This lesson is suitable for students in: Primary schools (Upper Primary)
Artwork title: Overcoming my fears
Name of artist: Angie Dai
Possible lesson ideas for discussing art Possible lesson ideas for making art
Strategy used:
Core routine- Think/Puzzle/ Explore
| Broad questions | Scaffolding questions |
| What do you think you know about this artwork? |
1. What do you see?
2. Does this artwork remind you of anything you recognise or experience? E.g. Public sculptures, origami pieces. 3. How do you feel when you are looking at this artwork? E.g. Overwhelmed, surprised. 4. Can you think of a suitable place to put this artwork? Why? E.g. Indoor or outdoor, at a museum or a public place. 5. How do you think this art work was made? E.g. interpretation based on their own experiences. |
| What questions or puzzles do you have? | 1. Do you have any questions on how the artist decided to come up with such artwork, what were the planning involved?
E.g. Why origami? What are the challenges faced? 2. Do you have any questions about the artist’s intent? E.g. What does it mean? What do the audience need to do to see the whole picture? |
| What does the artwork make you want to explore? | 1. What other methods and materials could create the same effect?
E.g. Other types of paper. 2. How else could you use the same art material to create other forms of artwork? E.g. Other sculptural forms. 3. What are the other ways in which you can view the artwork? E.g. Tiptoe, on knees |
Possible lesson ideas for making art
This lesson would be an extension of the Mathematics lesson on 3D shapes.
In this lesson idea, students could be asked to observe the shapes on the artwork. They will be able to identify many triangles on the large origami artwork. Some students will be able to identify that many prisms made up the origami.
Introduce the concept of modular origami, where multiple units can be folded from single pieces of paper and linked to form mathematical units. Each unit is a sonobe unit and a unit can be formed using 6, 12 or 30 units. A 30-piece unit as seen in the artwork is called an Icosahedron.
A possible elegant art task could be:
Your task is to create interesting sculptural forms by connecting the sonobe units. You could create forms in response to a theme (e.g. animals, buildings, landscapes). Explore the possibility of connecting many unique shapes using the same sonobe units or connecting the shapes to form more elaborate shapes. The guide to folding a sonobe unit can be found here
Other extensions to the lessons would be to explore on:
- Polygons – triangles, rhombus, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, etc.
- Angle Properties – e.g. 180 degrees in a triangle, trisection, etc.
- Polyhedra – cube, rectangular prism, tetrahedron, octagon, etc.
- Symmetry
- Powers of 2
Further information on the Icosahedron can be found here:
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