9-12 Band Activities
Art
SAS Big Ideas:
- The skills, techniques, elements and principles of the arts can be learned, studied, refined and practiced.
- Artists use tools and resources as well as their own experiences and skills to create art.
- The arts provide a medium to understand and exchange ideas.
- People have expressed experiences and ideas through the arts throughout time and across cultures.
- There are formal and informal processes used to assess the quality of works in the arts.
- People use both aesthetic and critical processes to assess quality, interpret meaning and determine value.
Nature Collographs
Objective: Students will explore environmental art and create a landscape collograph in response.
- Pre-visit: Look at artwork of environmental artists such as Andy Goldsworthy. If available, watch Andy Goldsworthy's movie Rivers and Tides. Environmental artists use a variety of media and a variety of techniques. Discuss techniques such as assemblage, additive and subtractive sculpting, joining multimedia pieces, and the logistics that surround these art forms.
- Post-visit: Using landscape as a platform, create collograph prints from sticks and textured materials. Compare inking techniques to the wood cut seen on the Artmobile. Collographs differ because of the removal of ink prior to printing. Print collograph images by hand or using a press.
Exploring the Vessel
Objective: Students will identify the fundamentals of a vessel and its role in society from past to present.
- Pre-visit: Consider a vessel. What is a vessel? How is it defined? What is the difference between a bowl, container, platter or plate? Class discussion.
- Post-visit: Using the works in the exhibit as a reference, collect images of vessels from different cultures and time periods. Using these images, create a sketch of your vessel to reference during creation. Use wood scraps or wood from nature to create a vessel. Consider space both negative and positive and technique such as assemblage, sculpting, mixed media, etc. Display in a group show.
Language Arts
SAS Big Ideas:
- Information to gain or expand knowledge can be acquired through a variety of sources.
- Effective speaking and listening are essential for productive communication.
Reflecting on Exposure
Objective: Students will explore how external influences shape an outcome.
- Pre-visit: Artists gain inspiration from multiple resources. Some of these include direct observation such as something someone may see on television, or indirectly from objects surrounding an individual's home or favorite vacation spot. Discuss how people are influenced by their exposure, sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way especially from media outlets and pop culture.
- Post-visit: Choose a favorite work from the exhibit. Write a reflection to the piece. Consider what the artist was thinking during the planning stages and while creating the work. Determine how you believe the artist may have been influenced and include in your reflection.
Allegorical Art
Objective: Students will identify allegory in art.
- Pre-visit: Allegorical art is when the literal content of a work stands for abstract ideas, suggesting a parallel, deeper, symbolic sense. Discuss different allegories that commonly exist in pop culture.
- Post-visit: Identify a work of art that may be seen as allegory from the Artmobile exhibit Tree to Form. Write a persuasive essay on your thoughts. Present a brief synopsis of your thoughts to the class in a persuasive style to see if your classmates agree with your choice.
Math
SAS Big Ideas:
- Some questions can be answered by collecting, representing, and analyzing data, and the question to be answered determines the data to be collected, how best to collect it, and how best to represent it.
- The likelihood of an event occurring can be described numerically and used to make predictions.
- Two variable quantities are proportional if their values are in a constant ratio. The relationship between proportional quantities can be represented as a linear function.
- Relations and functions are mathematical relationships that can be represented and analyzed using words, tables, graphs, and equations.
- Similarity relationships between objects are a form of proportional relationships. Congruence describes a special similarity relationship between objects and is a form of equivalence.
The Golden Rectangle and Furniture Design
Objective: Students will explore the theory of the Golden Rectangle and apply it to basic design.
- Pre-visit: Discuss the use of the Golden Rectangle from the Ancient Greeks and its application to furniture design. Resources:
- Post-visit: Using the information about the Golden Rectangle, symmetry, pattern, and proportion create a design for a bench. This bench can be found in a park, in a home, on a porch of a restaurant, etc. Consider aesthetics and form within your design.
