Passport to Knowledge

The 4th grade students at Michael R. White STEM School in Cleveland, Ohio completed their land form low-relief sculpture games before the 2014 winter break. The last blog post about this program explains how the students drew topographic maps, cut them apart and used the pieces as stencils on cardboard. Once stacked, the cardboard formed a low-relief sculpture of the land form that they had been assigned.

The second half of the residency was spent using different techniques and materials to transform the stepped form into a sculpture that more realistically represented land forms and then turning their sculptures into a game.

Students used a paper mâché pulp made of shredded paper that had been soaked in water for several days and wood pulp to fill in the geometric ‘steps’ of the forms. They then smoothed the area further with strips of newspaper dipped in wood glue. This was the point where they started to fully understand the relationship between the topographic maps and the actual landforms. Prior to this point, they learned how a drawing could relate to something with depth, but they didn’t see the in-progress sculptures as landforms. This was 100% realized when they painted their works. Students learned how to gray down colors by mixing in the complimentary color and how to create transitions between colors using a dabbing brush technique as opposed to brush strokes. They were a bit amazed at how realistic the sculptures looked in full color. For those that were still struggling with the academic content, seeing the separation of water and land in color was extremely helpful.

Our last step was turning the sculptures into games by placing them into a labyrinth game base that consisted of knobs attached to strings and springs which allowed the game user to tilt the board in all directions. Each student determined a path that they wanted the ball to travel and selected spots where holes were drilled as ‘traps’ that the game player had to guide the ball around. Click below to see brief footage of students experimenting with a game featuring an island landform:

During the final session students received a passport booklet and learned how passports were used for travel. The booklets had areas for the students to draw each land form and answer questions about it’s location and physical characteristics. They ‘traveled’ to different landforms, played the game and answered the questions. If they filled in each page correctly they earned a stamp just as someone would receive on their passport if they traveled to a foreign country. The creator of each sculpture (and expert on that specific land form) was on-hand to answer questions if necessary. The day was a reward for the work that the students put in that continued the educational process.

This is a follow up article to Land Takes Form published on 11/4/14.