Origami Pagoda Competition

I have been the most horrible blogger ever this year.  I've taken tons of pictures with the intent of sharing them with all of you but I just haven't gotten around to writing about them and here it is almost second semester.  I promise that I'll try my best to be better the second half of this school year.  It's only two weeks away and I am looking forward to changing classes and seeing some of my favorite faces in my classroom again.

I have to admit that first semester has been difficult.  I have had a hard time coming up with projects that were engaging for my students.  In my experience, most of the time, my students keep up with what I want them to do but for some reason this group has been rough.  I have found myself thinking and rethinking projects that would captivate and keep their interest and keep them working and excited about what they are doing.  It's not as easy as it might sound.  Being a middle school exploratory teacher can be so hard.  Students, especially 6th graders, have the mind-set that it's "happy-fun time" and don't take it seriously (until report cards come out) and don't realize that yes, our classes do count and yes, you are doing some serious learning in them and yes, YES, we are REAL teachers.  That being said, I do have some flexibility with what projects I do in order to impart the standards that NC says I need to teach my kiddos.  What I have found is that this group likes 3D projects.  They like to make things with their hands and fiddle with stuff and put things together and figure out how things work.  They got bored very quickly with basics like drawing techniques and color theory so I needed to rethink a lot of what I had planned to do this year and put in place some ideas to keep them interested, working and learning.

Over Christmas break, on one of the art teacher groups I belong to on Facebook someone shared that she had done an origami pagoda competition with her students prior to her break and that they really loved it.  I did a little bit of research and realized that the folds of the origami pagoda were very similar to the folds that we had just done with our explosion books so I thought I could build on that and I figured that maybe having a little competition would be a fun way to ease us back into the New Year.  

For whatever reason, this worked out to be one of the smartest things that I have ever done.  Have I mentioned that it is freezing cold in my little part of the world?   I know, I know, it's winter everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere.  I know that there are places that are colder (but not Alaska apparently).  But it has been COLD here.   We aren't made for this mess here.  We run different fuel in our school buses.  The heat pump in my house simply can't keep up with temperatures much less than freezing.  It's horrible.  And to make matters worse, it hasn't even snowed. At any rate, we've had 2 hour delays 3 out of 4 days last week, which meant that our classes were cut down to about 30 minutes a piece.  That's not a lot of time to get out art supplies and start painting or drawing or whatever-ing but it is enough time to do some origami.

I told you it was cold!  This is crazy!

I started out the lesson just showing them a couple of you tube videos about how to do the pagoda pieces.  I let them pick their own groups of 2-3 people and gave them gallon sized bags to save their pieces in.  I gave them their challenge:  Create the tallest Japanese Pagoda that stands, unassisted for at least 30 seconds and let them go at it.  On day two, I pulled out my document camera and we made the pagoda pieces step by step together.  After making one or two of the pieces with me, I'd say 90% of the kids got it and were on their way.  There were still a few kids that didn't get a couple of the steps, especially the ones at the end where you have to do some "Book Folds" and make "Barn Doors" but after some one-on-one lessons I think they finally got it.  We talked A LOT about being neat and making sure that our folds were even because we wanted our structures to be level and strong.  

Folding pagoda pieces proved to be a bit of a frustration but we eventually got it.

Simple towers of 3 or 4 pieces stand easily.

We don't usually sit on the table but when we get excited, MizzSmiff lets the rules slide a little bit.

By day three, most of the groups had quite a few pieces folded and were starting to try to build their towers.  Just as I suspected (because I am kind of smart like that) they all simply went straight up and tried to build the tallest tower from the get go, obelisk style.  And just as I suspected, they'd get about 5 or 6 pieces stacked up and down they would fall down.  "How, oh how can you make your bases stronger?" I'd ask.  And this is where we started talking about structures.  And engineering.  And architecture.  We started trying to figure out how to make our pagodas more stable. We talked about how triangles are the strongest shape because the force is spread evenly through the three sides.  We talked about reinforcing the paper to make it stronger.  They can only use the 81/2" square paper given them for the challenge (no glue, no tape, nothing but the paper), but I told them that they could alter it if they wanted to.  Some of them tore or cut the paper to make braces (they have to make their materials prior to the challenge on Monday) and some of them used 2 sheets of paper folded together to make on pagoda piece.  We talked about trusses and buttresses (yeah, that got a couple of laughs but you know...middle school) and we looked at the way the little pagoda pieces were put together in different ways so that we could figure out how we could support a tall tower. 

That's  a pretty tall tower!

No hands!

By Friday, which was day 4, we had finally gotten it and were working together to come up with solutions and working on ideas to make the tallest towers.  The kiddos were excited and BEGGED me to let them work and problem solve just one more day, and so, on Monday we are going to have the FIRST ANNUAL ORIGAMI PAGODA COMPETITION.  I'll update to let you know how it goes.  I managed to wrangle some prizes for the groups to win: Slushie passes from the cafeteria, Out of Uniform Passes, Movie Theater sized candy from the dollar store and trips to the treasure box.  I think the rest of the semester is going to be kind of a let down.  

So far, I'm thinking this 7th grade design is a winner!

Adding supports to the sides.

Yay, me!

A couple of months ago, while I was still sleeping late and basking in the sunshine during the long, lazy days of summer, I entered Our State Magazine's Creative Classrooms contest, sponsored by Linville Caverns.  I submitted an idea that had been rolling around in my head for years that I had unsuccessfully applied for grants and to Donor's Choose and other similar 'fund me' sources.  I got my entry in just under the wire, thisclose to the end of the contest and a mere 3 weeks later, I received an email that I had won!

