In our program, we have a lot of freedom to plan diverse curriculum to meet the needs of our students as well as engage them. We ( one math teacher and two English teachers) are working together in a unit designed around scale/proportional drawings in math and alter egos. Our inspiration came from an article in Scholastic magazine entitled “Create Your Alter Ego” (to access this site, your school must have a Scholastic subscription).

From this article, in the English classes, we began discussing what an alter ego is and we looked at some very popular examples of people who have alter egos using Prezi. In my English I class, we are reading The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, a dystopian novel, so in the vain of teaching genres, students were required to create a fictional dystopian society guided by this Prezi. The main character in the student’s story is supposed to be their alter ego, so students created Facebook page profiles to describe their alter ego. Creating the alter egos has been a unique way to teach character traits and direct/indirect characterization. To prepare students for 3D models in math, we read “Create Your Alter Ego” from Scholastic.

We are very focused on literacy across the curriculum, so in math class, students read another article from Scholastic called “Printing in 3D”   to get ready for sculpting their alter egos. But, before any sculpting could be done, students had to learn about proportional and scale drawings. Our math teacher has “flipped” her classroom, so all of her lessons about proportional drawings can be found on her YouTube page. Students have access to these lessons outside of school. After learning about scale drawings, students practiced with cartoon drawings before taking a picture of themselves to draw for their alter ego proportional drawing. Next, students will follow the steps in the Scholastic magazine and Mrs. Gilstrap’s flipped videos on YouTube to create their 3D models using wire, tin foil, and a salt sculpting dough. After sculpting their alter egos, students will paint their alter egos to match the character they have created in the English class.

The next step will be to make a comic strip using student stories and 3D sculptures.

Researching alter egos.

Drawing his alter ego.

Focused on figuring out how to draw 3D sculptures.

About to place the clay around the tin figure.

Wire/tin foil sculpture

3D sculpture

Mrs. G microwaving 3D figures.