Objectives
Something Missing: Appreciation for the Arts.
In this unit based on Langdon L. Hammer's seminar, "Playing with Poems: Rules, Tools and Games," students will study the poems and drawings of Shel Silverstein to discover how visual imagery influences understanding of and responses to the world. The students will use their prior knowledge of the solar system learned in science to demonstrate how learning can be deepened by connecting visual art to other disciplines by writing and illustrating their own poems. In "Using Visual Images", the author states, "Teaching methods involving discussion in which students are encouraged to express their ideas and make their reasoning explicit have been shown to have a positive effect on cognitive development and on the learning of new content." 10
To understand these concepts we will also explore many questions throughout the unit. To introduce poetry we will discuss, "Where and how do we encounter images in our world? How do artists and writers create meaning through visual and written texts?" Students will read and write their own poems in pairs and groups and experiment with the role of collaboration in creativty, "How does collaboration expand the creative process?" In a review of the solar system vocabulary and concepts, students will explore, "how learning is deepened through a study of visual art?"
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