Teaching Activities
What I see/What it means
Helping students become comfortable with looking at art and writing about how they interpret what they see is a major goal of this unit. What I see/ What it means is a teaching strategy from the University of Arizona Museum of Art and will be used as method of transferring student analysis to writing. Students will look at a work. They will be provided a T-chart with a heading of Observation/ Denotation /What I see on the left and Interpretation/ Connation /What I think it means on the right. I have added two sections to the basic T-chart. The students will write above the T-chart in a section called “Historical Context” in which the teacher will provide some background on the artist as well as major historical events at that time that may have shaped the importance of the work. After the students complete the of Observation/ Denotation /What I see and Interpretation/ Connation /What I think it means sections, they will add a “How this relates to The History of Mary Prince” section underneath. This is available in the Classroom Resources section at the end of the unit.
Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS):
The activity is based on the VTS teaching strategy, also from the University of Arizona Museum of Art. This activity asks students to engage in three basic questions. The questions ask students to employ a careful analysis of not only the action seen in the painting or photograph, but also to reflect on evidence (parts of the photograph or painting) that led them to that summation. These inquiry-based questions are designed to stimulate dialogue and discussion.These three questions should encourage students develop confidence by starting with the obvious and progressing to the more subtle.
1) What’s going on in this picture?
2) What do you see that makes you say that?
3) What more can we find?
Free Writing
At times during the reading of The History of Mary Prince, the students will stop and write a short paragraph analyzing one of the following prompts: a) If you could communicate with Mary at this point of the story what would you say to her and why? b) What is the book not telling the reader that could be occurring at this point? c) What are the binary relationships in the story and how might they be expressed in art? What type of medium would you use to express this scene of you were an artist? Why? d) Is there anything that you (the student) are feeling inspired to write about as it relates to what Mary has experienced in what we read today? Students will be given approximately 40 minutes and will be reminded to focus on a strong introduction with a thesis statement, two body paragraphs and quote support from the book or detail support from the works of art.
Establishing Chronology
The students will benefit from understanding when the actions in Mary Prince occur in relation to other historical events taking place at that time which shaped slavery/abolition. Students will create timelines that show the major events in the life of Mary Prince and the creation of the works of art we study, as well as the years that Demark, England and the USA banned the slave trade, banned slavery as an institution, in addition to the Haitian Revolution and the Jamaican Uprising.
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