National Tsing Hua University Affiliated Elementary School - Zhi Xiang Ting Tells Stories

Since entering the affiliated elementary school, students have received numerous learning and creative experiences with various courses and media, practicing many thematic courses under the curriculum arrangement and planning. This interdisciplinary aesthetics project started with observations and understanding of the campus and a walking tour of the living environment - Hsinchu, the "Windy City". The fallen leaves and plants seen on campus every day became the origin of the course ideas. The wind blowing the fallen leaves, the beauty of the falling leaves, the diversity of shapes and colors, the wind became the key to this picture. Through the wind, we rediscovered the beauty of plants. Dandelions spread their seeds and continued life through the wind. We saw, heard, and felt different natural landscapes and forms because of the wind, using our senses to get closer to the connection between plants and the wind, and rediscovered the growing environment through the course and creation. The natural landscape and ecological features of the campus and living environment and their impact on our lives were then discussed, shared, and analyzed in the classroom. The children talked about their feelings and discoveries about the observations. Through walking tours, keen observation, recording and discussion, and thinking about the connection between the environment and their own life experiences, they understood the relationship between the ecology of the growing environment and the culture of life, and cultivated a sense of identity, care and emotion for local characteristics and culture. The expression of art learning focuses on sustainability and innovation. Students actively discover and think about how art can make every teacher and student on campus feel the charm of the campus environment, and extend to the living environment - Hsinchu, so that the local environment and cultural characteristics can shine sustainably through the energy of art.
(I) A trend arises with art
With "Wind" as its theme, this program guides students to explore Hsinchu, the "Windy City," and through art workshops, fosters a deeper understanding of local culture and resonates with students' experiences. Utilizing diverse artistic expressions and media, the program explores the unique characteristics of Hsinchu, starting from the students' surroundings and the school environment. We will invite artists from various fields to lead workshops such as sound recording and glass mosaic art, allowing students to experience the imagery of wind through their five senses. Through auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory experiences, students will be guided to transform past feelings into creative works, experiencing the interaction between the present and the city, and expressing their imagination for the future through their creations. The learning process cultivates students' sense of civic responsibility, allowing aesthetic appreciation to gradually take root in their hearts through artistic creation, rooted in their lives. The program explores the changing landscape of the city due to environmental changes and the influence of the wind, allowing students to freely express their thoughts and ideas through artistic creation in the classroom, letting their creativity flow freely with the wind and art. This process not only allows students to interact with the city but also transforms their daily sensory experiences into artistic energy, enabling them to express their emotions and thoughts in their creations and collectively weave an artistic story that belongs to us and the wind.
2. Curriculum Development and Dialogue
Regarding the collaborative planning of teacher professional communities, the school will combine the time of the school's art class community with the teaching research association to arrange course discussions and collaborative preparation. Lecturers in relevant professional fields will be invited to introduce and share course development and teaching resources, and to provide suggestions and guidance to teachers implementing the course. Through such collaborative preparation time, the suggestions and ideas of art class teachers on the course will be collected, so as to enhance the breadth and depth of the course, and to make the course design more focused through dialogue and brainstorming.
(III) The Story of Campus Plants and the Five Senses
In the classroom, through teacher guidance and joint discussions, students explore and extend from the text content of the language arts domain, discovering the beauty of the surrounding environment. Students use their senses to find a plant map of the Tsinghua Affiliated Primary School campus, visually perceiving elements of the environment; and through their sense of smell, finding the scents of plants, the campus, and the city. By integrating these senses, students discover the beauty of the school's plants in all four seasons. Students create short essays and poems about the campus plants in class, and finally, they display their works combined with artistic images, completing the campus plant exploration map.
(4) Technological integration and innovation.
In the section combining technology and art, students created three-dimensional sculptures of campus plants to depict their forms and appearances. They then combined these with real-life campus photography and the integration of digital AI and VR technologies to model and incorporate the plant sprites into the campus environment. Using VR technology, students were able to step out of the real world and into the virtual world to explore, adventure, create, and discover, embarking on an adventure of exploring campus plants!
(V) Recognition and inheritance of local characteristics
In the integration into the social sphere, students learn about the new look of local development in the classroom, explore the problems encountered in the local environment, and how to make the local characteristics visible through action and regeneration. Through artistic creation, such as glass art in Hsinchu, the development of local environmental characteristics is integrated and revitalized. This fosters students' concern and action on environmental issues and public affairs, and helps them inherit and protect the memories of local cultural characteristics, becoming little guides for urban promotion.
(VI) Management and Discussion of Sustainable Environment
By integrating the natural world, the course teaches related courses based on the understanding of the local environment, ecology, unique weather conditions, and their impacts. It also explores the concept of sustainability, starting from oneself to find the relationship between humans and nature, and discusses related issues from the perspective of urban environmental changes and appearance. The course explores how to use one's own power to bring a different understanding to urban residents and tourists, and further considers how to express different aspects and new perspectives of the city through art.
(VII) Curriculum Innovation and Promotion
In terms of course promotion and connections, the program will leverage the resources of the Department of Art and Design at National Tsing Hua University. Professor Chang Chuan-Cheng will lead students and teachers in collaborative creation of glass art with Hsinchu characteristics, bringing Tsing Hua University's professional faculty into the campus to encourage students to have more ideas and creativity in their learning and creation. The creative process and results will be publicly shared on campus and in the performing arts hall. The course's creative process will be presented and performed at the graduation art exhibition, ensuring that the results are not just the presentation of finished products, but also the learning process itself, allowing every step of the students' creative journey to be seen. The program will also use art to present and share students' feelings and thoughts about the urban environment and ecology on campus and in their daily lives.
The curriculum development of the twelve-year compulsory education system is based on the spirit of holistic education, with the concepts of "spontaneity," "interaction," and "mutual benefit." It emphasizes that students are autonomous learners, and that schools should design and plan classroom activities with students as the main participants. Schools should provide appropriate scaffolding to stimulate students' learning motivation and enthusiasm, guiding them to develop various interactive abilities with themselves, others, society, and nature. This helps students apply and practice what they have learned, experience the meaning of life, create their own value, and be willing to dedicate themselves to the sustainable development of their living environment and cultural characteristics, jointly seeking mutual benefit and common good. This is also the goal pursued by this interdisciplinary aesthetic education project, "Planting Ideas, Listening to the Wind, Telling Stories."