3.1.3 Methodological Material_Chapter 5 "Educational Artmaking In Partners Countries: Good Practices In Community Settings": Detailed description of selected activities

3.1.3 Methodological Material_Chapter 5 "Educational Artmaking In Partners Countries: Good Practices In Community Settings"

26. Detailed description of selected activities

ACTIVITY 1: THE RAT OF LIGHT

Title	The Ray of Light
Country	Italy
Promoter	National projects
Context of implementation	X large city ☐small city ☐village
Goals of the activity	Favour an approach to reality and knowledge development. give meaning and greater freedom to the scientific thinking innate in human beings.
Description	Content of the artistic activities carried out: Light and the phenomena of light are doors leading to discovery and knowledge of the world. They can be explored through the ‘classical’ range of visible light, which can be broken down into colors, but also through the invisible spectrum with, for example, infra-red and ultraviolet rays. Main Steps The Illuminatories: contexts organized around a knowledge concept or problem, and offering different tools, materials, questions, encounters, and access points. These do not guide investigators towards a single solution but make different journeys possible, and are particularly conducive to interaction and the construction of group learning. The task: Through the means of different languages – words, drawings, sounds, constructions, and visual compositions –construct and verify hypotheses and theories. Theories on which the practice was based on: Research, dissemination and formative experience where the imagination, the fantastical, and the narrative form explanations and interpretations in organic ways with more scientific and rational processes.
Implementation choices	a. Target groups: middle school students b. Duration: 60 minutes c. The number of sessions/activities: afternoon activities in community centers d. Teaching methodology: multimedia learning e. Type of assessment and tools used to identify the benefits: 21st-century competencies questionnaire (Mancinelli, 2020)
Artistic mean	Analysis of famous artistic expressions artmaking activity x Painting A ☐ B ☐ ☐ Theatre play A ☐ B ☐ ☐ Music A ☐ B ☐ ☐ Sculpture A ☐ B ☐ X Creative Writing (storytelling, poetry, etc.) A ☐ B x X Arts and crafts (pottering, needlework, sewing, etc.) ☐ Other, please, specify:_____________
Materials	Collection of drawings, sounds and visual constructions
Who runs the activity	School
Benefits and results	Creative engagement of children. Sense of significance and satisfaction from personal achievements. Developing the imagination and cultivating a love of language and speech.
Challenge to inclusion addressed	Cognitive challenge.
How did it address that challenge?	Opening to differences in the use of different languages in communication and highlighting the possibility for each individual to find a personal way to address a task.
21st Century skills addressed	Creative thinking: generating new ideas, shifting perspective, conceiving of something new, and building on other ideas. But also Problem-solving: looking at a problem considering the different options for solutions and coming to a solution after weighing the pros and cons of the different options available. Interpersonal relationship skills: developing collaboration skills while searching for the best solution
UDL as Guiding principle	multiple means of representing the concepts are proposed. multiple ways to express the solution: participants can use verbal, pictorial, visual means. multiple ways to engage your students: several different tools are provided and participants choose those that motivate them more.
Website/E-mail /Other contact info:	Driven from programs implemented by Reggio Children Reggio Children is a certified Educational Provider under the International Standards UNI ISO 9001:2015 for the design and provision of professional development educational activity. atelier@reggiochildren.it
Questions for reflection:	Questions that can be asked to stimulate target groups’ feedback and reflection How many different ways to perform the activity were proposed? List what you and the other participants choose. Did you understand your task? Did you find a way to complete the task? How did you explain what happened? How many different solutions were proposed during the activity? Which is the one that you proposed? What did you learn?

ACTIVITY 2: IN THE SHAPE OF CLAY

Title	In the Shape of Clay
Country	Italy
Promoter	National project
Context of implementation	X large city ☐small city ☐village
Goals of the activity	exercising in thinking in a flexible way, shifting between digital and analogical, abstract and concrete, virtual and artisanal ways integrates languages.
Description	Content of the artistic activities carried out: supporting the exploration of clay, a material that speaks of human history. Clay is offered in its different "phases of life", from damp to dry. It is crushed and powdered, meets with water, comes back to life again, and returns to its capacity for plasticity. Main Steps: The hands listen, observe and manipulate, enter clay and fragment it with fine gestures, digging into the material with pressure and pleasure. They work the clay with fist, palm, and fingertips, experimenting with verticality and balancing different volumes. Clay is offered in a relation with different supports: wooden boards of different shapes and sizes, reflective surfaces, metals, and plastics. Bases that have different surfaces make for interesting departures, and can become the die or mold for interesting new textures. Large work tables allow for the use of traditional tools – for incisions, hollowing and smoothing – and for other unusual tools too, like pasta-cutters, potato-mashers, and icing-bags. Then there are torches, lenses, and microscopes, connected to computers, which let us get inside the material’s most intimate and unanticipated structures in totally new ways. It is possible to work on different levels of representation at once Theories on which the practice was based on: Connect multidisciplinary explorations and know-how, generating learning strategies and new forms of knowledge.
Implementation choices	a. Target groups: middle school students b. Duration: 60 minutes c. Number of sessions/activities: afternoon activities in community centers d. Teaching methodology: multimedia learning e. Type of assessment and tools used to identify the benefits: 21^st century competencies questionnaire (Mancinelli, 2020)
Artistic mean	analysis of famous artistic expressions artmaking activity ☐ Painting A ☐ B ☐ ☐ Theatre play A ☐ B ☐ ☐ Music A ☐ B ☐ X Sculpture A ☐ B X ☐ Creative Writing (storytelling, poetry, etc.) A ☐ B X X Arts and crafts (pottering, needlework, sewing, etc.) ☐ Other, please, specify:_____________
Materials	wooden boards of different shapes and sizes, reflective surfaces, metals, and plastics, pasta-cutters, potato-mashers, and icing-bags, torches, lenses, and microscopes, connected to computers
Who runs the activity	School.
Benefits and results	The benefits of this best practice for the target groups Participants discover the force of contact with terra, the earth, shaping it in different ways, with alphabets of plasticity, layers and strata, structures rich in solids and voids, creating complex compositions and forms in different colors.
Challenge to inclusion addressed	Cognitive challenge.
How did it address that challenge?	By providing diverse ways for expressing their skills, it supports the development of a positive sense of self and personal strengths.
21st Century skills addressed	Flexibility and Adaptability Productivity and Responsibility Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
UDL as Guiding principle	In using multiple means of representation at the same time.
Website/E-mail /Other contact info:	Driven from programs implemented by Reggio Children Reggio Children is a certified Educational Provider under the International Standards UNI ISO 9001:2015 for the design and provision of professional development educational activity. atelier@reggiochildren.it
Questions for reflection:	Questions that can be asked to stimulate target groups’ feedback and reflection What did you realize? What artistic skills did you discover? How did you improve it from the beginning of the activity? What did you discover about yourself? What can you do in the future to practice more and to improve it?