Ceramics Classes

Pinch Pot Spirit Rattle

Today we will be talking about my classroom and in my classroom; ideally, I would be teaching a ceramics class in which we would have five units of study. The first of these units of study would cover pinch pots, the second would be coil pots the third would be slab work, the forth would be throwing pots on the wheel and the last unit of study would be a combination that is sculptural. Today we are going to focus on the first unit of study, pinch pots.

The student will produce a pinch pot that has beads in its inner chamber to make the object into a rattle; the rattle will consist of six pinch pots. The student will produce a pinch pot that uses techniques to release trapped air.

On the first day of the class, I will give all the students a ball of clay to work with while I introduce the medium and some key terms such as green ware, bisque ware, leather hard, and bone dry. I will also introduce them to the first project. This will give them time to work with the clay if they have never had experience with it before while still enabling them to get comfortable with the class. The homework will be three designs for a pinch pot spirit rattle. I also will show students a PowerPoint with examples of the spirit rattle and different pinch pot art. I will play a fun game at the end of the class to make sure that students are grasping the concepts I present in class, this will be the formative assessment. On the second day students will be learning how to wedge clay so that they are taught a valuable lesson for when they are working with the clay on their projects. They will also view a PowerPoint that has example videos of slipping and scoring and other techniques. Wedging is essential to a ceramicist’s process. Also when I go around to see that they are wedging clay properly (which is the formative assessment for the day) I will check to see if they did their homework and approve of their project. Once I have done this they may begin. Realistically the project would take a minimum of ten classes. The first three classes would be working with clay before it is leather hard, the next three days would be working with leather hard clay and then there would be a miscellaneous day that would be for students who are struggling with the time or just need to really catch up with the work load as it will be a strenuous timeline. The last three days are for glazing in which students will have a rolling deadline as long as it is done before the critique.