Help me give my students an art project that is unlike art they usually get in middle school. They will fuse glass to make jewelry, sun catchers, and small art pieces. Science and art work together here.
Rural school districts have to pinch pennies, and mine is no exception. My district covers many square miles, but is so sparsely populated that they do not have enough students for a full time art teacher nor do they need a full time teacher for gifted students. Therefore, my students start as young as grade two and span through grade eight. Over half of the land in our district is national forest land, which means that no one lives there or pays property taxes so the school district receives a fraction of the cost of running schools. Students travel up to three hours on the bus per day to get to our consolidated schools and back home, making transportation costs alone a huge consideration.
Just like the circuit riding preachers of olden days, I am the traveling itinerant teacher of the gifted for students at three elementary schools and two middle schools in the mornings (for the entire county), but in the afternoon I change gears and teach art in grades six through eight.
My Project
Middle school students sometimes get to make clay projects along with painting and pastel pieces in art. Seldom do they break from the same old bowl, animal, or cup they fire in a kiln. The average kiln heats to an extremely high temperature and the room needs specific electrical wiring which is quite expensive and sometimes hazardous with students of this age.
My students combine science and art as they design projects, cut glass, and fuse it up to 1500 degrees.
Since this is a low temperature for a kiln, no special electrical outlet is needed. The cost of the kiln (which I already own) and the cost of the electricity is more economic for the school Not only do they have a finished project which brings them great pride, they get to use the inquiry in science to see occurs with glass of different coefficients. They have several opportunities to try different kinds of glass to see for themselves WHY some kinds of glass work better than others. They also check along the way to see if the glass tacks (sticks together but is still 3-D) or fuses fully (melts until the top is even.) Anyone can tell students what NOT to do. My students experiment to see for themselves WHY they should not do certain things when working with glass. Students do the inquiry, experiment to find their own answers, own their own learning, and have a finished project which brings them great pride.
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