Learning 20 Jun 2016

Elephant Project: Read All About It

By CIS Communications
Photograph by CIS Communications
by Rachel Poff, PYP Coordinator, Lakeside campus –

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see”

– Degas

At the beginning of the school year, all CIS teachers were asked to reach out to members in the community in order to expand the opportunities for the children to learn from experts. We recognise we have a wealth of knowledge and talent within our community and we try to capitalise on it as much as possible. Also, it allows parents and community members to become more deeply involved in the CIS community.

Diana Francis is a Singapore based artist, who not only paints scenes of daily life in Singapore, but is also the Creative Project Manager of Elephant Parade. Elephant Parade is a social enterprise based in Chiang Mai that helps raise funds and awareness for elephant conservation through installations of art elephants designed and painted by artists (both famous and aspiring) and celebrities. Diana was contacted to see if she would be interested in working on some sort of art project with the primary division of our school. An initial meeting took place on 2 September 2015, to begin looking at ways she could get involved. We knew we wanted it to be a whole school project to build community, as well as raise the profile of our amazing visual arts teachers.

Through conversations, we decided that “Sharing the Planet” could provide an excellent opportunity to use the elephants as the canvas to express the students’ ideas and understanding of each central idea for each grade level. From there, the project unfolded in a very organic way, discussing all of the possibilities, interpretations and opportunities. We decided to use elephants of increasing size for the grade levels. The changing size could represent both the growth in the students’ understanding of Sharing the Planet as a whole, as well as their growth in their art skills. The highlight of the project would be the 1.5-metre elephant for the Grade 6 exhibition.

A meeting was held with Marieke de Zeeuw from Elephant Parade on 13 November to pitch the project to her. She was instantly on board and acted as the liaison between myself, Diana and Elephant Parade. Elephant Parade wanted to build and create a relationship with a school and thought this project sounded great.

The objective of the project was multi-faceted

  • To build community within CIS.
  • To bring in experts to work with and mentor our students.
  • To weave a common thread of Sharing the Planet from JK up to Grade 6.
  • To highlight the explicit connections between the grade levels in the PYP framework and how they are connected.
  • To showcase our amazing visual arts teachers.
  • To create an art piece for our entire community to enjoy.
  • Finally, it connected the students to global issues that they will be able to build upon as they move through the PYP.

There were also multiple learning benefits/outcomes for our students

  • They were able to focus and showcase their art skills.
  • They learnt that art conveys a message.
  • They learnt to communicate their message in an abstract manner.
  • They learnt that sum is often bigger than its parts. One elephant is lovely, but an entire herd is powerful!
  • They learnt to use their descriptive writing skills to write, explain, and publish a piece about their artwork.

Each grade level represented their understanding of their unique central idea on their elephants. With the guidance of their visual art teachers, they created masterpieces! Some contained abstract shapes, some literal translation of ideas, and some inspired by the work of famous artists. During the Grade 6 Exhibition, the students create their own central idea and lines of inquiry under the transdisciplinary theme of Sharing the Planet. They inquired into the big ideas of rights and responsibilities, peace and conflict, sharing finite resources, and communities and the relationships between them. Each exhibition group was given a “patch” on the elephant and used it to share their knowledge and understanding of the issue they inquired into during the exhibition process. Under the guidance of Lisa Little, the students worked with Diana to create their elephant, Read All About It.

The installation was unveiled on the evening of the Grade 6 Exhibition. Our parade was the largest ever created. We had over 1,000 pieces of elephant art on display in the Atrium. I think we can all agree it was absolutely spectacular! So spectacular in fact that Mike Spits, the CEO of Elephant Parade, has selected our elephant to appear in the Global Travelling Herd! It will make its way around the world sharing the message of our Grade 6 students. It was indeed a very successful collaboration!

I would like to offer a special mention and thank you to Lisa Little, Hernie Martin, Robert Choi, Sandra Ebsworth and Lizz Rossi for sharing their talent and enthusiasm with our students during this project. I would also like to thank Chris Keller for all of her hard work. Finally, I would like to offer a huge thank you to the entire CIS maintenance staff for all the moving, shifting, packing and unpacking of our herd!

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