WPU Art Practicum Student Develops STEAM Lesson Plan at SOIT

Recently, WPU ART Practicum student, Kelly Bogucz, an art major at WPU who hopes to soon be certified as a K-12 public school art teacher in NJ, developed an interesting and engaging STEAM lesson plan for students at SOIT who are in Art teacher Marilyn Simon's class.

Bogucz brought in many books and examples of scrimshaw art and methods for the students to peruse.  Scrimshaw is an art form that is considered by some to be the only art form that originated in America, since the art of Scrimshaw was first practiced by sailors working on whaling ships out of New England.  LINK

 SOIT STEAM students learned that today, when people hear the word Scrimshaw, more often than not they think of the images cut or scratched into ivory or other materials to produce a picture, however, there were a number of other things that were produced aboard whaling ships that were also considered Scrimshaw.  There were the hinges, latches and other whale bone and ivory fittings that made the “Nantucket Basket” famous.  LINK

Inspired by these new learnings in art, culture, history and science, students were then taught by Ms. Bogucz how to employ a variety of cross hatching techniques with permanent markers onto bone shaped papers.  They were encouraged to use their imagination as well as their critical thinking skills to invent their own scrimshaw narratives.

A number of rich drawings were produced by the students after several days' work on this project, full of science as well as art knowledge.  Thus, an interesting and easy to do STEAM lesson plan emerged for use in any high school classroom.

Ms. Bogusz is studying K-12 Art Methods at WPU with SOIT Art PIR Triada Samaras who is focusing on developing new STEAM lesson plans in this college class.