Episcopal School Blog

"Shoe-Flies" Invade 6th Grade Classes

10/10/2016

The Shoe-fly sculpture project was an inspired collaboration of poetry, science and the visual arts. 6th grade students were given the task of reading Kwame Alexander's BOOKED, the follow-up to the Newbery-winning novel THE CROSSOVER. Soccer, family, love, and friendship, take center stage as twelve-year-old Nick learns the power of words. He wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams. Helping him along are his best friend and sometimes teammate Coby, and The Mac, a rapping librarian who gives Nick inspiring books to read.

In the novel-told-in-verse, Mac, the school librarian, loves dragonflies.

From the novel:

The Mac drinks tea
in a dragonfly mug.
On the library floor
is a dragonfly rug.

The door is covered
with dragonfly pics,
‘cause Skip to the Mac
is dragonfly sick.

"Mac is a big reason the main character of the novel ends up falling in love with reading, so he’s a character I admire," said sixth grade teacher Mrs. Guarisco. "We started our novel study with an examination of our reading histories, including people who have influenced us in our reading journeys. I sure hope I can play a role in kids’ journeys the way Mac does.

"I thought it would be fun to do some kind of dragonfly art, so I asked Mr. Ropper and Mrs. Minton about working on something together. Mr. Roper revamped his Shoeberts project and with a few tweaks the Shoe-flies project was born. I’m hoping to decorate my classroom with the finished work."

Mrs. Betsy Minton, our Science Instigator, made a presentation to Mr. Roper's 6th grade art students about the dragonfly to inspire ideas for their own creatures.

"I showed the students a short video clip of dragonflies that spoke specifically about engineering and how dragonflies are the perfect flying machine. We went over some basic dragonfly anatomy to help them understand what components they needed to complete their sculpture," said Minton.

6th grades students are using a piece of cast-off footwear as a form from which to build, thus the "Shoe-fly" label. Wire and paper mache' are being used with other found objects to create the creatures. Students finished the constructions with paint and a variety of decorative touches.