Grade 8 Humanities World War Museum Installation

For this experience, students were tasked with creating a museum-quality installation in our Middle School Art Gallery. Using the principles of Design Thinking, the focus was on the user experience and prototypes were drafted and developed using empathetic interviews to assess the needs and curiosities of the exhibition’s audience. Each experience was intended to have some element of user interaction, and the assessment had three parts: the User Experience (expressed through a Storyboard and video), the Artifact itself, and a Plaque detailing the Artist’s Statement, Design Process, and User Instructions. Here are a number of examples of student designs — many of which included QR codes to dive deeper into the experience and learning!

“Kipling’s Choice” Final Task

As my friend and colleague Dr. Josh Powell told me when we first began working together at the Mount Vernon School in 2017, “If you don’t toot your own horn, no one is going to toot it for you.” In that light, I would like to share how proud I am of my Humanities students for getting showcased in this week’s MV Newsletter, sharing the work they did to create infographics on topics of their choosing from our first class novel, Kipling’s Choice. 

The article was sourced and edited by our own Director of Student Engagement and Alumni Relations, Katie Trenney, and you can see it for yourself here:

https://mountvernonschool.org/blog/grade-8-students-explore-curiosities-about-world-war-i-after-reading-kiplings-choice/

This assignment is a great example of the voice and choice that we offer our students, as well and the real-life application and skills that are inherent in our student work: how might we create a visual representation of data, based on independent research, to teach others about our passions and interests?

I hope you enjoy the article and student work, and I look forward to a new rotation of Humanities students starting my class in just two short weeks’ time! (The first trimester concludes on November 1st, and MV Middle students will rotate to their second Humanities teacher, as well as to their third Art and Design teacher.)

Here is a link to the full spread of student work on this project: PDF

Conflict Final Task 2019

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Students were given the task of designing advertising and subvertising (subversive advertising) campaigns in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with the option of applying them to the present day, or anachronistically to past eras in history that we have studied this year (i.e. Civil War, Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights Movement, etc.).
All captions are counterclockwise starting from the NW corner.

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Civil War-Era Newspaper Article on African-American Poverty; Mid-19th C. Billboard, with Graffiti; 19th C. Abolitionist Sign-Spinner; Contemporary Advert on Poverty; Contemporary Advert on Animal Poaching.

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Modern Art of Ocean Plastic; Civil Rights Movement Anti-Segregation Poster; Women’s Suffrage Billboard; Up-Cycling & Re-Purposing Demonstration for Clothing.

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Plastic Consumption Public Warning; Anti-Poverty Billboard; Zero Hunger & Better Education Initiative; Senate Pamphlet on Approaches to Government; Modern Advert on Fresh Water Access; Modern Advert on Consumption & Waste.

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Contemporary Advert on Corporate Sustainability; Infographics on the 12 Countries with Current GDPs Less than $$ Shrek $$; Global & Domestic Anti-Poverty Billboards.

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Anti-Poverty Billboard; Equality Billboard; Government Vaccination Campaign; Recycling Billboard

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Civil Rights-Era Gender Equality Billboard; Gender Equality Campaign; World Hunger Infographic; Recycling & Sustainability Campaign