Subjects

Social Studies, Art

Grades

4-7

Brief Description

This hands-on activity invites students to assess the content of visual images and place the images in a logical production sequence. This lesson helps students understand how hand-made technologies allow for creative expression. The lesson fits well into curricula relating to art, ancient cultures and local history and should be taught after the students have had an introduction to basic ceramic construction. This lesson may be done in conjunction with 'Pottery Reconstruction', also on this web site.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Research the steps of making a ceramic vessel by hand
• Learn about the skills required to construct a ceramic vessel
• Reflect on the creativity and skills of potters in traditional cultures
• Use a database and search functions to find relevant images
• Analyze visual images
• Use their knowledge of ceramic technology to sequence photographs

Keywords

History, ancient, art, archaeology, artifact, prehistoric, pottery, ceramics, image analysis

Materials needed

• access to the the ¡Hola Canada! The Latin-American Collections at the Simon Fraser University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology web site
• access to a printer
• writing tools

Lesson

Have the students access the image database and search for all the images that illustrate the stages of ceramic manufacture. (See list below.) They can do this by searching for 'Pottery' in the 'Subject' category of the Archival Images Database. Have the students place these images in their 'Build Your Own Exhibit' folder on the web site. The students can either print the images and do the exercise off line, or examine the images on line.

Aided by their previous knowledge of pottery manufacture, and in light of their previous experience in reconstructing a pot, have the students write out a description of the actions being taken in each image. These descriptions should be at least four complete sentences long and should describe the image in a detailed fashion.Next, have the students arrange the images in a chronological sequence. What process must have been done first? What process done last? What are the broad stages of pottery manufacture, and what steps are involved in each broad stage?The students will complete a final report that outlines the processes of making a hand built ceramic vessel in a traditional context. They will organize the images in chronological order and place their four sentence caption under each one. They will create a title page, and an index and summary statement at the end.

Evaluation

Observe how students work together and stay on task. Students are graded on the accuracy of their sequencing, precision of their understanding of the image content and the quality of their written report.