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Cross-Curricular Language Arts Lessons
Here are lesson ideas to begin integrating social studies content into the language arts classroom.
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Hands-On Ways to Engage Students during Youth Art Month
Enjoy an artful departure from spring fever through creative art lessons.
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Pastel Scratch Portrait
A great cross-curricular project for any art classroom, this activity encourages young artists to consider color, pattern, texture, shape and line in their depiction of a historical figure. After researching a historical figure of their...
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Inhale the Colour of Life
Here is a four-lesson series which elicits understanding of the power of color when viewing and creating pieces of visual art. Learners view the works of Robert Harris and engage in discussions which lead to an understanding of what...
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Chatty Cherry Stories
Young artists will respond to reading children's literature, by engaging in original storytelling and representing their own images through the visual arts. Then they orally describe details of people, places, and things in their stories...
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Paper Spiders
The positional words up and down are the focus of a language and visual arts lesson. Learners get a paper plate and eight strips of construction paper. They create a spider out of their paper plate, and cut out a circle out of a piece of...
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Painting Faces: Interpreting Portraits
Over the course of four sessions, upper elementary learners explore the elements of visual art and portraiture and the work of Canadian painter Robert Harris (links included). (Paintings by any portrait artist will fit the plan; choose...
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Adventures in Creating Hypertext Stories
Use hypertext to make a multimedia choose-your-own adventure story! Young writers incorporate knowledge of story writing elements to write their own stories, and rewrite the adventure with various scenarios and endings. Use technology to...
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Gateway to the Arts
Students redesign a dead space in the school to create an interesting and stimulating visual environment. In this art design lesson, students look at how to redesign architectural space and research ways to enhance a space. Students then...
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Creative Cubbies
Students get comfortable in the classroom. For this early childhood visual arts lesson, students engage in an art activity that encourages individuality and creativity using a variety of art materials to decorate their cubbies.
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Make Something Beautiful
Students create an art piece using recycled objects. In this environmental lesson, students collect and sort recycled objects and create a three dimensional art piece.
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Exploring Pottery Techniques
Students examine Native American pottery. In this visual arts lesson, students analyze burnished and glazed clay pots. Students study how to create pots from online sources and respond to questions about the process. Extension activities...
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Greek and Roman Symbolism
Young scholars explore Greek and Roman symbolism in art. In this visual art lesson, students draw portraits of ancient leaders based on the written descriptions they read about them. Young scholars also design campaign posters using...
Armory Center for the Arts
Place Value Collage
How can art represent math? Use a lesson on place value collages to illustrate the different meanings that numbers have in their designated places. Kids observe photographs and paintings that show place value, then work on their own.
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Garbage or Art?
The three R's are, reduce, reuse, and recycle. Third graders use recycled materials to design and create an environmentally themed piece of art. They discuss and examine major art works that were created using recycled materials, then...
J. Paul Getty Trust
Exhibiting Common Threads
Artists working in different media often explore the same themes—to model how these same themes weave their way through different forms of artistic expression, scholars analyze images by Dorothea Lange, identifying key themes in her...
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The View From Here
Study the beauty of the landscape around you with an innovative art lesson. After discussing the foreground, background, and middle ground of landscape art, kids work on making their own piece of landscape art. The lesson provides...
San Diego Museum of Art
Tapa-Inspired Pattern Painting
Middle schoolers are encourage to try their hand at traditional Oceania tapa art by crafting their own cloth using brown paper bags. Included in the resource is background information about the cultures of Oceania and their art.
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Abstract Planes in Paper Sculpture
High schoolers create maquettes of abstract sculptures utilizing the elements of art; line, shape, value, color, space and texture and the principles of design; balance, emphasis, contrast, rhythm and movement, pattern and unity. These...
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Lesson: Elizabeth Peyton: Artist's Community: The Real
What is real or imagined? The lines of beauty reality, and imagination are blurred in Elizabeth Peyton's portraits of her community. Learners analyze her use of artistic technique in conveying real and imagined communities. They then use...
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Lesson: Paul Chan: "Score for the 7th Light"
Music, art, and poetry coalesce in a single exhibition, and in a single lesson. Critical thinkers analyze the Fluxus art movement as it's seen in the work of Paul Chan's 7 Lights. They consider the use of poetry and music in his...
J. Paul Getty Trust
Still-Life Painting: Arranging Nature—Lesson 1
Art learners examine still-life arrangement images and respond to a series of prompts. In a whole-class discussion, pupils list elements and qualities that still-life paintings can have. After instructors create an arrangement and model...
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Lesson: Double Album: Sentence as Thought
The cut-up technique invented by surrealist artist Tristan Tzara is the focus for today. Young artists examine the technique and analyze its use in relation to expressing and viewing the world. They then use a newspaper to create a...
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Lesson: Double Album: The Collection and the Archive
An open discussion starts this lesson off. The class takes a critical look at five works of art that demonstrate the impact and purpose of identity through collections or archives. They then write a list or draw 10-15 items found in...