Content Objectives
My objective for this unit is to transform the way in which students think and learn through visual and verbal art. It is also my goal for students to appreciate how various art forms inspire one another. Ideally, I would like the students to immerse themselves in art and poetry so much that they begin to appreciate the value of these artistic forms in their own lives. It is imperative that they have the opportunity to have meaningful experiences with both the poetic language and aesthetic images in order to build their confidence as poets and artists.
From my personal experience as an educator, I have realized that any form of art can be difficult for students to interpret. This is because we often interact in literal terms since we want to make sure that we are understood, and when communication is incoming, we seek it in the same manner and try to extract its literal meaning. Art doesn’t always work that way. Artists and poets often show us a higher truth (their truth) that is expressed in a nonliteral, nonlinear way. Therefore, some students get discouraged and shy away from poetry. What I would like students to realize is that they have the ability to investigate both visual and verbal art through personal experiences and prior knowledge. The connection is certainly there and I will simply be a guide to help them discover it.
This unit will ask students to use their cognitive skills to connect visual arts to poetry and vice versa. The students will explore how biographical and social factors shape an artist’s or poet’s work. Through this unit, I would like to foster a more conscious approach to analyzing work by breaking thoughts into smaller, more digestible pieces. My pedagogy is based on investigation and break-downs, which enhances the analyzing and production of visual artwork. We will be taking a similar approach to enhance the process of reading and writing poetry. In discussing a poem, will we analyze its context, identify its purpose, focus and topic, and targeted audience. Subsequently, we will do the same with public art. That way, students can write poems confidently about murals in their community while using personal experiences as the initial spark. Ultimately, this will help lead students toward creating a public art piece that will be a form of communicating their collective ideas, motivated by the poems they have written.
In summary, by the end of this unit, 8th grade student will have engaged in meaningful conversations involving poetry and famous works of art that inspired the poets, they will have successfully written poetry about art inspired by their community (specifically murals), and lastly, they will have created a community mural that is strongly influenced by the poetry they have written about their neighborhood. In other words, they will have taken on the roles of both a poet and artist.
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