$500.00 (approx) of cameras for my Bulldogs, courtesy of Our State Magazine

I have never been so excited in my life.  This was definitely a "You're going to Disneyworld!"  level of excitement.  I've never been to Disneyworld either so you can see what I mean about how happy I was.  This really was a surprise because never in a million years did it ever occur to me that I would win.

I love Our State magazine.  For those of you that don't live in the Old North State, Our State is a magazine that features all that is wonderful about North Carolina.  It is full of rich photography, historical essays and endless ideas for road trips for those of us that are lucky enough to live within driving distance.  From barbecue to cobbler, from big cities to the smallest of towns (that would be Charlotte in Mecklenburg County, population 731,434 and Cerro Gordo in Columbus County, population 206.  Salute!) from Cherokee to Rodanthe, Our State covers it all.  Reading some of the essays makes me feel like I am sitting with my PawPaw under the string bean tree again, listening to him tell his stories.  I look forward to receiving it every month and the time that I spend browsing the pages while I sit with a hot cup of tea in my sun room.

I have always had a great love of photography that was nurtured when I was in college.  I learned my way around the dark room and took great joy in the magic that happened when developing film and printing my own photographs.  With the otherworldly red light and the torturously slow emergence of the images on the paper, I loved everything about it.  I didn't even mind the chemical smells.  I rarely go anywhere without my camera and am currently struggling with my now too small camera bag, that I love (it's red leather. What's not to love?) after buying a new lens this summer.  

I have always wanted to introduce photography to my students but art budgets these days are rarely large enough to cover the basics much less expand into a whole new medium.  With the advent of the digital age and the availability of fairly inexpensive cameras without the extra cost of film, photo-paper and all the other needed darkroom stuff I began to think that it might be a possibility.  Still, I had no cameras, not that there was a lack of 'photography' in my classroom, for what it is worth.  How many times have I turned my back for a split second only to find 4 of my girls are instantly cheesing for a selfie?  In their own words:  I. Can't. Even.   

One of my college photography professors carried around a little Olympus point and shoot camera in his shirt pocket at all times.  He used it for pictures that he called 'happy snaps'.  Still in the pre-digital age, I wonder now if he sent his happy snaps to the film lab at Walgreens or if he developed it himself?  That being said, I learned from him that there is a time and place for the pictures that we take every day, memory captures, now primarily using our smartphones (who would have thought 30+ years ago?  It boggles the mind) and the pictures that we consider 'ART'.  It seems that we record every minute of our lives and then end up posting it on social media (said the art teacher writing a blog post) and that our memories are driven by images on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook.  Every moment from "This is me this morning, no makeup!" to "Bacon, eggs and grits for breaky!" to "Finally, toes in the sand!" and endless furrbaby pictures (I'm guilty) are captured for all to see.

I remember this day!  Ocean Isle Beach for a whole week with friends.  Ahhh.  Toes in the sand!

This day.  We had a big storm and the power was out all over town, in some places for over a week.  I drove into Charlotte and took myself out for breakfast.  Looks good right about now!

Ahh.  My sweet furbaby, Maia.  She's a love.

See what I mean?  Pictures!  They are everywhere.  We have become a society that communicates visually.  You get a text that asks, "Whatchoo doin?" and you send back a selfie of yourself at the gym (well, not me.  I'm on the couch).  Someone asks, "What's for dinner?" and you snap a pic of the lasagna in the oven.   

But is it art?  I really want my students to learn the basics of photography.  Things like composition and exposure and manipulating the image before you upload it.  I want them to look through the lens differently to see things that they see every single day of their lives in a new way.  I want them to learn about the pioneers of photography and become familiar with the work of Ansel Adams and Alfred Steiglitz. Dorothea Lange and Man Ray.

Martin Parr and Walker Evans.  Leibovitz and Mapplethorpe.  Well, maybe not so much Mapplethorpe.  This is middle school after all.  And I'm not ready for THAT discussion.  With my babies or their parents.  You get the idea though.  I want them to understand that there is a craft and a skill behind the lens.  I want them to think beyond the selfie.

My idea is this:  I am going to start with my 8th graders who are one of my most favorite groups of students that I have taught in my career.  They are fun and smart and thoughtful and trustworthy.  We'll dive in with a little bit of photographic art history, learning about all the artists I mentioned above and then some.  We'll look at tons of photographs-photojournalism, art photography, portraits and landscapes.  After we learn how to use our cameras, we are going to receive a series of photographic challenges that we will complete both at school (this is where the trustworthy part comes in) and at home.  Then the fun begins.  Have I told you that I work with some of the most amazing teachers that I have ever come across?  Well, I do.  We do our best to support each other's crazy ideas and try to make them work.  For the good of our students.  So, I mentioned to one 8th grade ELA teacher, the extraordinary Penny M., that we would be taking pictures and I wanted our kids to write about the photographs that they took.  She immediately took my idea and went with it, declaring that "We shall do narrative writing with those pictures in class and it shall be amazing!", more or less, tee hee,  but you get my point.  So, collaboration at it's best.

Visual literacy.  Pictures are our first language.  We communicate with images every day of our lives. The pictures that we take have special meaning for us and drive our memories.  Of people, of places in time and in space.  What better subjects to write about than the things that stir our emotions and recall relationships.  We are going to learn to look at our world differently and then we are going to tell stories about our world. And we all know that writers make better readers.  So, it's a win-win.

And now, if you'll pardon me, it's Saturday morning and this month's Our State and a cup of tea are waiting for me in my sun room.