Second-grade students used 2D and 3D shapes to create their own city. Creating a city requires a huge heap of teamwork and a solid knowledge of how to make shapes like squares, circles, cubes, rectangular prisms, pyramids, and more. Our final project involved working in teams to build our own 3D buildings, that were decorated with 2D shapes and drawings.

We experimented with lots of different art mediums before construction began. We started by talking about blueprints, or building plans that are always drawn to scale. Then we practiced making 2D to 3D shapes with a stensil. Folding 3D shapes was pretty hard but we figured it out together. We looked for geometric shapes in Picasso and Braque's cubist paintings as inspiration for making our own 3D scenes out of paper. Next we explored the Chicago Skyline, pointing out the ways that shapes create our beautiful city. Finally, we came back to blueprints for creating lego printmaking cityscapes that we translated into real 3D sculptures.

All of this was combining different 2D and 3D art making techniques with geometry and engineering. 

Blueprints: Talking about them, drawing our own clubhouses and showing off the completed works!

The academic learning standard and arts learning standard are

CCSS.2.G.A.1

Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces. Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes.

VA:Cr2.3.3

a.       Individually or collaboratively construct representations, diagrams, or maps of places that are part of everyday life.

When creating our blueprint projects, students created shapes out of their bricks and then brought those shapes to life when constructing part of their 2D blueprints into a  3D representation. During this project, they identified triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, and cubes. We also worked with cylinders and rectangular prisms.

We wanted our students to have something tangible during our unit that helps them process the inquiry question and their own thoughts. We introduce the inquiry question at the beginning of the unit, and students jot it down in their content-aligned notebook, which in this case was Math. They have a special section for CAPE in it, and that is what we come back to when working with Ms. Betsy. Students were able to reflect on the inquiry question and what we had done to explore it throughout the unit, as they referenced this journal.

The students’ social emotional experiences varied, but a big emphasis was put on teamwork, collaboration, and listening to others’ opinions and input while creating their blueprints and 3D models. We were impressed with how the students could come together, listen to each other, and dive into the inquiry question during our whole-group meetings together, which was a good way to begin and end each of our sessions, letting them share their experiences and learn from their classmates as well.

This can be taken literally and metaphorically, as students all took different perspectives when creating their 3D models and then creating maps of the whole class’s 3D models. Some students’ stayed in their same spot week after week because they preferred that perspective when creating their model. Some liked to switch their position in the group and were more open to change.

Metaphorically, Ms. Betsy was able to open their eyes to different perspectives of how shapes can be seen in the world around them, whether in various forms of art or in buildings in cities around them. During the cubism project, it was great to see what perspective students wanted to look at the project and what mattered to them in creating what they chose.

Throughout my teaching career, I have learned to “Be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage.” When Ms. Betsy entered, the students were really brought into a new world of different perspectives and shapes, much of what we had not even discussed yet in math prior to Ms. Betsy. I have let go of more of the reins and let the students dive into their curiosity, wondering, and inquiry. What I enjoy about working with Ms. Betsy is that we do not always stick to one plan. Sometimes, our plans pivot and change based on what students are asking, learning, or doing. This is a great reminder about what we do and why we do things in the classroom: Advocating for student voice and autonomy, while guiding and facilitating along the way with inquiry-based learning. 

SEL was integrated into the structure of the classroom. Ms R's class  had a higher ratio of boys to girls than any class I'd ever visited before and many students  were actively working on their social and classroom skills.  CAPE time officially began about 15 minutes after the kids came back to the classroom from a special. Ms Betsy would participate in the math review, preserving their daily routine and practicing patience and structure with the 2nd graders BEFORE art time would start.   

The entire tail end of the unit was spent practicing working in groups. We began by making a print of a town or city, then chose a building or two to turn into a 3D Structure, that we painted and decorated. As we went deeper into the process, we realized that the kids needed to learn more about how to talk about creative differences and how to listen to their teammates.  We weren't just teaching math, science and engineering -- we were teaching teamwork!