Glass Unlocks a Door to Learning

What do glassblowing and dance have to do with each other? How do you connect fractions with Warhol? At GlassRoots, the answer is arts integration. Every teaching artist  is committed to weaving the arts and standard curricula together to create a richer and more lasting learning experience for everyone who visits.

GlassRoots classes for youth in 5th through 12th grades are grounded in STEAM (STEM + Art) and enhance classroom work with real life experience. Our programs are offered at our studios and, with limitations, at schools off site. When students visit GlassRoots they have the opportunity to visit one, two or three art studios, known as the Flame Shop, the Flat Shop or the Hot Shop. All glass art projects include lessons on basic color and design theory, and introduction to and practice with glass tools.
 
No material inspires more creativity than glass! Scientists and artists alike have revered glass for the way it handles light and color, changes shape and take on new forms, while maintaining stability and strength. Artists, architects, engineers, and designers are turning to glass for its stunning characteristics. Glass is a natural material for joining art and STEM education in both practical and creative ways.  Students enhance math skills by making sense of problems and persevering in solving them, reasoning abstractly and quantitatively, constructing viable arguments, modeling with mathematics, using appropriate tools strategically, attending to precision, looking for and making use of structure, looking for and expressing regularity in repeated reasoning.   
 
Glass can demonstrate and help students understand core concepts and principles of science and use measurement and observation tools to assist in categorizing, representing, and interpreting the natural and designed world. GlassRoots’ scientific vocabulary and terminology include gravity, viscosity, temperature, gas/heat, chemicals, mandrel, torch, vermiculite among many others.
 
For Earth Science educators, in collaboration with Rutgers – Newark’s Earth Science Department, GlassRoots offers the Glass Volcano Experience, a hands-on STEAM-based workshop that uses molten glass to teach 6-12th grade students about the science and behavior of volcanoes.  The Glass Volcano Experience is a two-hour workshop  which includes four interactive components:

• A video presentation describing volcanoes and their behavior;
• A hands-on  Flame Shop experience in which students work with fire and glass to simulate lava behavior by creating  “Pele’s tears” and “hair,” products of Strombolian volcanic eruptions;
• A Flat Shop experience in which students learn about obsidian, aka volcanic glass, and are able to smash glass causing a ripple pattern that mimics that of volcanic rocks; and
• A Hot Shop observing molten glass that is heated to 2000 degrees simulating lava flow and how it reacts to various environmental features.

GlassRoots teaching artists are happy to collaborate across disciplines – full STEAM ahead!

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