Understanding History and Society through Images, 1776-1914

Strategies

Teacher-led Discussions

Central to this unit is getting students to think critically. Teacher-led discussions will encourage understanding of how to pose questions when looking at art. In order to meet my district standards and utilize the six question types that improve critical thinking skills, my unit will focus on knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Here are some general discussion questions that could apply to most artwork:

• What is the central idea of this painting? What are important details that support the central idea? What events happened before? What events will happen next?
• Knowledge: Who do you see? Where is she? What happened before this picture was painted?
• Comprehension: What does this picture tell you? What could happen next?
• Application: Who do you think this girl is? What questions would you ask the girl?
• Analysis: How is the dog similar to the girl? What are some of the problems of taking a nap in a public room?
• Synthesis: Do you think taking a nap in public is a good thing? What other solution could you suggest for the girl?
• Evaluation: Do you agree that it is okay to nap in public?

Here are questions to prompt related topics:

• Why do you think the artist drew this?
• How does the artist use colors in this painting?
• How does the artist use point of view?
• What does the artist want us to see?

Here are questions to connect learning with life experiences:

• What does this remind me of in my life?
• What is this similar to in my life?
• Has anything ever happened like this to me?
• How does this relate to my life?
• What were my feelings when I saw this?
• What does this remind me of in another painting I've seen?
• How is this painting different from other paintings I've seen?

Think-Pair-Share

Using Think-Pair-Share is a specific type of responding to questions strategy where students think and generate their own conclusions about a prompt or question. Then they share the conclusions they each came up with a partner. Think-Pair-Share is an efficient way to maximize verbalizing and listening to ideas.

I will use Think-Pair-Share often to encourage participation in leading a discussion and responding in a discussion. Each child will be assigned either an A or B. The A's will lead with one question and the B's will respond. Then they will trade turns to make sure that each child practices posing questions and responding to them. I see this strategy being used after the Teacher-Led discussion so that the children will be able to use fresh examples from the teacher.

Once partners have had ample time to share their thoughts and have a discussion, I will expand the "share" into a whole-class discussion, allowing each group to choose who will present their thoughts, ideas, and questions they had to the rest of the class.

Promoting Empathy

Seeing, Writing, Observing is an activity that helps students become more creative thinkers. First, students are shown a painting. After the students consider what the subject is, where the setting is, what will happen next in the photograph, and so on, they write about their responses down. Next, the students collaborate in pairs to share their ideas.

Pantomime is when students are shown a painting and then they act out the scene. This improvisation builds imagination by allowing children to create a scene from nothing. Students work as a team to listen to each other and to respond naturally to what has been said. By thinking on their feet, students learn how to adapt to evolving circumstances.

Performing a tableau is to recreate the painting as a "frozen picture". Participants represent both living and non-living elements from the story and pose. This activity promotes team building, creativity, collaboration and thinking in three dimensions. Each group of students would be given a painting and they would have to decide how they could capture the essence of the painting in one still or "frozen" moment. Students could represent the people and inanimate objects in the painting, drawing or sculpture.

In the book, Interdisciplinary Learning Through Dance: 101 MOVEntures, I have learned that sculpturing is a technique where you create living sculptures. First, tell each child to find a partner and a space in which to work. One student will be the artist and the other will be the clay. The artist will decide whether the sculpture will be standing, sitting, or lying down. The artist will carefully mold the partner, moving arms, legs, head, and even fingers into place. When the sculpture is complete, the artist will step back and take one last look, making sure there is not anything to change. Then, the "clay" students hold their shape for 20 seconds after being molded. They close their eyes and think about the shape they are in so they can reform their pose later. The artist and clay take turns to make statues. ²⁰ It is really fun to vary the level of poses from standing, sitting, and lying down.

I think that drawing is a way to make learning concrete, express feelings, and be experimental. Drawing benefits children in a number of ways by exercising imaginations, strengthening fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, and developing visual analysis. ²¹ After learning about the artists and their paintings, children may be excited about trying to draw pirates and mothers for themselves.

Opinion Writing

This unit requires students to write opinion pieces in which they introduce a piece of artwork, state an opinion, supply reasons that support the opinion, use linking words to connect opinion and reasons, and provide a concluding statement. I plan to have my students write following the teacher-led discussion, think-pair-share activity, and promoting empathy activity. In order to help explain their thinking, I have included an opinion writing form that includes thinking stems in the appendix.

Close Reading

Through the course of my unit, my students and I will read an array of passages about the artists, pirates, mothers, and historical periods. By breaking down text into smaller segments, we will understand the purpose in reading, see ideas in the text being interconnected, and form questions and seek answers to the questions while reading.