In term 1, I teamed up with Mr Ablett and Mr Chamberlain (Year 3) to run an Art and English project. The aim was for the children to use their artwork to inspire their creative writing at the end of term.
With their class teachers, pupils read the book ‘The Tunnel’ by Anthony Brown; we used the book’s themes to launch our art project. Using inspiration from psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach’s ink blots and author and artist, Victor Hugo (who used random ink blots as the starting point to some of his drawings), we began by creating random and unpredictable ink marks and blots (and generally made a big mess of the carpet). In the following lesson, these marks were transformed into landscapes and creatures drawn into the ink marks using colour pencils. Each child had now created a long concertina sketchbook with images from their imagination - inspiration for writing! Pupils began to weave stories around these drawings which they noted on the back of their sketchbook in rough.
We then wanted to make these stories come alive – we needed three-dimensional characters to walk through the sketchbooks. Clay of course! The children designed, made and painted a character from their story. They learnt how to sculpt with the clay, join clay shapes together and create decorative texture and marks with tools.
It was then time to write their stories………….over to Mr Ablett.
In English, we have been exploring 'The Tunnel' by Anthony Browne. This adventure story follows two siblings who don't not get along as they are forced to work together in order to save themselves from the dangers beyond a tunnel. We sentence stacked the story, looking at lots of different writing techniques, for example simile and personification, before the children planned and wrote their own version of the story, changing what lie beyond the tunnel. The children took inspiration from their art work to devise their world and what may inhabit it.
The children work is fabulous and very creative. Please view our gallery below:
