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The lights are turned off in the colourful
Art Room and the Grades 4 & 5 students are viewing slides
of 13th Century Japanese screens. The art teacher is pointing
out the iconography’s significance and the main design
elements of the work. As they continue viewing the slides, the
girls discuss different design themes that can be incorporated
to create their own version of these screens.
More fun and teamwork awaits them in their
mathematics class. Problem-solving skills, including the ability
to identify relevant pieces of information and to integrate
them into a creative solution, have been strongly indicated
as key to achieving success in a wide range of disciplines
and careers. Our girls are working at math puzzles, which
offer them an array of challenges, from matrix logic puzzles
and individual and co-operative strategy games to manipulatives
and three-dimensional topological puzzles.
During a visit to the Grade 6 class on a
sunny morning, one finds girls conducting a series of three
labs for their science class, designed to promote skills in
observation, documentation and investigative analysis. In
this particular lab, girls are examining each other’s
fingerprints, both with and without magnification, and classifying
and cataloging them. They are also exploring how to lift fingerprints
from a variety of objects and surfaces, and learning how to
contextualize this new knowledge through a discussion of applications
to real life situations -- an essential component of effective
science learning for girls.
Girls in Grade 6 have also
been exploring body images as portrayed by the media. Today
they are in the computer lab for an Internet-based lesson
on how the ideal conception of the perfect body has changed
across time and cultures.They begin by looking at images of
popular models and asking the question: Who decides how we
should look and what body type is considered attractive? After
taking note of what the characteristics of the "perfect
body" are now considered to be, the next logical question
is: Was it always this way?
The girls then take a virtual tour through the ages to explore
what body types and fashions have been considered attractive
in different times and cultures. Along the way they meet the
prehistoric Venus of Willendorf, with her torso; they visit
the Middle Ages when restrictive clothing began to be used
to mould women’s bodies to attract men and 10th Century
China when the practice of footbinding began; they see Victorian
corsets and crinolines, early 20th Century flappers with their
boyish looks, voluptuous movie stars of the 30's, 40's and
50's, Twiggy and Barbie of the 60's and the birth of youth
culture, the emergence of people of colour in the 70’s
as attractive, and the toned hardbodies of the 80’s and
90's.
The lesson ends by reminding the girls that
what is considered attractive goes in cycles. It challenges
them to ask themselves what images they want to be influenced
by and to decide for themselves how they want to look. The
power is in the choice!
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