Iowa City Mural Hunt
Willowwind teachers wanted to create a learning experience that would combine literacy, art and art advocacy, collaboration, and community service and engagement. This 10 week-long learning project accomplished that and more. The culmination of this project is The Great Iowa City Mural Hunt, a booklet full of poetic clues that leads art lovers and Iowa Citians on a scavenger hunt around town. You can download a copy below.
The Owls and Foxes teamed up on this project. Students took field trips downtown and used maps to navigate and find the locations of 27 of the cities murals. They made observations and took notes about the murals and surrounding area and brainstormed clues.
Students wrote their clues in various forms of poetry because they were also entering a literacy on unit on poetry around the same time. Students had multiple workshops and editing sessions with our 3rd-6th grade peers so we could get lots of feedback and make this project the best it could be. Sometimes this process was hard so we also learned how to give constructive feedback and practiced listening and responding to it.
During this project students also got to meet with a couple of the local mural artists. They learned about their background and experience, inspirations, creative process, and how they actually made those giant murals. Some of the artists even took time to do a little critique of student artwork to help us get better with our own skills.
