Hsinchu City Tsinghua Elementary School - Art Field Tour - The Elves Guarding the Stream

Starting from the first semester of the fifth grade, students have worked with community college teachers to take a themed course on the Keya River near the school. They learn about the environment around the Keya River by visiting the river, and then experience the natural landscape, ecological features, and impact of the Keya River on our lives. They then return to the classroom for discussion, sharing, and analysis, allowing the children to talk about their feelings and discoveries about visiting the river. Through visiting the river, keen observation, recording, and discussion, they think about the relationship between the Keya River and their own lives and those of local residents, understand the relationship between the ecology of the river and the living culture, and cultivate identification with, local care for, and emotions for the Keya River. The main theme of art learning is how to protect the Keya River. Students actively discover and think about what kind of artistic performance actions can help everyone better understand the Keya River and achieve a sustainable Keya River.
(I) Wandering in the Art Basin
The theme of the course will continue the local environment course - Keya Creek theme research, with "The Elves Protecting Keya Creek" as the creative theme. Students will use their field research experience as inspiration and imagine themselves as the fantasy creature "the elf guarding the stream" as a starting point for their creation, thereby cultivating their imagination and creativity. In addition, we will incorporate elements of information technology into the curriculum, using a variety of artistic expressions and media to explore the process of mutual influence between the self and the environment. Through artistic creation, students will participate in community conservation and sustainable sharing, cultivate their responsibility for civic participation, and allow the cultivation of aesthetic literacy to start from their own lives through artistic creation. From the campus environment and ecology that are close to the students, they will understand the life course of the hometown watershed and the customs and cultural characteristics of their hometown, and reconstruct the story of the stream. Through the students' creations and ideas, we will weave together our own artistic watershed and roam freely in it.
2. Curriculum Development and Dialogue
In terms of planning for co-preparation with the professional community of teachers, we will combine the time of the school's art class community of the school's teaching research association to arrange course discussions and co-preparation. We will invite lecturers in relevant professional fields to introduce and share course development and teaching resources, and give advice and guidance to teachers who implement the courses in school. Through such co-preparation time, we will listen to the suggestions and ideas of art class teachers on the course, so that the breadth of the course can be improved and the resources can be richer. Through dialogue and brainstorming, we can focus more on various aspects of course design to make the course more diverse and richer.
3. Cultural Identity and Appreciation
In the classroom, through the guidance of teachers and discussions between teachers and students, starting from the language field of "tasting the flavor of food", the content of the text in the text explores and extends the food brought by the environment. Students start from the senses to find the food map of Keya Creek, perceive the food elements brought by the environment through vision; through the sense of smell, find the taste of the environment, and integrate the local taste through the senses. Students also create poems and introductions that combine the environment and food in class. Finally, they display their works combined with artistic images to complete the Keya Creek food map.
(IV) Technology Integration and Innovation
In the part where technology and art are combined, students present the guardian elves in their hearts in the form of three-dimensional creations to present the elves' shapes and appearances, and add the depiction of the stream scene. They use the painting media techniques they have learned to create the watershed scene of Keya Creek, and combine the integration and creation of digital AI and AR technology. The elf shapes they created are photographed and integrated into the created stream scenes. AR and AI technology are used to allow students to move from real life into the virtual world to explore, adventure, create and discover, and go on an adventure journey with the Keya Creek elves!
(V) Local Identity and Heritage
In the process of social integration, students will explore the problems encountered by the local environment through the identification actions of the new local development learned in class, how to make the local characteristics visible through action and regeneration, and integrate the development of the revitalization of local environmental characteristics through artistic creation. This will establish students' concern and motivation for environmental issues and public affairs, inherit and protect the local memories of the residents near Keya Creek, and become little marketers for urban promotion.
(VI) Discussion on Sustainable Ecology
In the integration of the natural field, relevant courses are taught through the cognition of the ecology of Keya Creek, the habits of animals unique to the creek, the understanding of the watershed, the functions of the creek, etc., and the concept of sustainability is explored. Starting from the self, the correlation and relationship between man and nature are sought, and the issues related to survival and habits are explored from the animal ecology of the creek. How to use one's own power to bring a different understanding to the residents of Keya Creek and the concept of protecting the sustainability of the creek, and show a different face of Keya Creek. Finally, it is presented through artistic expression to expand new perspectives on the stream.
(VII) Course Sharing and Promotion
In the part of course promotion and connection, our students in the fifth grade combined the resources of the community college to co-create a picture book of the story of Keya Creek. The resources of bringing professional lecturers from the community college into campus gave students more ideas and creativity in learning and creation. In terms of the promotion of the creative process and results, the course results will be published in Keya Creek, and the course creation process will also be published and exhibited at the graduation art exhibition, so that the results are not only the presentation of the finished product, but the learning of the process is also the result of the creation, so that every bit of the students' creative process can be seen. We also present our feelings and thoughts about the stream through art and share them with everyone.
The development of the 12-year national basic education curriculum is based on the spirit of holistic education, with the concepts of "spontaneity", "interaction" and "common good", emphasizing that students are spontaneous and active learners. Schools should design and plan classrooms with students as the main body, and build learning scaffolds in a timely manner to stimulate students' learning motivation and enthusiasm, guide students to develop various interactive abilities with themselves, others, society, and nature in learning, help students apply what they have learned and practice what they have learned, experience the meaning of life, create their own value, and be willing to contribute to the sustainable development of society, the natural environment and culture, and jointly seek mutual benefit and common good. This is also the goal pursued by this cross-disciplinary aesthetic education course "Art Wandering - Elves Guarding the Creek".