Practical tips and examples of children's work

Lesson 1
Book your IT suite to start the topic. Load the What is a Chair? flash interactive before the lesson starts as it may take some time. Pair stronger readers with weaker ones for the interactive. Completing the interactive quiz and afterwards looking at the online artwork and photo gallery work well as whole class activities in front of an interactive whiteboard as they prompt plenty of discussion.

Lesson 2
This lesson is good for generating discussion at home as children seek out magazines and catalogues and it involves them actively looking at chairs. Encourage them to think about different ways they might theme chairs in their collage.

Chair collage

Chair collage

Lesson 3
Print different chairs from the website for each child to stick into their room setting. This is an important time to reinforce thinking about how chairs are designed for different purposes and rooms. If you have time you can also introduce the Chair Details interactive to prepare the pupils for their visit to the Gallery.

Room setting

Room setting

Lesson 4
The visit to see real chairs in Victorian room sets can generate a lot of enthusiasm. In pilot sessions the quality of sketching was a lot higher than normal with the children concentrating and paying a lot of attention to detail with their drawings. Asking the children to annotate their drawings ensures that they note details of colours, materials, age and design.
"I enjoyed looking at the different types of chairs"
“I enjoyed drawing the chairs and doing it in detail”
“It was good to see very old chairs in the room they belonged in. We had seen some of them on the website which made it very exciting.”
(Pupils visiting the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery for Take a Seat)

Sketching chairs

Looking at chairs

Lessons 5 - 6
These lessons are an opportunity to discuss the visit and reinforce the pupils' learning on site. Using the Chair Details interactive lets them explore the design of the chairs they've been drawing and reinforces messages about materials, technology and fashion.
"I think the website is excellent because you can make the camera [magnifying glass] have a better view of the chair". (Pupil)

Chair sketches

Chair sketch

Painting a favourite chair from their visit is an option if time allows and enables pupils to use the annotations on their drawings to recreate the materials, design and colours accurately.

Lessons 7 - 11
Thinking about the qualities of the person for whom they are designing a chair and how their chair design could reflect those qualities can generate plenty of discussion and ideas among children.

Chair design

Finished chair

Some might choose to concentrate on real people and want to produce very practical chairs, others might choose fantasy or imaginary people and produce more creative designs.
"Drawing 3D was challenging".
"I enjoyed designing the chair and then changing it"
(Pupils)

Lesson 12
The children need to be given plenty of time to discuss their designs and to reflect on what they've made. Many will have had to alter their initial design perhaps because it proved too hard to make or was a poor design, the materials available were not appropriate or they ran out of time. Reflecting on their experience is an important learning outcome.

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