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This was my first "big" collaboration with one of my teachers and we present this lesson together every semester now! Of course, we tweak it as necessary, but the hard part is quite finished.
First Things First
First Things First
We used UDL (Universal Design for Learning) and backward design to create the lesson. First, we asked some key questions:
What is the desired outcome/project/demonstration of mastery? Students will create an art parody that combines an Impressionist or Post-Impressionist background with a modern-day animated character.
What information do students need in order to get to this end? At a minimum, students need to choose a background from the (Post-)Impressionist movement and logically add an animated character to the scene. Students will recreate the background and add the character as appropriate. They also need to be able to give basic information about their artwork and the artist.
What would be helpful additional context to make the information more meaningful? Context of the time period and an understanding of the movement itself are key points, as well as understanding style since they are, in essence, creating their version of a "style."
While our design process worked in reverse, the order of the lesson ended up as follows.
The Components
The Components
The first time we presented this lesson, each student was given a small square of blank paper and a smaller square of paper that had an image on it. The students reproduced the smaller square on the larger square and then assembled the pieces together to discover that the image was "Starry Night" by Van Gogh. As with any good lesson, time is not always on one's side so this piece does not always make it back into the rotation.
NOTE: if time allows, you can "impressionize" a photo of a teacher or administrator; perhaps the school mascot or an important historical figure students are studying in their Social Studies classes. Cut this image into squares that students then reproduce and assemble. The first time I did an Impressionism lesson, I "impressionized" photos of the school principal and assistant principal and the students absolutely loved it!
Every semester since, we have begun with a Kahoot to set up the lesson. Students are NOT expected to know all the answers. In fact, most of the time, they guess. If you are as lucky as we were that first time, you'll have enough students to group them - each group is responsible for remembering one of the question/answer combos in the Kahoot. We just happened to have created the same number of questions as there were tables (groups) in the room!
Interested in seeing (or even harvesting) our Kahoot? It is public so you can search it by name (in the video above) or by owner (suamadame).
Second, we present a slide show that follows the order of the Kahoot. Want to collaborate vicariously? Click here and make a copy of this slide deck to see what we did. We've included notes on each slide to give you an idea of the process.
Depending on the length of your class, your students may have time on that first day to begin the selection process. One stipulation of the selection process for us is that only one of an artwork per class period (one "Starry Night" or one "Impression, Sunrise"), but students may select any (school-appropriate) animated character to add.
Finally, after the masterpieces are complete, students present their work via a collective Google Slide file.
Then they conduct a Gallery Walk where they give feedback to each other. Each image has three visitors who offer a TAG review. Each visitor writes their comments on a post-it note.
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