IELTS LISTENING – HAT-MAKING PROJECT S50T4

VIVIEN: Thanks. Um Mr Yardley has asked me to describe to you the project I did as a student teacher at a _Q31 secondary school in London. I was at this school for six weeks and I taught a variety of subjects to a class of _Q32 14 year old pupils. The project I chose to do was a hat making project and I think this project could easily be adapted to suit any age. So, to explain the project. After we’d done the research, we went back to the classroom to make two basic hat shapes using rolls of old wallpaper. We each made, first of all a conical hat by um well if I show you now cutting out a circle and then making one cut up to the center and then um _Q33 overlapping the cut like this a conical hat that sits on your head. The other hat we made was a little more complicated um first of all we cut out a circle again like this then you need a long piece with flaps on it I’ve already made that bit which I have here you bend the flaps over and stick them with glue or prittstick to the _Q34 underside of the circle like this. Again I’ve prepared this so that I don’t get glue everywhere the pupils do of course so you need plenty of covers for the table. And there you have a pillbox hat as in pill and box. Now variations and combinations of these two hat shapes form the basis of the pupils final designs.

The next stage of the project was the design phase and this involved first of all using their pages of research to draw a design of their hat _Q35 on paper. That’s the easy part. They then had to translate their two-dimensional design into a form to fit their head. I encouraged them to make a small scale _Q36 three dimensional hat first so that they could experiment with how to achieve the form they required and I impose certain constraints on them to keep things simple. For example they had to use paper not card. Paper is more pliable and easier to handle. They also had to limit their colors to _Q37 white, gray or brown shades of paper which reflected the colors of the buildings they were using as a model for their hats and they had to make sure their glue didn’t show! Well, it was very enjoyable and just to give you an idea of what they produced, I brought along three hats to show you. This one here is based on a circular stairway in an old building in London. It uses _Q38 three pillbox hats one on top of the other. This was designed by Theresa. Here’s another one that has a simple strip going round the base of the hat but has then gone on to add strips of paper that come out from the base and that meet at the top of the hat rather _Q39 like a crown making a fairly tall hat. This was made by Muriel. And lastly there’s a combination of the pill box or single strip around the base and then the _Q40 conical hat shape on top to form a castle turret. This was made by Febrice, and there are many more that i could have brought.