Behind the Scenes
The first stage of the project was to create the design and this task was given to Year 6, facilitated by Tracey with help from the Y6 class teacher, Mrs. Beisly.
“Tracey came into our classroom to help us to design the mosaic. We started by brainstorming ideas. We wanted the 3 panels to represent the three stages in our school: foundation, key stage 1 and key stage 2 and link it all to Green Day.” (Sade, Y6)
The children came up with some very interesting and creative ways to represent the theme through nature. For example, life cycles of plants and animals that could be shown developing across the three panels.
“We thought of ideas from nature that could symbolise how we grow and flourish as we move through school.” (Danny Y6)
“Once we had a good list of ideas, we started to create images of them, using tissue paper, lolly sticks, buttons and feathers sandwiched between two pieces of clear sticky back plastic” (Ryan Y6)
Whilst the rest of Year 6 continued with individual designs, eight children were selected by the class teacher to work on the overall composition for the mosaic with Tracey. They split into two teams of four and each team came up with their own proposal.
The two design teams returned to the classroom to make a presentation to the rest of the class. Both proposals proved to be very popular and the class found it impossible to choose one or the other. Instead, Tracey suggested that she could take both of them away and try to combine them into one design.
Each year group joined Tracey in the school hall for a half hour slot as part of the exciting Green Day activities. Tracey, assisted by Cathy, Lisa and Luke (three parent volunteers), gave each class a brief introduction to mosaics and an inspiring slide show of interesting examples. Then the children had a look at the design created by Year 6 and heard about the themes and ideas involved. Finally, they all had a chance to make a design of their own using an improvised printing technique.
The mosaic was made using the direct method and incorporated an exciting selection of materials: glass smalti and glass mosaics, ceramic tile pieces and old fragments of ceramics salvaged from the days when the school had its own kiln in operation, together with glass beads. Real treasure!
The talented pupils of Chorlton C E Primary School selected their own colours and materials and did all of the work on the mosaic themselves with just a little assistance as needed. Each class sent groups of 8-10 children down at a time to work in the basement workspace, which was ideal.
Staff and parents that assisted with the sessions had the opportunity to take part too and by the end of the project volunteer assistants Cathy Brydges, Lisa Scott and Luke Adamson had all mastered the mosaic techniques involved.