Rivers in Motion — Grade 8 STEAM

Meramec gradient study meets watercolor value scales and court-side velocity modeling. 3 weeks, 3 differentiated exits.

Watercolor river landscape

Week 1 • Light on Water

Students paint the same 12-inch stretch of riverbank three times under different light—exactly Monet’s Rouen method, only with phone photos from our field walk. They note pigment settling time like a slab pour.

Week 2 • Court as Current

Guard footwork drills become proxies: sprint distance = meters/second; pivot timing = turbulence. Data table becomes the watercolor wash base layer.

Week 3 • Erosion as Verse

Students write one verse each, Dylan cadence, about what the river carries away. Record on porch mics, overlay on their own paintings in a 90-second cut.

Watch the Student Verse Cut Film

Albert Wobo’s Atchafalaya ghost-town watercolors taught me pigment timing—credited here with thanks.

albert-wobovisit albert-wobo.4ort.net →

Materials & rubrics: rivers-materials.json