Wood as a Natural Resource
Objective: Students will use logical math structures to identify impact of global trade using wood as a natural resource and its effects on the economy both from which the resource is obtained and as a powerful tool of industry for economic growth.
- Pre-visit: Review structures of logic such as statements, truth values, and logical operations. Discuss wood as a natural resource. Refer to the chapter on Wood from the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, Fourth Edition, Volume 25, Copyright ©1998 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- Post-visit: Consider the tradition and beauty of using wood as a material for design. Artists globally incorporate some type of wood working into their cultures. But will wood always be an available resource? Use logical math structures to identify impact of global trade of wood and its effects on the economy both from which the resource is obtained and as a powerful tool of industry for economic growth.
Science
SAS Big Ideas:
- Living things depend on their habitat to meet their basic needs.
- The survival of living things is dependent upon their adaptations and ability to respond to natural changes in and human influences on the environment.
- The health of all living things is directly related to the quality of the environment.
Living Wood
Objective: Students will calculate expansion in wood based on environment and how craftsman take this into account when working with wood.
- Pre-visit: Wood is a living material. Even after it leaves the tree or is removed from the ground it continues to change. The environment plays a great role in the life of wood. In humid environments wood acts differently. Investigate the life of a series of cut branches. Create a variety of environments to observe. Over the course of several days observe and record data including measurements from freshly cut young branches from the same tree. Postulate how the branch will change. Record your thoughts.
- Post-visit: After observing the many wood works from the Artmobile, revisit the branch experiment. How have the branches changed in appearance. Take measurements again. Has the surface changed? Extrapolate these findings to a craftsman perspective. What factors may a craftsman need to take into account when joining wood together? Does this change when working with small objects versus large scale?
Wood on a Cellular Level
Objective: Students will experiment with wood as a porous material by changing its cellular structure while applying a variety of finishes to it.
- Pre-visit: Wood is a porous material. This allows wood artists and craftsman to apply finishes enhancing or changing the character of the piece. Using a block of any type of unfinished wood create a series of experiments. Using water, vegetable oil, and paint test the porous material. Start by dropping the testers onto the surface of the wood. Record your findings. Then rub each tester into the wood. Record your findings. Then soak the wood in each tester over night and record the findings. How did the findings relate or differ? What does this tell us about the cellular structure of the wood?
- Post-visit: Wood is highly hydroscopic. The amount of moisture adsorbed depends mainly on the relative humidity and temperature. Compare porosity and permeability under different cellular structures. Keep findings of the previsit as a control reference. Refer to the way artists have changed the structure of wood throughout the exhibit. Record findings of same experiment as above but now using burnt wood and swelled wood that has been soaked in water. Does the cellular structure change the absorption of the testers? Compare and analyze.
SocialStudies
SAS Big Ideas:
- Geography is used to explain the past, interpret the present, and plan for the future.
- Geographic representations are essential to explain the spatial organization of people, places, and environments.
- Places and regions have physical and human characteristics, and one's culture and experiences may influence perception of place.
- Human actions modify the physical environment, and physical systems affect human systems.
Cultural Wood
Objective: Explore woodworking from various cultures in today's world.
- Pre-visit: Look at wooden objects across the various cultures within Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and South and North America. Compare and contrast the objects from each culture.
- Post-visit: Choose a culture to further research. Complete a research project and actual artwork from the chosen culture. Include technique, geography, influences, as well as images within your presentation.
Progression of Woodworking
Objective: Refer to Bucks County and Philadelphia Heritage and its relationship with wood to present a multimedia mini workshop by groups.
- Pre-visit: Wood working has a rich history within Philadelphia and Bucks County. Many tradesmen began their wood businesses within these areas and are some are still prominent today. Using the internet as a tool for discovery, explore the history of technique and product within the Philadelphia and Bucks Counties.
- Post-visit: Choose a style of woodworking from the previous discovery. Explore this style and relate it to historical findings in the Philadelphia area and Bucks County. Discuss the evolution of the art form. Provide images and examples of its progression. If possible include a hands-on project to teach to your classmates. Present the findings to the class using media.