Introduce your class to the seven elements of art through a presentation and related project. Before beginning the project, class members take notes on the presentation, writing down the underlined items and adding drawings into their...

Introduce young actors to the key elements of performance with this handout that defines key staging terms and activities.

Lilly Martin Spencer's "Peeling Onions" is the subject of a series of exercises that model for learners how to use the elements of art to read a painting. A series of worksheets focus viewers' attention on how Spencer uses...

Play with dimensions and practice making a two-dimensional scene look three-dimensional. Class members view pieces of art and then make their own scenes by layering different materials and drawing in details. Check out all the tabs for...

Explore contemporary American Indian art. After viewing a set of images, class members discuss the design elements of techniques present, as well as how these artists represent history and culture. Learners examine the parfleche and...

Explore the world of textured landscapes through the eyes of the famous artist, Grant Wood. Here is an elementary art lesson in which scholars learn about Grant Wood's life, view his work, draw their own textured landscape, and then...

If anyone suffers from metrophobia—the fear of poetry—the PowerPoint on the elements of poetry may help alleviate their worries. The presentation introduces learners to poetic elements, including simile, metaphor, and personification....

Whether new to the Kodály Method of music instruction or an experienced veteran, you'll find much to make your heart sing in a teacher guide that was designed for a music appreciation project. 

Clothes might not make the man but they certainly do help an actor create a character. How costume designers employ the same elements of design found in sets (line, color, texture, shape) to realize a character is the focus of a lesson...

The set for a play combines design elements (style, line, shape, mass, measure, position, color, and texture) and principles of composition (unity, harmony, contrast, variation, balance, proportion, and emphasis) to create a particular...

Panel 58 from Jacob Lawrence's "Migration Series" of paintings provides middle schoolers with an opportunity to sharpen their observation and analytical skills. After engaging in a warm-up activity that introduces the concepts of...

Learners listen as a teacher models how to read a poem using The Negro Speaks of Rivers. They use the How to Read a Poem anchor chart to help guide their thought process on how a poem requires different reading than other text. While...

Line, shape, color, texture, space. The first in a three-part series of lessons intended for advanced theatre arts classes introduces the elements of set design. Class members examine maquettes and analyze how designers have put together...

Poetry is all about sound and rhythm. The sound of the words, the rhythm of the lines, and the emotional atmosphere created by these elements and the literary devices poets use, compress whole stories into a few stanzas. The specialized...

Color, light and shadow, the placement and size of objects. These are some of the tools artists used to tell their stories. Model for learners how to read a painting by closely examining these features. The richly detailed packet...

Imagine a project that informs and entertains. Replace book reports with a bulletin board that highlights all the important elements of a novel. Readers research the author, create a timeline of events in the story, write a...

Delve into the heart of dramatic dialogue with a unit focused on Oedipus the King by Sophocles. Having completed an online exploration about ancient Greece beforehand, ninth graders read the play's opening lines and analyze how...

How did jazz influence Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man? Class members read some of Ellison's non-fiction writings about blues and jazz, listen to records, watch videos, and engage in student-centered discussions. They then produce podcasts...

Making inferences and drawing conclusions is a key component to successful active reading. Encourage your class to use context clues and prior knowledge to infer different elements of a story, including the setting, plot, and character...

Designers communicate their vision for a set through a progression from thumbnail sketches, to drawings, to renderings. After examining a series of renderings, class members begin work on their own rendering paying particular attention...

What are the musical elements that characterize a school's fight song or its alma mater? Class members listen to examples of fight songs and alma maters from various schools, play a listening game, and then create a list of the...

Introduce young thespians to all aspects of the theater. A syllabus for a one-semester drama course provides lessons that take learners from the history of drama to the many facets of play production.

Young artists don't need to be skateboarders to enjoy this assignment. Class members use the provided worksheet to craft 10 sketches that convey action or motion using no more than seven lines. They then select their three best ideas and...

Full of activities for Jan Brett's story "Gingerbread Friends," this resource will get your kids in the mood for some snacks, fortify their need for vocabulary, and fill their minds with story elements.