Lesson 4: Wander Walking Book Lesson Number 4, Art 1, 2nd - 4th grade, 1-2 class periods
Elementary students are learning about how they navigate space and ways that their interactions can intersect with the landscape around them. Students are introduced to using walking protocols to structure their experiences. Students engage and experiment with language to create prompts for creative engagements with space. Engaging students with designing walking and mapping protocols, students become aware of the process of embodied learning that they engage in when they navigate space.
Key Concepts: We use our senses to navigate. Getting lost can help us to heighten our observation of our environment. The built landscape teaches us how to move within it. We can learn about our environment by structuring a playful engagement within it.
Essential Questions:
How do we navigate our world?
How do we construct a sense of place?
What can we learn from places?
How do we map place? How do we map experience?
How do we construct meaning and narrate experiences within place?
Where do we feel at home?
Where do we have access to and where can we not go?
Lesson Objectives:
The student will be able to apply the strategies and ideas that they have learned throughout the unit by creating collaborative Wander Walking Books to structure a wander walk.
The student will be able to reflect on the ways that we use our senses to navigate by notating or mapping their experiences in the walking books.
The student will be able to learn about their environment by structuring a playful engagement within it, designing prompts to record observations from their immediate environment and following them. The student will be able to analyze and reflect on the ways to structure playful engagements through discussion and review of completed books.
Reflecting on the types of prompts they design; students will be able to assess the success of different types of prompts. The Instructor will assess the students during the activity, based on student engagement and performance as well as after the activity during student-led discussion and reflection on the success of their instructional design. The Instructor will assess the Wander Walk Books using the provided rubric (below).
Specific Art Content: Students will identify walking as a way of knowing using observation and different sense perceptions to notice the world around them. Students will observe their local environment, looking for symbols in architecture, patterns in nature and meaning in social space.
Artists/artwork: Situationist International, Francis Alÿs, Jorge Macchi, Julie Libersat
Resources & Materials: Power Point presentation Computer or Tablet ROAM Playing Cards Small Books Walking shoes Pencil
Instruction and Sequencing: Introduction/Motivation Instructor will provide an overview of all the activities in the preceding lessons using images from student examples and activities. Instructor will present examples of artists and art works that use walking protocols.
Guided Practice Instructor will guide students in creating collaborative walking books. Starting with the first four pages, instructor will model the sequence of prompts (Direction Prompt, Capture Prompt)
Independent Practice
Students will create collaborative walking books.
Each student has a small book and enters their name on the front cover. On first page, students will write a DIRECTION prompt (walk X steps, turn Right, etc.). Book is passed to the student on their right. On the second page, students will write CAPTURE prompt (look for something ). Student will indicate how to record their observation (take a picture, draw, collect, smell and describe, taste, touch).
After all the pages of the book have been assigned a prompt and every member of the class has contributed to each book; students will reclaim their original book and follow the directions written on each page. Using the space in the book directly below the prompt to respond/collect/describe/draw observations per the instructions.
Closure
Once all the pages have been filled in, students will return to the classroom and trade books.
Students will engage in a discussion about designing prompts. Which prompts worked? Which prompts were confusing or impossible to accomplish? What are some different ways that you could structure a walk?
Students will draw a map of their experience using the walking books. Referring to the instructions from the book, students can represent their motions and depict the objects and observations they made during their journey. What kinds of surprises did they find? Using words, images, materials collected from the site, students are encouraged to explore multiple ways to represent space and experience.
Formative Evaluation Instructor will use the guided and independent practice time to assess student comprehension and application. Depending on performance, Instructor will slow or speed up demonstration and practice.
Classroom Management Procedures At first, it is advised to use the school campus for this activity, setting a limit that students cannot go past. Students can be paired up for this activity.
Summative Assessment and Evaluation: Summative assessment is based on the collaborative walking books. Students are assessed based on their engagement with designing prompts. Participation and experimentation in designing prompts and in responding to prompts must be assessed on an individual basis.
Interdisciplinary Connections: History, Architecture, Science, Social Science, Anthropology
Student Examples from ROAM workshop at Mapping Meaning 2016.