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Inside the Classroom: Christina Lincoln - Hatfield Elementary

Inside the Classroom: Christina Lincoln - Hatfield Elementary

Inside the Classroom is a series that visits Northwest ISD campuses throughout the year and highlights the magical moments that happen between teachers and students each and every day across the entire 234 square miles of NISD.

Photo Album

Image of Ms Lincoln showing students how to form clay

For this week’s edition of Inside the Classroom, we are actually taking you inside two classrooms, as we visited the art classrooms at Hatfield Elementary. That is where elementary art teacher Christina Lincoln and art paraprofessional Traci Fleeman were helping fifth-grade students get creative with clay.

In her 17th year teaching art at Hatfield, Ms. Lincoln is no stranger to working with clay, and neither are her students. Ms. Lincoln and art teachers throughout NISD expose students to working with clay as early as Kindergarten, and now Hatfield’s fifth graders are ready to tackle creating clay whistles and tic-tac-toe games

After a quick introduction and some reminders from Ms. Lincoln, students chose which project they would like to work on. Those doing the whistle stayed in Ms. Lincoln’s room, and those working on tic-tac-toe moved next door to Ms. Fleeman’s room. 

Because students visit once a week, the process of getting from day one to a finished product will take approximately five or six weeks. They will spend the next three weeks forming their structures. When the clay dries, Ms. Lincoln will fire the pieces in the kiln which sits between the two classrooms. After their projects are fired, students will paint the finished products.

For our visit, students creating tic-tac-toe projects began to work on the pieces for their games. They had the freedom to design their boards and pieces in any way, as long as they used their imagination to create something beyond the typical Xs and Os.

With Ms. Fleeman available to offer advice and help with techniques, students were getting creative with the tools they needed to create their pieces. Meanwhile, next door in Ms. Lincoln’s room, the creative tools were also out as students used expired gift cards to cut their clay spheres into near perfect halves.

Students work on clay whistles in Ms. Lincoln's art class

Ms. Lincoln walked the students through turning their half spheres into miniature pots that would soon be combined to create a hollow sphere, forming the main body of their whistle. The process of creating the mini pots is a delicate one as they need the perfect thickness. Too thick and they won’t dry enough to be fired. Too thin and they won’t withstand the next steps in the process.

Next, students combined their two mini pots together by scoring the edges and using water to seal the two halves. This is another step in which Ms. Lincoln encouraged her students to use extra caution

Lastly, with one hollow sphere in hand, students write their names on bags and carefully wrap up their projects so they can be stored safely until next week. Next week students will work to create a mouthpiece to add to their structure, and within two weeks they will be adding details that bring their whistles to life.

To close out their first day with clay, students helped Ms. Lincoln clean tables and prepare for her next group of students. As the fifth graders returned back to their classrooms, Ms. Lincoln quickly shifted gears from clay projects to the mosaic-style art pieces that her next group of students will be working on. 

In just a few minutes, she would be welcoming  a group of fourth-grade students to her art room, and they would be equally inspired to let their creativity and imagination run wild. In one week, Ms. Lincoln will see every Hatfield Cougar walk through her art room door, and although their time together may be short, the impact she will make will be immense. 

Check back regularly all year as we continue to visit students and teachers throughout Northwest ISD and offer a rarely seen look Inside the Classroom.