Elementary practicum

Draw Like a scientist

In the fall of 2021, I developed and taught curriculum on the big idea of artist and scientist collaboration. Students learned about artist-scientists Klaus Kemp, Carla Stehr, and Cynthia Beth Rubins, working in the field of marine biology whose artwork highlights the beauty and environmental significance of plankton. Students learned about the different types of plankton like diatoms, phytoplankton, and zooplankton, and their diverse patterns. Students then created sketches of the different types of plankton that would later be translated into their scratch art drawings. The scratch art drawings incorporated glow-in-the-dark crayons that highlighted the bioluminescent quality of plankton. At the end of class, I led students to observe their glowing drawings through a make-shift “microscope” using a blacklight and a cardboard box.