Lesson Plans
-Pottery-
Japanese Tea Bowls
This lesson was the introductory lesson for working with clay. For many of the students this is the first time they have worked with clay outside of Elementary school. To get students comfortable working with clay this lesson introduced the building technique of pinch pots.
Students were given some history on the Japanese Tea Bowl Ceremony and background information on shapes and uses of Traditional Tea Bowls. Students then sketched out tea bowls and added symbols and colors that were representational to themselves. Students were required to attach a coil foot to their tea bowl to keep their bowl stable without having to flatten out the bottom of their bowl while also learning the slip and score technique. After all of the bowls were fired students were able to participate in a Tea Ceremony, and after learning about the rules of a Traditional Ceremony students, as a class, came up with rules that they wanted to follow for their ceremony. |
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Coil Vessels
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For this pottery lesson students were given a presentation on the uses of coil vessels through time. Some examples given to students included Canopic Urns from the Egyptians and history of some of the uses of Greek pottery. Each of these historical uses of pottery were used and decorated for specific uses and items.
Students were given a worksheet to fill out with items that they felt were important enough for them to build a special storage container for. To get students thinking out representing their item, they were asked to think "if an archaeologist found this one thousand years from now how would they know what it was used for?" Students then used the coil technique to build their vessel. This technique used the slip and score technique that was introduced during the building of their Japanese Tea Bowls. Students were given the chance to either smooth out the coils on the outside of their vessel or leave them as a prominent texture of their piece. Students then used representational imagery to communicate the intended use of their vessel. Glaze was later added to add emphasis to their vessel. |
Exaggerated Face Mugs
This was the final pottery lesson, for this lesson students combined all of the techniques they had learned through out the first quarter of the semester. Using the history of Face Jugs from North Carolina as well as revisiting Canopic Urns students were able to notice that Face Jugs have been created for many years. Students then viewed images of exaggerated faces to begin thinking about making funny or crazy faces rather than realistic faces. Before beginning their clay building students found examples of historic Face Jugs as well as exaggerated faces.
This project required students to roll out slabs and shape them into a mug shape and attach a separate slab bottom. Students then attached applique facial features to their slab mug using the slip and score method, learned in previous lessons, to ensure that the features did not fall off. After firing students used Watercolor Glaze to add emphasis to their exaggerated features. |
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