Lesson 1: Day 1
Project/Unit Description/Expedition:
Attention Researchers: Your Creative Thinking Labs are up and running successfully! Well done. Your first mission is to research, design and create a brand new planet for Earth’s inhabitants to live on after the meteor hits! All researchers will need to come together to decide what 5 characteristics the new planet will need for the inhabitants to survive… Then each researcher will design and create their new world by planning/sketching, drawing and finally painting their brand new Ideal World and Habitat they would want to live in!
Today, students will be brainstorming in their sketchbooks in response to the prompt above.
Essential Understanding (s):
Inquiry/Learning Target:
Students will design a new, habitable world in their sketchbooks and create an acrylic painting of it.
Key Concepts:
Skills:
Art Focus:
Students will sketch and brainstorm in their sketchbooks to create a new habitable planet. They will be practicing drawing skills and developing creative ideation skills.
Literacy Focus:
Students will be learning vocabulary terms including overlapping, foreground, middle ground and background. They will also be encouraged to brainstorm with a list of ideas and discuss these ideas with the teachers and peers, and at the end of each day we will have a written reflection to post on the discovery board.
Documentation:
Attention Researchers: Your Creative Thinking Labs are up and running successfully! Well done. Your first mission is to research, design and create a brand new planet for Earth’s inhabitants to live on after the meteor hits! All researchers will need to come together to decide what 5 characteristics the new planet will need for the inhabitants to survive… Then each researcher will design and create their new world by planning/sketching, drawing and finally painting their brand new Ideal World and Habitat they would want to live in!
Today, students will be brainstorming in their sketchbooks in response to the prompt above.
Essential Understanding (s):
- Planning and refinement is an essential component in creating art in all its forms.
Inquiry/Learning Target:
Students will design a new, habitable world in their sketchbooks and create an acrylic painting of it.
Key Concepts:
- Improvisation
- Law / Rules
Skills:
- Generating or assessing solutions
- Comparing analogous situations: transferring insights to new contexts
Art Focus:
Students will sketch and brainstorm in their sketchbooks to create a new habitable planet. They will be practicing drawing skills and developing creative ideation skills.
Literacy Focus:
Students will be learning vocabulary terms including overlapping, foreground, middle ground and background. They will also be encouraged to brainstorm with a list of ideas and discuss these ideas with the teachers and peers, and at the end of each day we will have a written reflection to post on the discovery board.
Documentation:
Here is our whiteboard from Day 1! Listed on the left are the components that the students voted to require in everyone's invented planet. On the right are some of the questions we discussed at the beginning of class.
At this point in the lesson, Lizzy taught about foreground, middle ground, background, and overlapping. Here, a student points out the background in a contemporary artwork example. |
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This student told me that he decided to base his world upon a giant hill that looked like a tree. However, he was having a difficult time figuring out the best way to draw this realistically. He told me, "I'm having problems getting it to look like it's not flat." In response, I asked him how he could show that it is large and also distant. He realized that he could "make the bottom part bigger at the bottom and smaller at the top so it looks like it is getting farther away." Furthermore, he applied new knowledge from our lesson and decided that he should create a foreground, middle ground, and background in order to show a progression of distance. His engagement and persistence led to the development his idea as well as his technical skill and understanding. |
This student began by deciding what animal she wanted her world to incorporate. When prompted, she admitted that choosing to combine buildings with an ocean creature was an idea that mostly came from one of the examples we saw earlier in class. All of these were contemporary, respectable artists, so sharing ideas with them was an encouraging demonstration that students gained new understanding of the current art world.
After making these decisions, the student worked on developing craft through carefully drawing her whole idea and then adding color with watercolor paints and colored pencils. She incorporated a more personal element by drawing herself on the sea turtle's back and labeling it "me." Her ideation continued into the development of literacy skills; she verbally expounded upon everything shown in the drawing, explaining that the turtle would carry all of the buildings on its back and ferry people back and forth to the underwater castle in the bottom-left corner. |
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In this instance, the student began by claiming that he would draw "a lot of apartment buildings for people to live in." Although this was a practical idea and good problem-solving, it did not address the components that they had voted to require in their works. I reminded him of this and asked how he could include one of the concepts on the board; he responded by excitedly telling me a whole string of ideas that came to mind, including a fountain coming out of the roof of one apartment.
After this conversation, he continued to address other aspects on his own. When I came back later on, he had created mushroom buildings (such as the red and yellow one on the far right), a fruit tree, and a chair on one roof for relaxation. This led to a good discussion. Perplexed, he told me, "I want to draw the things that will be on the roofs. But when I try to draw the roof, it doesn't make sense." He illustrated by drawing another rectangle on top of one of the buildings. In response, I asked him, "How does a rooftop look when you are standing on the ground?" He reasoned that you can't actually see the rooftop unless you are slightly above the roof level. Based on this quick discussion, he began independently exploring different angles and ways to show perspective. Critically thinking through this problem led to his use of a side view for most of the buildings, with rooftop accessories shown from a profile view. |
Through the use of many horizontal layers, this student created an excellent sense of depth and distance. The jumble of buildings and structures at the top seems to rise up in the distance out of layers of mountains, water, and other elements in the landscape. He implemented developing craft and also stretched and explored new artistic areas, and was excited by the possibilities created by his findings.