Africa-Themed Ceramics Inquiry

After a semester focusing on ocarina building, I planned my new ceramics semester at Woodlands Secondary with the idea of expanding on the musical instrument explorations. I brought an African themed unit to the students, starting by visiting several countries in Africa and looking at similarities and differences in cultural aspects, as well as how they dealt with musical instruments. This was supported by a website page where I kept all needed materials, www.themonkeybin.com. You can visit my supporting website page here. Students were able to research in the computer lab a few times throughout the unit to collect needed sources.
We started the unit projects by building pinch-pot rattles and decorating them with slip, in African patterns, and soon moved towards making pan plutes, which were found in many countries, including Egypt. These could be decorated without African patterns, in any style the students chose.
Finally, the students were introduced to their first inquiry project, in which they had to pick a musical instrument and build it out of ceramics. The sky was the limit, as long as the student did their research and tried their best.
This was an amazing process. The class produced two lutes, several udu drums, one djembe with an authentic Turkish goat skin I ordered from eBay, five flutes, one amazing xylophone, three rainsticks and a few more rattles and ocarinas.
And all of the instruments played music, even the lutes!
Their second inquiry project was to look into their personalities and find an African animal that would best describe it, and build it realistically out of clay.
We started the unit projects by building pinch-pot rattles and decorating them with slip, in African patterns, and soon moved towards making pan plutes, which were found in many countries, including Egypt. These could be decorated without African patterns, in any style the students chose.
Finally, the students were introduced to their first inquiry project, in which they had to pick a musical instrument and build it out of ceramics. The sky was the limit, as long as the student did their research and tried their best.
This was an amazing process. The class produced two lutes, several udu drums, one djembe with an authentic Turkish goat skin I ordered from eBay, five flutes, one amazing xylophone, three rainsticks and a few more rattles and ocarinas.
And all of the instruments played music, even the lutes!
Their second inquiry project was to look into their personalities and find an African animal that would best describe it, and build it realistically out of clay.
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