Fifth Grade Pagodas

I adapted last year's pagoda lesson to allow for more choices on the part of the students. They were able to choose between printing, drawing and sculpture.

The printing project was the same project that was completed last year: Pagoda Printing

For the drawing project, the students drew the pagoda they wanted. I had them trace their composition with a black Sharpie and then they colored them using Crayola Color Sticks. For this project, I did a lesson on basic shading. They decided where they wanted the light source to come from and then used the Color Sticks to create light and dark areas in their building.

The sculptures were made out of 100% recycled materials: cardboard, bottle caps, cork.... basically if they found something they wanted to use, they went for it. Then the used tempera cakes to paint them. I think next year, we might try acrylic. The tempera didn't have the vibrancy that I was looking for.

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Fifth Grade Pagodas

This is an idea I got from the teacher resource Thinking With a Line. I have used the printing ideas previously, but only with PreKinder, Kinder and 1st. I decided to try an activity on architecture with my fifth graders. Since fifth grade is learning about Asia, we focused on pagodas.


We looked at different examples, the lines that were used in them and I had them plan out their building in their sketchbook.

Then I gave each table a basket of printing tools: corrugated cardboard, 1/2 circles (tape rolls that I cut in 1/2), blocks, marker caps, bottle caps, pretty much anything that I thought might make an interesting print.

Each student picked a piece of construction paper and began building their pagoda using white acrylic paint- this was a change for them, since they are used to using black as their outline for everything.

The next week, we discussed color schemes. We reviewed old ones (warm, cool, primary, secondary, complementary, monochromatic) and I threw in a new one (analogous). They had to choose 1 color scheme for their entire pagoda. I gave them a basket with a variety of materials: tempera cakes, watercolors, Sharpies, watercolor markers, color stix, oil pastels. They could use as many as they wanted, as long as they stuck with their scheme.

I was very impressed with the results!

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