Lesson Library

Enduring Understanding: Personal identity can be communicated through deliberate artistic choices.

Students in grades K-5 start the year building community by sharing who they are through their art. Students design and complete a portfolio cover communicating personal identity through name design, symbolic imagery, color technique, and background painting.

This is a 4 week unit, with classes seen once a week for 65 minutes.

• In Week 1, each grade level reviews the class routines and expectations and puts their name on their portfolio using a technique unique to their grade level. 

• In Week 2, each grade level is given a guiding question to think about. Students draw symbols around their name in response.

• In Week 3, each grade level learns a coloring technique and uses it to color their letters and symbols.

• In Week 4, students analyze the art of an artist, review painting procedures, and paint their background on their portfolio.

The unit arc for each grade is as follows:

Kinder: alphabet stamp letters → what makes you happy → hard vs soft crayon pressure → Resurrection, Alma Thomas

1st Grade: tracing poster letters → what are your favorite things → layering crayons → Air View of Spring Nursery, Alma Thomas

2nd Grade: bubble letters → what things are important to you → blending crayons → Yellow Edge, Sam Gilliam

3rd Grade: character letters → what symbols represent you → layering crayons with color pencils → Milkwood Arcade, Helen Frankenthaler

4th Grade: cursive letters → what does your inner world look like → shading with color pencil → Shedding Tears to the Season, Yayoi Kusama

5th Grade: graffiti-style letters → what are your hopes and dreams → burnishing and marker detail → Still Life (1966), Yayoi Kusama

Photo Album

Enduring Understanding: Artists use line, shape, and space with increating intention to represent the world as they see, experience, and imagine it.

In Unit 2, students are guided through the creative process while building a grade level drawing skill. 

This is a 5 week unit, with classes seen once a week for 65 minutes.

• In Week 1, each grade goes through the exploration phase of the creative process.

• In Week 2, each grade level goes through the planning phase of the creative process.

• In Week 3, each grade level goes through the making and feedback phase of the creative process.

• In Week 4, students go through the refinement phase of the creative process.

• In Week 5, student go through the share and reflect phase of the creative process.

The unit arc for each grade is as follows:

Kinder: exploring line through sorting and making → using lines to draw something from your world → finding straight, zigzag, curvy and broken lines in your partner's art → The Smile of the Flamboyant Wings, Joan Miro and Sea Sea,  Shantell Martin

1st Grade: exploring shapes through sorting and making geometric and organic shapes → combine shapes to show a place in your community that is important to you → finding geometric and organic shapes in your partner's art → Church Picnic, Faith Ringgold and Baile en 1958, Carmen Lomas Garza

2nd Grade: exploring space by identify foreground, middle ground and background in scenes → overlapping shapes and show depth using a foreground, middle ground and backgroudn in a story scene of your choice → finding layers of depth in your partner's art→ Snap the Whip, Winslow Homer and Fujisawa, Utagawa Hiroshige

3rd Grade: exploring contour lines by drawing a blind contour drawing and observation drawing of a plant → setting up a still life to draw from observation → using hatching to add value to your drawing → Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, Georgia O'Keeffe and Metamorphsis Insectorum Surinamensium, Maria Sibylla Merian

4th Grade: exploring one-point perspective by identifying the vanising point, horizon line, and convergent lines in scenes → creative a scene that shows one-point perspective → giving feedback about depth and perspective in my partner's art → The Skiffs, Gustave Caillebotte and Gallery, M.C. Escher

5th Grade: explore figure drawing to show moments between two people (contest art) → analyzing contest winners to plan and build your composition → give feedback about composition layers, unity and figure interactions → Doctor and the Doll, Norman Rockwell and School Days, Kadir Nelson