Water Drops : an interdisciplinary project for our annual Art Night.
Contributed by
Elisabeth Lepert, April 04, 2016
Over the last three years, I’ve taught a unit about polygons in Scratch to explain reusing variables and loops and to make a connection with their Math class. However, I had never had the opportunity to link it to their Art class. Every year our school has an Art Night where art projects from students are displayed during one night. When the Art teacher announced in September that the theme this year was water (in response to California’s severe drought), I had the idea to make them draw water drops using geometric shapes (triangles and half circles).
The location, size, and color of the drops had to be random. It wasn’t an easy task for them, and I encouraged them to use a “divide and conquer” approach by asking them to think about the first thing they needed to create and then the second and so forth.
They realized that they first had to create a single drop. I asked them to think about the geometric forms that they found in a drop (I used a simple model of a half a circle and a triangle). They had to figure out how to create half of a circle and find out the relationship between the diameter of it and the length of the sides of the triangle (see picture “drop: geometrical shapes” attached).
It was a good opportunity for them to reinvestigate geometrical concepts that they had covered in their math class. Through the project, they realized that a circle is special kind of polygon (see “polygon ” attachment).
Finally, when they were able to draw one drop, they brainstormed how to draw it randomly. They had to use notions like variables, loops, initialization, nested loops (see “program” attached).
They took a screenshot of their program and submitted it through our school portal. I printed them and glued them all together. The best part of the project was brainstorming as a class how they wanted their project to appear. I showed them the initial collage (see “first version” attached) and asked them what they thought. The class started a very nice conversion about how to improve it. A lot of ideas came out, and they agreed on creating a collage in a form of a drop using only greenish- blue colors and limiting the size of the pen to 3 and 4.
A group of students took charge of the collage and did a fantastic job !
The location, size, and color of the drops had to be random. It wasn’t an easy task for them, and I encouraged them to use a “divide and conquer” approach by asking them to think about the first thing they needed to create and then the second and so forth.
They realized that they first had to create a single drop. I asked them to think about the geometric forms that they found in a drop (I used a simple model of a half a circle and a triangle). They had to figure out how to create half of a circle and find out the relationship between the diameter of it and the length of the sides of the triangle (see picture “drop: geometrical shapes” attached).
It was a good opportunity for them to reinvestigate geometrical concepts that they had covered in their math class. Through the project, they realized that a circle is special kind of polygon (see “polygon ” attachment).
Finally, when they were able to draw one drop, they brainstormed how to draw it randomly. They had to use notions like variables, loops, initialization, nested loops (see “program” attached).
They took a screenshot of their program and submitted it through our school portal. I printed them and glued them all together. The best part of the project was brainstorming as a class how they wanted their project to appear. I showed them the initial collage (see “first version” attached) and asked them what they thought. The class started a very nice conversion about how to improve it. A lot of ideas came out, and they agreed on creating a collage in a form of a drop using only greenish- blue colors and limiting the size of the pen to 3 and 4.
A group of students took charge of the collage and did a fantastic job !
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