Celebrating Community

Hynes UNO

2nd Grade, Social Studies, Visual Arts

Ms. Brigid / Ms. Russell

Ms. Russell was interested in using the social studies unit to give students an opportunity to celebrate and learn about their own neighborhoods and communities. We started the unit by reading books about young people in their communities, including “Tar Beach,” by Faith Ringgold, and taking a walk as a class to draw and observe the school’s neighborhood.

We then used the multimedia collage to create buildings (houses, apartment buildings, stores, hotels) from our real or imagined communities. One student chose to create a house that looked like their favorite aunt’s house with a beautiful garden, and others used their imagination to create never before seen architecture. The buildings were created over two classes, first by combining two shapes to create a new image (the building’s roof and ground floor), and second by adding details using collage with tissue paper and found objects, or oil pastel to draw details. Along the way, we learned to identify and describe our own neighborhoods, the neighborhood where our school is located (Gentilly), and the city that we live in (New Orleans). We also began to identify important landmarks in our community. We explored visual art concepts like horizon, landscape, observation, collage, drawing, and multimedia.

Students were given the opportunity to share their multimedia houses in front of the whole class, and share about the neighborhoods where they live.