Curated OER
Art Transitions: Morphs
Students identify artistic expression by participating in a morph activity. In this art analysis instructional activity, students identify the work of Keith Haring and examine some of his flip books. Students practice creating artistic...
Curated OER
Composition in Journals
Carlos Fuentes’s The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait and Jaspre Bark’s Journal of Inventions: Leondardo da Vince serve as models for an assignment that asks class members to create a personal journal they will use...
Curated OER
Poetry As Oral Performance
Reciting poetry is a great way to build oral language skills and build classroom community. Pupils look at the text elements of poetry and choose a poem to read aloud. They focus on rhythm, fluency, and expression. This is a great way to...
EngageNY
End of Unit Assessment: Revising and Publishing
Dictionaries, thesauruses, word walls, oh my! Pupils use several resources to revise their position papers to include appropriate vocabulary. Then, after peer editing, scholars write the final drafts of their essays and self-assess using...
Curated OER
Look Out My Window. What Do You See?
Students explore William D. Huff's experience during Civil War as portrayed in his drawings, express empathy and demonstrate historical knowledge through creating their own artwork, and craft drawings and captions from perspectives of...
Curated OER
Poetry Connection: After Reading Strategy for Fever 1793
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same. . .” After concluding Fever 1793 class members engage in a reading strategy that asks them to connect their thoughts about the self-reliance theme in...
District 186 Springfield Public Schools
Tone, Mood, Theme, and Motif
It's all well and good when you're asked to identify a speaker's tone using his or her body language, facial expression, and pitch and emphasis. Identifying the tone of a written passage is another challenge entirely. Check out an...
Curated OER
Flexible "Glass" Sculpture
Older artists create 2-dimensional surfaces with paint, then use these paintings as the components of a 3-dimensional sculpture. They assemble a free-standing sculpture that may be viewed from any angle by using wire to create the shape....
Curated OER
Is That Movie OK?
Discuss movies and movie enjoyment with your middle school language arts class. They interpret movie review information, determine appropriate movies, and then write film reviews to share with the class. Focus on using context clues to...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Practical Criticism
As an introduction to literary criticism, class members recreate I.A. Richards' close reading experiment. Individuals select a poem, paraphrase the story, focus on the imagery used, consider what the imagery adds to the tale, and...
Education World
Take Five: Writing a Color-Coded Paragraph
Use a traffic light to model a very basic paragraph plan. The Go, or topic sentence, is written in green and expresses an opinion about the topic. Information that supports the opinion of the Go sentence is written in yellow and the...
Curated OER
Do You Prefer Your Children's Book Characters Obedient or Contrary? Opinion Writing
With this New York Times "Learning Network" exercise, high schoolers read an article about the death of Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are and then respond to several prompts that require them to shape their own opinions...
Curated OER
Cubist Self Portraits
Learners investigate how other artists have expressed their ideas in a visual way. They practice on how to use oil pastels. Students consider what ideas about them are important and what ideas they want to visually communicate about...
Curated OER
Turning Everyday Objects Into Art
Students are introduced to the art of assemblage - which is the process of taking ready-made materials, and ordinary objects and using them to create sculptures. They create a self-portrait by assembling and joining found objects in a...
Curated OER
Venn Diagram: Gauguin Self-Portraits
In this Venn diagram worksheet, students compare 2 self-portraits of Gauguin, then use pictures from magazines to create their own "self portrait."
Curated OER
National Gallery of Art: Jackson Pollock
Students paint a picture in the style of Jackson Pollock. In this painting lesson plan, students learn about Jackson Pollock and the method that he used to create his famous pieces of art. Students use objects other than paintbrushes to...
Curated OER
Visual Arts: Symbols That Stand for You!
Learners explore symbols and what they represent. In this visual art lesson, students collect various symbols and discuss what they represent. Learners create and discuss personal symbols which represent themselves.
Curated OER
Using Fabrics in Your Art Curriculum
Students use a dicut machine to do block printing on fabric. In this fabric lesson plan, students draw, carve, and print onto blocks for this art project.
Curated OER
National Gallery of Art: Leonardo da Vinci
Students study a portrait of Ginevra by Leonardo da Vinci. In this art appreciation lesson, students study this unique double-sided work by Leonardo da Vinci and are asked to create their own double-sided piece of art.
Curated OER
Cardboard Weaving
Fifth graders observe artworks of cardboard weaving for their art elements and principles of organization. In this cardboard weaving activity, student create their own and compare artworks of the past and present. Students self evaluate...
Curated OER
Dance: Personal Soundtracks
Students create a musical autobiography. For this fine arts lesson, students explore the emotions that music can express by listening to and discussing a variety of music. Students construct a personal timeline and a collection of music...
Curated OER
Princesses Don't Have to be Passive
Students rewrite a fairy tales to eliminate any gender bias that occurs in the original fairy tale. In this gender bias lesson plan, students also discuss how gender bias effects self esteem, relationships, and behaviors.
Speak Truth to Power
Dalai Lama: Free Expression and Religion
How is religious freedom connected to the conflict between China and Tibet? After reading an online passage of background information, your learners will divide into groups and both read and view an interview with the Dalai Lama. They...
Curated OER
Homes of the World: Ceramic Lesson
Kids consider the various dwellings humans inhabit all over the world. They choose a home from anywhere in the world. Then they research the type of materials, designs, and structures need to build that type of home. The project ends...