.hula-hoops.com/video_clip.html )is
a bit like Hawaiian dancing . (And islands like Hawaii in
the Pacific may get inundated by the sea one day). We need
to think sympathetically about our fellow inhabitants of the globe. If “a
problem shared is a problem halved", then how can we share their problems? We
may all have to face a wetter environment one day. What is the
answer?
If we see water as symbolising vitality, movement, communication,
fluidity, time, sharing, caring, many parts making a whole, many drops
of water creating a pool, a river, a sea, each child could symbolise
a 'drop of water'. As intelligent citizens they 'use water wisely'.
Activity: After receiving permission from parents for student participation
(which will involve being photographed), we will set a date for this
whole school community event.
Possible suggestions from Unesco* are:
April 7 - World Health Day
May
15 - International Day of Families
The International Day of Families
is an opportunity to affirm and appreciate the intrinsic value of family
life.
The nuclear and extended family is the foundation upon which moral and social behaviour is based. It is in this secure environment that we learn about love, compassion, human values and self-discipline. The current breakdown of family life is reflected in the violence and collapse of moral standards in our communities. High levels of mental ill-health and of drug and alcohol dependency are testimony to the loneliness, insecurity and uncertainty people are having to face without the traditional support of the family.
June 5 - World Environment Day
June 17 - World Day to Combat Desertification
Approximately one third of the Earth is arid or semi-arid. With the modern problem of global warming, it is predicted that in the next century the areas of desert climates will increase and every year more and more arid land will become unproductive.
On the 17 June 1994, the United Nations proclaimed World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. There was acknowledgment that desertification and drought affect all regions of the world and that international co-operation should be enlisted to combat the problem which is especially evident in Africa. The purpose of this day is to promote awareness of the implications of desertification and land degradation as well as the problem of drought and the need for international cooperation to contend with these problems.
July 11 - World Population Day
It need only take half an hour.
In the school play ground the assembled participants of the whole school community will all have the chance to hula hoop en mass, depending on the number of hoops available at any one time. It may be that we hula in small groups. I am hoping that they are a resource possessed by most schools. They are about £2.00 each.
http://www.edirectory.co.uk/pf/880/mia/pid/924865
Photography
Day One/ Everyone hula hooping or holding a hoop
gets photographed, I will then download the pictures and turn the pictures
into a panorama, print it out and return to the school with print outs
ready for the drawing. If the school prefers and has the relevant
software and printer I can try to do this at the school. If
not I will do this in my studio.
Materials: hoops, camera, people, space to move, co-ordination, communication
Drawing
Days Two/Three: One class activity, 30+ pupils, and their teachers
and TAs and any other interested parties.
Materials: Pencils, water soluable and non, rulers and set squares, tracing, grease-proof paper.
Once back in the school I would show the panorama to the class working with me who would start drawing out the figures and other relevant content, with the opportunity to practise before drawing on the big roll of paper.
We lay out the big roll of paper and we plan how we will draw the figures on it. We look at the Panoramic picture and select which part we are each going to draw. Sharing out. I would help with the drawing – we would look at relative size of figures and how it conveys depth and space. We could have a focus on faces and hands. Then I would show “gridding up” for which we would need rulers and set squares, to transfer small detailed images to a larger format if pupils need that to assist their skills. We would finish the outlines and mentally note which colours would be going where.
Painting with Water Colour:
Days Four/Five: One class activity, 30+ pupils, and their teachers and TAs and any other interested parties.
Materials: Brushes, and paint tubes, palettes, water pots etc. toilet tissues, water colour paper, etc.
Look at how to mix the paint, how little or how much water is needed. Each participant would have a test swatch to hand while they painted to try out the paint before it goes on the big picture.
Look at colour, mixing, warm and cold, colour wheel.
Look at colour wash, how long it takes to dry.
Look at fine lines.
Look at wet in wet, wet on dry and dry on wet. Using water drops, spatters, etc.
Working light to dark.
Tilting the paper.
Days Six/Seven. The big invitiation to join in to the extended school community, family, etc. They can come to the school for after school workshops (say from 3.00pm until 4.30pm ) and try out water colour and contribute to the painting(s), even if they were not at the Big Hula event.
Materials: Pencils, water soluable and non, rulers and set squares, tracing, grease-proof paper. Brushes, and paint tubes, palettes, water pots etc. toilet tissues, paper, etc. Water colour paper.
Days Eight/Nine. Finishing off.
Day Ten. The hanging and final opening of the picture.
Website: Content gathering: Text, images.
When: Days One - Nine, while waiting for the painting to dry or in 'down time'.
Writing Text on Intelligent Citizenship in a global context. To aid their writing, we could ask the children questions, such as:
Q: “We are all of us little worlds, but we have to try to join up sometimes into a bigger world. Like little drops of water making up a bigger pool of water. How can we do this?
A: Possible answers could be “by communicating clearly and gently, by thinking about other people and treating them as we would like to be treated ourselves.”
Q: You are a good school pupil.
As a school pupil you are part of a school group, and your school is part of a community. How can you school help the community?
How can your community help Colchester?
How can Colchester help the county of Essex?
How can Essex help the United Kingdom?
How can the United Kingdom help the European Community?
How can the European Community help the Northern Hemisphere?
A: Possible answers: “ We need to think sympathetically about our fellow inhabitants of the globe.
Q: If “a problem shared is a problem halved, then how can we share their problems?
Q: We may all have to face a wetter environment. What is the answer?
A: Designing, building and living in floating homes?'
How can the Northern Hemisphere help the Southern Hemisphere?
How can both Hemispheres help to care for our world?
Text. We could ask the children to make a descriptive log of our activities:
"From Day One to Day Ten of Water colour worlds"
Images.
Photos of our ongoing workshops activities and outputs. Photographed by all involved who have access to a camera, and who have permission to use it in the school context. Pass them on to me and I will put them on the site.
Scans of their smaller preliminary paintings.
Website: building, navigation and information architecture .
Design and front page logistics could be suggested by the children, eg. Water drops with image roll-overs as buttons, hotspots in an image to take you to next page. What is an image rollover?
See http://duckegg.org/teachingsite/page%20seven.html and run the cursor over the purple rectangles and little frame on the left hand side.
Further study: seeing a wider context for this project.
Network
Series – how we are all joined up.
Different sorts of networks – Centralized, decentralized and distributed. 
Even in the middle of a potato field you are connected to some kind of network.
Get them to draw their own. Then put their home on one of the nodes and plot a route to some very distant location, say, Beijing in China and show them pictures.
China the country, the birth place of water colour, partners in trade ove the sea and ove the internet.
Our romanticised view of old China and Japan, eg. The Floating World, traditional Chinese brush paintings of mountains, clouds, Japanese wood block prints, caligraphy, etc.
I would ask the children a series of questions.
1. How would you get to China? What do you think it is like there?
I would set up a connection with a Chinese school, and ask them to send us photographs. We swap photographs, and the children would make water colours from these pictures.
Or, we would make a giant watercolour of a landmark location near to us, say Jumbo the old water tower, and cut windows into it which would connect us with the other side of the world, so that images from there combine with our image of ourselves here in this location.
Other citizenship journal based worksheets can be found at http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_b/uncotheme_b_list.htm
a nice scientific site on water
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/equil.html
* http://www.unesco.org/
Summary
Hula Hooping: The Big Hula on June
17 - World Day to Combat Desertification
Drawing
Painting with water colour
Website: Content gathering: Text, images.
Further study: seeing a wider context for this project.