Lessons

Here you will find some of the lessons plans and other teaching resources I have created during my time as an art teacher in training. These are extremely condensed and abbreviated versions of full lessons or Units of Study that I have developed. If you would like to see an example of a complete Unit of Study you can visit the website I created for my unit on Virtues and Animal Archetypes.

Home

Assemblage Sculpture

Students will identify items, patterns, and/or materials that have contributed to their concept of “home.” After learning about juxtaposition, multiplication, fragmentation, and rotation, students will use those items to construct a three-dimensional work of art constructed with improvised building techniques.

Motion

Pixel Art Animation

Students will learn about the history of traditional animation and the visual phenomena associated with it. Then students will create their own animations using the Pixel Art Maker iPad app. Once all the students have completed their animations, they will share their work with the class during an Animation Showcase.

Communication

Pop-up Greeting Books

Students will create simple pop-up books using cardboard, construction paper, and other media. Their artwork will symbolize words, actions, and emotions associated with greetings, that the students have generated though class discussions. Students will also participate in an informal critique of their work.

Virtues

Hard Slab Animal Sculptures

During this lesson students will have the opportunity to connect the abstract concept of virtues to concrete visual symbols they have developed, identify virtues valued and promoted in their communities today, and construct a clay slab sculpture of an animal that symbolizes one virtue they have chosen to explore further.

De Style

Art Resource for Teaching

A series of textual and visual components to help generate content for lessons on a specific work of art – in this case Kerry James Marshall’s seminal painting, De Style. This resource provides supplemental information and establishes connections to other disciplines including language arts, social studies, and history.

Photoshop Fundamentals

Video Series

For this lesson, I’ve created an online video series of fundamental Photoshop techniques that students can view on their own time. Students will then receive direct instruction in these techniques, in class, and use them to create a digital photo collage combining three disparate elements, chosen at random.