Mrs. Lee's Art Adventurers!: 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade Australian Rock Drawings

The final destination in our travels was the county and continent of Australia. We started the project by talking about collaborative art and how it might be helpful for this project. "Well the rocks are big, so the more people we have in our groups the easier and faster it will be to finish such large drawings. We can also split up the work according to everyone's strengths. Also, we might get to work with people we usually don't get to work with and discover that we are a great team." Once we split up into teams, each group was given an article about a different Australian current event. The teams split up the articles so each person read and recorded notes about a different part. The groups then had to create a sketch that communicated the main idea of the articles without using words. We talked about how our drawings would have to be simplified and could include symbols to educate other Australians about our article subjects. Also, rocks are bumpy, so we could not include alot of detail in our drawings. The Australian rock drawings were primarily done before language existed, so the drawings were a form of language. We would be communicating with pictures instead of words (symbols!). When we moved on to start creating our large rock drawings, each group split up the jobs according to everyone's strengths. A challenge arose when the students learned they could only use chalk that was the color of the Australian rocks, sand, and dirt, because that was what they used long ago. In the end we shared our drawings with the class and they had to guess what our articles were about. If the class had some correct guesses, then we created a successful rock drawing that communicated to other Australians walking past!

Article: "Eucalyptus Leaves Laced with Gold, A Miner's Best Friend"