KS3 Mini Art & Photography Project

Posted on by art_teacher_mcr

This Art & Photography project is fairly simple scheme of work and quick to teach, with effective photographic final pieces for students. It doesn’t require any complex understanding of photographic techniques (yay) and it was designed as a taster of GCSE Photography for my Year 9 (KS3) classes. Students created some brilliant, woven photograph pieces as their final outcomes using their own pictures 📷

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**UPDATE**
I have added more slides to the presentation with even more examples of paper weaving and student work – enjoy!

Click here to get this project – for free!
Easy photography project - KS3 paper weaving art scheme of work for free.
Paper weaving art project - photography KS3 - free
Paper weaving art project - photography KS3 scheme of work
Woven photograph art lesson examples
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This mini art and photography project was really designed as a GCSE taster. It’s very short to teach (but could easily be extended if you wanted to) and students could make the work really personal by taking their own photographs.

Art & Photography KS3 Project

I chose CONTRAST an overall theme for the scheme of work, giving students something to consider when taking their own pictures. To introduce the project, there is a starter activity getting students to think about what contrast means and how it could be explored in photography.

Art and Photography scheme of work - free resources

Once students were clear about the idea of CONTRAST in photography, I introduced the artist / photographer David Samuel Stern as a reference for students to research – his work is brilliant!

David Samuel Stern Woven Portraits - art & photography lessons
David Samuel Stern Woven Portraits - art & photography lesson

Although Stern doesn’t necessarily focus on CONTRAST, I wanted students to understand his process for weaving photographs together and see some of the possible outcomes. Students loved his work! Pictures of his work are included in the project slides so they can be printed for students to use in their research.

Students produced some excellent research pages about David Samuel Stern:

Art & Photography KS3 Project
Art Photography Scheme of work
Woven photographs art project
Photographs woven together art project

Quick note:

I’ve actually updated this scheme of work with another photographer – Jason Chen -as a reference for students. His work is now included in the presentation so you can choose either (or both!) to use in your lessons. Chen’s work has a clear link to ideas of contrast, juxtaposition and duality, which I thought were a bit more appropriate to the scheme of work.

Collage of woven photographs by Jason Chen featuring abstract, colorful patterns and portraits.
How to organise students taking photographs during lessons

This part of the project required a bit of lesson planning:
– each student needed to take at least two photographs
– each photograph had to be printed ready to be woven
– some classes had 35 students!

While students were working on their David Samuel Stern research pages, I would select groups (up to 4) to move around the room taking pictures of things that contrasted, eg. a rough surface and a smooth surface. I would give them some tips and ideas related to camera angles / lighting etc. as they worked.

Any students not working well in their research, or not on task, didn’t get chosen and had to take the pictures as homework (hehe).

I set up an Assignment in Google Classroom and students uploaded their best two photographs. From there, I could just open the Drive folder and download all of their photographs in one go, ready to print.

Google Drive - class drive folder for printing images

Some students didn’t have a phone to take pictures with (or it had died) so I let them use our GCSE Photography cameras. We have a couple of these Canon EOS 4000d cameras and I find them great for our GCSE students – simple to get started with and various features for experimenting.

Canon EOS 4000d Camera

As soon as I got these cameras out and started to demonstrate with them for the small groups taking pictures, the rest of the class suddenly became very engaged and all wanted to have a go 🤔

Once students had finished their research pages, and had their contrasting photographs printed out, they could start weaving them together. This was the second or third lesson in the project (depending on the class I had or how far ahead / behind students were).

I used this great video on photographic weaving techniques to speed up the process:

How to weave with photographs.

To increase the challenge for some students, I used differentiated outcomes with my trusty Nando’s peri-ometer 😆 which they love. They were also already engaged with the work because they were using their own photographs rather than pictures from magazines or random print outs.

Photography weaving project - KS3 free resources
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Once students understood the paper weaving concept and had cut their pieces, the rest of the lessons were quite straight forward. To make their work as accurate as possible and to incorporate some maths into the project, I had students draw out ruled lines on the back of their photographs, ready to cut.

The smaller the gaps between the lines, the more complex the weave became. Most students opted for 1cm gaps, but a few went for 2cm or even 3cm if they really struggled with all of the cutting. Their photographs were all A4 size, so it was quite a lot to measure and cut.

Paper weaving art photography project free resources

Once students began weaving their photographs in my class, I assigned them a task to finish at home. This was primarily because of limited time, but you can also expand on this small art and photography project by trying out various weaving methods: using different shapes or sizes, or even by printing one copy of their photo in black and white to observe the contrasting colors.

Here are some examples of final photographic woven pieces by students – what do you think? I was really pleased with how well they came and, some look so nice!

Examples of students' woven photographic work, showcasing creative use of color and texture.
Three examples of woven photographs created by students, showcasing a variety of colors and patterns.

If you would like a copy of the resources for this project, just leave a comment and I will share it with you – enjoy!

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425 thoughts on “KS3 Mini Art & Photography Project”

  5. Yes please i would love the resources for this project to teach my students 🙂

    Reply

  6. I would love a copy please! Looks great 😊 I love the “peri-ometer” we used a Nando’s styled menu for students to select their own homework in my training school and they seemed to really like that!

    Reply

  7. Fantastic project . Will definitely incorporate it into my yr 9 surreal room project . Thanks

    Reply

  19. I would love a copy of resources please 🙂 this is perfect for one of my students who is thinking of taking photography gcse 🙂

    Reply

  20. I think this project would be perfect for my students. Thank you for sharing it!

    Reply

  22. WOW!! What a fabulous lesson; so descriptive and complete with visuals.
    Thank you for introducing me to David’s amazing artwork. Need to discover how he creates the tumbling block affect in his photos…
    With gratitude for your sharing!

    Reply

  28. I love this!!!
    Would love to have resources for this project.
    I think my students would really enjoy this.
    Thank you for sharing.

    Reply

  29. Fab session plans! I particularly like the woven photographs, would love the resources if you don’t mind!

    Reply

  30. Hi,
    I am a Stage 3 teacher and I am looking for an art program based on photography. A colleague shared this link with me and I love the ideas you have to do. Thanks for sharing your expertise as I have no creative ideas at all. Your resources will be so helpful.

    Reply

  31. These are fantastic! Just setting up photography course within Art to get our Year 9s enthused. Would love resources please 🙂

    Reply

      1. I’ve got it – thank you so much. I’m hoping so but good to be able to use something tried and tested! Thanks again .

  32. Weaving project looks awesome, thankyou for sharing greatly appreciated. Would love resources thankyou.

    Reply

  38. Great lesson concept! Would love to check out resources! Thank you so much for sharing! HS from MS and in a panic!!!

    Reply

      1. Where do I find the resources? Is there an attachment? Using my phone right now just wanted to make sure I didn’t miss the resources. Thank you so much.

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Published by art_teacher_mcr

Making and teaching art. Based in Manchester.