Lesson Plan: Coil Bowl in the Mississippian Moundbuilders Style
For this Basic Moundbuilders Coil Bowl Lesson Plan, all you need is a way to show 2 short videos and a slide show -– altogether less than 10 minutes –- and your regular clay materials. If you have a little more time and access to a little technology tools and/or Internet, then here is a fun and engaging lesson that you and your students will enjoy. Your students will surprise you with what they come up with in both ideas and artworks.
Basic Activity Lesson for Creating Mississippian Style Bowls
Time: 4-5 Hours
Concepts and Terms:
Coil
Coil Method
Score
Slip
Score and slip
Leather hard
Parts of a bowl: foot, body, rim
Glaze
Break – with reference to glaze
Kiln
Fire
Objectives:
Student will use historical references as a basis for design and inspiration in his/her piece.
Student will create sketches of designs based on the works of the Mississippian Moundbuilders
Student will create a coil pot using the coil as a decorative element in his or her work.
Procedure:
Show the 2 short videos that you will find on the "Videos and Slide Shows" page (see link above) entitled The Classic Olla - Oaxacan Pottery and Mississippian-Inspired Coil Pots. The first is of a professional potter creating a beautiful coil pot with great expertise using methods that have been used for generations. This is a beautiful resource.
If you cannot access video sites at your school, I’ve included very simple instructions for downloading them to your computer. Just go to https://www.miroguide.com/ and download Miro. It’s simple to use for downloading and viewing videos to your computer so that you can show them at school.
The second video is a short demonstration video for Making Mississippian-Inspired Coil Pots that I put together as an overview. It is less than 4 minutes long.
After viewing the videos, have student do thumbnail sketches of the shapes of pots that they might like to create. Ensure that they know all of the parts of the pot. When a shape is decided upon, have students start to create their pots, ensuring that they are correctly smoothing coils together so that they pieces do not fall apart in the kiln. Discuss their progress as you supervise them, using the vocabulary with them.
When the bowls are barely leather hard, students can score and slip the bottom to attach a foot, following the directions on the video.
Tech Tip: While young potters are creating their masterpieces, keep the how-to slideshow or video showing with the sound turned all of the way down. Students can look up and refresh their memories on how to do different parts rather than constantly calling you over.
When students have completed, have them loosely wrap the pots in plastic to start to slowly dry. While pots are drying and again while pots are firing are good times to have students do some of the additional enrichment activities (see link at top of page).
