Today, we explored the concept of print-making. This print making was the next step in exploring our evocative objects and will be a part of a final product. On a piece of rubbery plastic, we engraved a minimalistic representation of our objects, using lines and shapes to make an image. This image did not need to be realistic, it just needed to be a personal reflection of the object. I feel that this is a good thing to do with children as they can sometimes worry about being ‘a good drawer’, so this encourages children that as long as they are happy with the drawing that they have created, then they do not need to worry about it being realistic. I do feel, however, that this activity would need to be very much supervised as we used sharp tools that were fiddly to use. The printing could, though, be done with other media like potatoes or paper, which are easy to access.
My print included the band and geometric shapes of the sapphires on my ring. We were also given a choice of paper and ink to use, showing us that teachers should not limit children to A4 white paper, but should allow them to express their project through choices like coloured paper too. I feel that this made it more personalised also. I feel that an effective teacher ‘ensures that during the course of a lesson a contribution is drawn from each pupil in a variety of ways, at a variety of levels, according to each pupil’s capacity’ (Johnson, 2004).
Johnson, M. (2004). Personalised Learning – an Emperor’s Outfit?. London.
