Activities
Silent Session
This is an early activity to introduce students to artwork in a historical context. Choose four or five pieces of artwork that represent a variety of styles or themes that will be explored in this unit. Hang one piece of artwork in each corner of the room and withhold their titles and authors, or any information that may give students clues about the piece in its historical context. The goal is to facilitate a space for students to discover the beauty of artwork not only as an expressive medium but also as a tool for understanding history and the people who came before us. Give students 10 minutes for which will have the opportunity to silently walk around the "gallery" and experience historical artwork in their own space. There should be no talking, so as to encourage students' awareness of their own emotional and intellectual reactions. Students may be given a blank sheet of computer paper to note any feelings, ideas, reactions, assumptions or conclusions about the works of art. Be sure to tell students there is no right or wrong way to examine art. Artwork speaks to everybody different, as everyone sees artwork from the lens of his or her own experiences. It is through this independent interpretation that a rich a vibrant discussion about the gallery will arise.
After students have walked the gallery, ask them to respond to the following questions openly with the class, or with a partner. How did you feel looking at the artwork? What drew you to a particular piece of art? What did you like/not like about what you saw in the pieces? What stories were being told in the pieces? Could you relate with anything that was going on in the artwork? What historical themes do you think were in the artwork in our gallery? Why do you think these pieces are important? Remember it is important to validate what students are saying especially if this activity is used as the introduction to the artistic interpretation in the classroom. Use this activity as a corral to guide students, often serendipitously, towards seeing artwork as a vehicle for understanding history.
Precision of Language
Precision of language is a multi-step activity that centers around students creating a set of vocabulary words that reflect a particular piece of artwork, and eventually using these words to developing sentences. This activity can act as a segue into a separate activity called "90 words." Often, when examining artwork, students will naturally respond with language that is rooted in emotion just as much as it is rooted in historical context. This activity aims to help students improve their own use of language through critical analysis of artwork while helping students articulate the conclusions they have formed while interpreting art using a scaffolded approach.
For this activity, divide the students into groups of four or five, with each group receiving one piece of artwork. Give each group one piece of paper and assign one member of the group to be the recorder. If you plan on using this activity more than once, rotate the role of recorder within the group as to promote a sense of community while being equitable. It may also be helpful to assign a timekeeper as well. Students will be given five minutes to examine the piece of artwork as a group with the intention of writing down all words, feelings, topics and associations that are evoked while studying the piece of art. It may be effective to model this step of the activity on the project using a separate image and asking everyone to participate by sharing words, feelings, and associations that come to mind. Nevertheless, after the five minutes are up students should have a healthy list of vocabulary words that reflect the students' responses to the artwork but also their understanding of that particular historical event.
At this point the teacher may decide to have a classroom discussion around some of the art that is being interpreted. Teachers can check and correct student understanding about a topic in the Industrial Revolution in a fluid, organic class discussion. Once students have demonstrated an adequate degree of understanding around the topic of their art piece and developed a means to articulate this understanding, teachers can allow the next step of the activity to unfold.
Students should now take out a blank sheet of lined paper and a pencil. Next, students within the group will take turns choosing one word at a time that speaks to them, until all words are accounted for and assigned to a student. Students will then have 5 minutes to compose one sentence about their piece of artwork that contains one word from their list until all of their words have been accounted for, in the form of a sentence. Ultimately, students will have written several sentences about their piece that contains powerful language that highlight both the emotional and historical aspects of the artwork they have examined. This activity will help students examine artwork as a historical story telling device collectively with other students while practicing documenting their findings and conclusions in a way that is both unique to their own interpretation and informative to their peers. Furthermore, this activity can easily premise the "90 words" activity.
90 Words
90 words is an activity that is based around the short description panels found next to artwork in museums. In most museums, there is a short synopsis that often includes information on the artist's background, purpose and general story behind the piece of artwork that is being presented. For this activity students will construct a description for a piece of artwork that is no shorter than 70 words but no longer than 100 words, as that generally tends to be the case in many museums. This poses a challenge in that students are often comfortable responding to "short answer" questions and longer, drawn out essays, but often struggle with concise and descriptive paragraph length responses. Learning to formulate a healthy and concise summary on a topic will improve students' capacity and efficacy for outlining and assigning value to information that will either be deemed useful or insignificant.
Students may want to use the sentences they created in the previous activity or start from scratch. Nevertheless, teachers will want to model this activity to the class by constructing their own 90 word description of a painting. Furthermore, students may benefit from seeing actual museum description synopsis as to better understand its purpose. For the most part, students should focus on responding to the five "W's": What, who, where, when, and why. In other words, students should aim to create one to two sentences for each "W." For example: Who authored this piece of artwork? Who is being represented? When was this artwork created? Where is the location of this scene? Why was this artwork created? What is being depicted? Then, organizing the sentences so they create a cohesive and eloquent paragraph. This activity can act as either an assessment for students to demonstrate their understanding of a piece as well as an instructional activity for short writing exercises.
Step Into My Shoes
For this culminating activity students will be utilizing artwork and text in conjunction with one another. Ideally, this activity should occur after students have had much practice analyzing both primary sources and pieces of artwork using the Four Reads and Socratic Questioning Model, respectively. For this activity, students will be choosing a piece of artwork that resonates with them. It should be noted that in order for this activity to be implemented properly, the artwork must contain a person- as students' will chose to write from the perspective of a character 'subject.' If a students is adamant about choosing a piece that does not contain any individuals, the student can decide to make up a character that may exist in the space depicted in that particular painting or print.
Student will choose a character-subject to step "into" with the intent on creating a fabricated primary source outlining a typical experience of their subject, as they exist in their environment. For example, students may choose to write as a woman who is illustrated in a textile painting, or a man engaging in back breaking labor in the factory. Whatever the case, students should consider the style, tone and purpose of the primary sources they examined earlier in the unit as to maximize authenticity. For further effect, students can compose a final draft on a weathered piece of paper using an appropriate writing utensil. Depending on student literacy, teachers may want to offer guiding questions and sentence starters like: What was life like for this person? What were their thoughts on work? What kind of hardships did they have to deal with? Who are they writing to? If students are having difficulty starting, ask them to write about the subject of the painting their character lives in. What was that day like at work? What kinds of things could be heard, smelled, felt in their environment? What sort of feelings where being experienced at that particular moment in time? As a way to finalize and validate students' work, give them the option to share their letters with the rest of the class.
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