Trivis & Savva

Michelle Cambi

Title:  Artistic Learning in Relation to Young Children’s Chorotopos: An In-Depth Approach to Early Childhood Visual Culture Education

Author: Eli Trimis and  Andri Savva

Short summary (50-75 words):  Trimis and Savva’s article explains the importance for the in-depth use of chorotopos in the art classroom.  It is considered important in planning and implementing school based art programs. They stress the importance because it helps teachers involve children in artistic learning through their community and surroundings.

Main points of the reading: Trivis and Savva give three examples of teachers in three different areas.  Within each group, they include the use of chorotopos, and got children involved with materials that surround them. (ex: sand form the beach, leaves, form the forest)  It became evident to the teachers that the different activities in the diverse places with chorotopos allowed children’s minds and creativity to soar.   They combined these found materials with other art materials.  The process of this enabled the children to experience things such as line, shapes, textures, colors, and sizes when making their artwork.

What is valuable to consider in terms of:

Teacher’s choices: Trimis and Savva note that in the teacher’s observations, their notes reveled that they easily linked creating with observation.   They were able to develop an interactive school based art program. 

Curriculum: One thing I found important in the choice of activities was the attention they gave to the four stages of the concept of chorotopos. They followed these by first allowing the children to explore and play with the materials they were allowed to choose from surrounding areas, she allows them to combine them with other materials they already have experience with (paints) and she allows them to group together to create a physical piece of work, encouraging them to reflect and talk to each other during the process. 

Resources:  The authors give plenty examples of resources here.  I think it’s important for the teachers to make use of the unlimited supply of resources they have that surround them.  Classrooms in suburban areas can use seashells, fountains, sticks, pebbles, tree branches, etc. while the children in rural areas can use rocks, garbage, fountains, statues, and even museums.  By identifying these things the teachers can create useful programs.

What questions do you have about the reading?

I wanted to know why this study was only done on one age group.  What would happen if this were done to a group of high school students? Also if the children were from city areas what different affect would visiting museums more frequently have on them?

What questions does the reading prompt you to ask about teaching art?

Although I find this method of teaching very important and useful, I want to know how I can make it affective.  I do remember doing this in elementary school but not in high school.  I would love to know how I could make this method useful for older children.

One important quote:

“Teachers should posses the qualities of flexibility, enthusiasm, the joy of discovery and they should be open to learning from other children”.

Trimis and Savva Reading

After reading the ideas the two authors present in the article, I have a new idea and take on art education.  I agreed with the ideas they shared.  They start by talking about the young learners and their surroundings, or chorotopos, and how they can affect their learning.  From reading this article, it is clear to me that even though a child's environment is not that great a teacher can really change their outlook on learning by the way they treat their classroom and students.  Although I found the three experiments with the schools to be beneficial for learning about surroundings, I find myself asking these questions.
All the children in the study were from rural areas, how would the outcome be for the children who live in cities?  Would children benefit less if they were not exposed to museums and art galleries?  and How would the outcome differ if the study was done on and older group of children?

9/11 flag

My idea for the Studio Exploration proj.

There's a waterfall I have been going to with friends for a few years now, there's also cliff jumping there.  I have not jumps since just recently.  After I took the risk of jumping, I found myself taking risks in other areas of my life, mainly with my art.
I want to further explore risk taking and possibly gender risk taking.

One of my drawings...

Some of my art work

Reflecting on class 9/1

Today my class mates and I paired off into groups of 5.  In the previous class all 5 of us were given separate readings in which we needed to complete and answer questions for.  I had Hand-in Hand, Building Community on Common Ground by Lawton.  We were then asked to set up 5 different categories , which I can not remember off the top of my head what they were, where we had to put different view points in.  The exercise was helpful, it made me realize there's some methods of teaching I just don't agree with and some I would love to try.  My article was about getting the kids out of the classroom and working alongside homeless people.  This would make the children aware of their environment and what's really going on.  Although I don't think I would use homeless people and I don't think many parents would want their children around them either.  Maybe I would choose firemen or something along those lines.