Introduction
“The church says: the body is a sin. Science says: the body is a machine. Advertising says: the body is a business. The body says: "I am a fiesta.”1 – Eduardo Galeano
In this interdisciplinary unit designed for my novice level sixth grade Spanish students, I will create an engaging and culturally enriching learning experience that invites my students to explore the human body through art, imagery, and science. This four-week unit will emphasize "close looking” to develop observation, analysis, and interpretation skills all while building foundational target language proficiency skills.
My end goal for this unit is my students will confidently identify and describe the human body using novice level Spanish while critically engaging with artistic works from across the Spanish-speaking world. Using art, movement, and the target language, my novice level language learners will expand their abilities to communicate using all three modes of communication, interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational. This will deepen their intercultural understanding preparing them for future interdisciplinary exploration.
To begin the unit, my students will examine representations of the human body in Mesoamerican sculpture, specifically the series Las Señoras Bonitas. This series will provide my students with a powerful indigenous perspective on body and identity. Continuing along in the unit, my novice Spanish learners will investigate how the human body has been represented, celebrated, or critiqued over time through the visual arts of Spain and Latin America. Works of art to be studied include but are not limited to Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez, Los Caprichos by Francisco de Goya, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso, Las Dos Fridas by Frida Kahlo, La Familia Presidencial by Fernando Botero, and Panel 17. Gods of the Modern World – The Epic of American Civilization by José Clemente Orozco. These works serve as cultural texts, allowing my learners to compare and contrast artistic representations of the human body across historical periods, cultural contexts, and perspectives.
Using a variety of multimodal activities such as visual analysis, physical movement (Total Physical Response), collaborative image descriptions, and sketching, my students will use novice level Spanish to identify, describe, and discuss parts of the body and artistic interpretations. The target language development in this unit will focus on essential vocabulary like la cabeza, la cara, los brazos, and las piernas, along with simple sentence structures that support my novice learners with understanding and engaging in basic conversations and descriptions. My students will develop understanding as they participate in listening and viewing activities. Writing and drawing tasks will help them to share their ideas in the target language about how works of art express identity, health, and cultural values.
The culmination of the unit is a creative project in which my students will reimagine or reinterpret an artwork that focuses on the human body. They will describe their reimagined or reinterpreted work in Spanish. This project will support my students in bringing together what they have learned in the target language with their growing understanding of culture, allowing them to express ideas through both language and art.
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