Setting and Context
Olander Mission: Empowering children to reach their full potential and fostering the love of learning through a collaborative, creative, purposeful education.
Based in the Poudre School District, Olander has about 380 students from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade and is focused enriching the education of the students through project based learning. Teachers are collaborative and work constantly to ensure that they are creating meaningful learning experiences in the classrooms. They provide a wide range of programs for students of all needs if they need an extra challenge or extra support. Students' learning is focused around real-world experiences and skills where they collaborate and think critically in order to deepen their understandings.
Based in the Poudre School District, Olander has about 380 students from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade and is focused enriching the education of the students through project based learning. Teachers are collaborative and work constantly to ensure that they are creating meaningful learning experiences in the classrooms. They provide a wide range of programs for students of all needs if they need an extra challenge or extra support. Students' learning is focused around real-world experiences and skills where they collaborate and think critically in order to deepen their understandings.
Demographics
Life at Olander
During my stay at Olander, I saw three sets of each grade throughout the week on rotating A, B, and C days adding up to about 350 different students altogether. Classes were about 50 minutes for each grade and I had 6 classes everyday. Projects varied between 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional work with varying materials. Some projects utilized skills in perspective, sculpture, and weaving across the grades. The classroom offered natural lighting at all parts of the day, when it wasn't too cloudy, allowing for times where lights in the classroom were unnecessary.
Bag-imals |
This lesson was about how shapes can be pulled from forms and used to create art. Along with this came observation skills as students were required to focus in and look at the shapes that were present in their chosen animal. It was important to ensure that they could identify the shapes and make connections in the way animals share similar shapes so that they weren't focused on making the features exact copies (bird beaks are triangles, mammal noses are often circles, etc.). The goal to this project was to make a paper bag animal using key features that could stand on its own.
Into the Wilds |
This lesson was focused on the fundamentals of 1-point perspective. The students were guided in how to setup a horizon line, establishing a vanishing point, and setting up some basic guidelines for their road. These were related to some of Vincent van Gogh's works where he included 1-point perspective and how they followed the fundamentals. Students had the choice of creating a road or path somewhere in nature be it a road to the mountains or somewhere in Antarctica or even in a desert. The main focus was talking about depth and how things look smaller the further away you get from them and larger when you're closer to them.