ART CORNER
Botanical Gardens
and Place-based Learning
By Kev Watson, MYP Visual Arts Teacher
I
n her book, Place-based Curriculum Design (2015),
Amy Demarest asserted that ‘learning means more
when students go directly to the source’ and that
‘place-based learning brings students… into a full-
spectrum world of colour’. When we each reach
back into the mists of time and try to recall our own
childhood experiences at school, it is likely that the
field trips we took will be among our most vividly
preserved and treasured memories. What this tells us
is that the learning experiences we have outside of
traditional classroom environments are likely to stick
in the minds of participants. And it was with a desire
to make learning meaningful and to help learning stick,
that the decision was made to take the Grade 8 Visual
Arts classroom out into the field – to Beijing’s Botanical
Gardens - to allow our students to investigate and
inquire in a fabulously stimulating external setting.
Daystar Academy Fall/Winter Edition 2018
At the time of writing, Grade 8 students at the Beigao
campus are putting their finishing touches to their latest
summative artworks: big, bold, brightly coloured acrylic
paintings on canvas of magnified flowers and plants.
These finished artworks represent the final step in a
tremendously successful ten-week project – a project
which followed a familiar path involving research,
reflection, skills development, idea generation, and
idea development. What makes this project stand out
from others, however, was the stimulation each student
took from the field work they engaged in back in late
September, during their visit to Beijing’s Botanical
Gardens.
It was at the Botanical Gardens that the students
produced observational drawings of some of the many
flowers, orchids and cacti that can be found within