Written by Spring 2025 AFA Intern/TAP Extern Summer Xiang
Through my five weeks with resident teaching artist Briget Villanueva, I had the opportunity to observe and take part in guiding 2nd and 3rd-grade students through an exciting multi-week diorama project. These classes were unique in how they complemented the curriculum taught by Mandarin teacher Mrs. Daisy.
As students learned vocabulary for classroom elements like desk (桌子: Zhuōzǐ), chair (椅子: Yǐzǐ), and door (门: Mén), they simultaneously designed and constructed those elements as 3D paper models for their imagined classrooms. Briget led demonstrations on folding techniques, showing how a flat sheet of paper could transform into a dimensional piece.
This project seamlessly combined linguistic literacy with design thinking and hands-on crafting. In the early weeks, students sketched blueprints of their classrooms, with creativity spanning from dinosaur-themed math rooms to Hogwarts-inspired spaces for the four houses. As the project progressed, they folded papers to form the walls and floors of their miniature classrooms, filling them with pop-up furniture and decorations.
Certain moments stood out to me, like a student who became fascinated with drawing perspective lines, another who set a personal challenge to use only three colors, and a group that collaborated beautifully by incorporating a repeating pattern across all their classrooms. One student, who designed a minimalistic room with just one table and one chair, explained to me that his school had only one student. I loved exploring the stories embedded in their creations.
Almost every class ended in a whirl of last-minute adjustments, as students eagerly added more details and movable parts to their rooms. But alas, as the final minutes ticked down, supplies were gathered, tables were cleared, and the students were off, just in time for Spring Break.
