A Constructivist lesson continued...

On reflection this lesson I created could have had a stronger scaffolding to help the students focus on the silhouette. I have given an exercise to year 11 Visual Design students where they had only random objects and muslin, which provided a limited focus on the colour and fabric choice. The year 10 Visual design students got caught up on focusing on the fabrics, which made the focus of the lesson shift a bit.

Group work can be very productive but can also disadvantage some groups. Some groups have highly motivated students who will help to focus the group keeping them on task creating exciting work. Then you have students who dominate groups making the others feel second best and unable to express their creative ideas. Then you can get groups of totally unmotivated students who will try to get away with doing nothing, letting down their groups.

Discovery learning at best is suited to the self-motivated student where as the less confidant, unexperienced or lazy student can fall behind and get lost and bored. Discovery learning has to be monitored by the teacher to make sure the student doesn’t start to focus on something that the teacher didn’t intend.

Overall this lesson was well received and encouraged the students in their next step of inspiration. They found the groups that they went on to design pieces for the WAVE production with. It encouraged them to play with brainstorming in a physical form rather than being limited to the pen and paper.

They all had a lot of fun and were very pleased with their final products.
It was fascinating to see the ideas blossom and the dynamic of the groups un fold.