School Name St Mary's RC First, Swanage

Year Group        Year 3

Number of Pupils 20

The Activity

Pupils have to find a place in their local environment that would be improved by a sculpture. A digital photograph of the area was taken. Pupils made sculptures, took digital photographs of them, cut them out and digitally pasted them onto their backgrounds to virtually improve the area.

What it was intended to achieve

To make pupils more aware of their environment and to think how it could be improved. To develop their use of the digital camera and the software related to it and to combine art and IT in a purposeful way.

Planning       Pupils looked at sculptures on Living Library and printed off those they liked. The class looked at all the pictures which were pasted together on a board. Then the pupils went outside to find somewhere in the grounds that needed improving. The pupils had to fill in a questionnaire about the place saying why it needed improving. Then the place chosen was photographed.

Activity      

The pupils had to make a model from wire and paper mache. The models were designed first on paper and then made, dried, painted. The biggest was about 8 inches long, but many of them were smaller.

The models were then photographed and the digital photographs were put into MGI Photosuite so they could be cut away from their back grounds.

The photographs were then pasted onto the backgrounds, so the pupils could see how they looked. These are currently on display.

How did it Make a Difference?

In two ways. Pupils were able to find pictures of sculptures on the Internet. The school does not have any books on the subject, so this was really useful and quick.

Working on the computer with the pupils cutting and pasting and also linked to art. We couldn't do it any other way!