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Coast-to-Coast Book Design -Part 2: What is Design?
Students explore the concept of design, and identify items in their lives that have been designed. They explore the concept of book design and create and arrange their own page layout.
Michigan Reads!
Reader's Theater with Animal Masks for Preschoolers
Take a trip to the farm with a fun preschool lesson! Kids decorate animal masks and participate in a reader's theater, based on different songs and additional props.
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Decorating Objects... and Re-decorating
Students create decorative objects and discuss their importance in form and function. In this art history lesson, students discuss Chinese porcelain objects with mounts later added by the Chinese. Students recreate an example of this art...
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What Is Industrial Design?
Students explore the processes used by industrial designers to design useful, safe, and appealing mass-produced objects. They select an object from their home or classroom and redesign it to improve its function, feel, and/or appearance.
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Help! I Need Some Editing
Learners write their own story using as much descriptive language as they can. They peer edit each other's stories and create illustrations to accompany their writings. They place their story in a booklet and give it to a needy recepient.
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Sondheim: Secret Metaphors
Students explore the work of Stephen Sondheim. In this musical theater lesson plan, students examine the musicals Merrily We Roll Along and Sunday in the Park with George. Students identify and anaylze linear and nonlinear structural...
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Introduction To Film Editing
Students are introduced to the role of a film editor and to two common film-editing techniques: continuity editing and montage (discontinuity) editing. By viewing video clips, students identify and define these two editing styles.
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Visual Arts
Students identify different kinds of lines in art and nature. They use continuous, curved line to create a drawing.
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Contours, Curves & Lines
Students discover how straight lines and curves function in both art and the science of conservation tillage by building model "hills" and experimenting on them.
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Rhythm and Art: Gesture Drawing
Students explore connections between non-verbal language and art. In this visual and auditory art lesson, students investigate the science of sound and principles of drawing. They then use various genres of music to directly apply that...
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Dining and Reclining: a Greco-Roman Feast
Students acquire and discover what it was like to be the ancient Greeks and Romans at a feast. They identify the informal and formal Greek and Roman clothing styles,and basic information about ancient make-up and
hairstyles and the...
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Medieval Coat of Arms/Heraldry
Students examine the history of Heraldry from medieval times in preparation for reading the novel "Freak the Mighty." They view and discuss examples of shields and discuss the color system and how shields were divided. As a culminating...
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Discovering Details: Shoebox Designs
Students investigate architectural art by creating an interior design for a box. In this art design instructional activity, students analyze modern artifacts such as doorknobs, brackets and mailboxes by using a Venn diagram to identify...
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Buzzing Bee's Wardrobe
Students investigate the anatomy of honeybees. In this anatomy instructional activity, students research the physical characteristics of bees and discover what they do. Students create a model of a honeybee showing the correct anatomy.
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Castles and Cornerstones
Students become familiar with the style of architecture of medieval times. In this architecture lesson, students design a model of a medieval castle including its cornerstone. Students understand scale in their representation.
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Which Would You Choose?
Fourth graders investigate two types of water vessels that were used by Lewis and Clark during the exploration of the Louisiana Territory. They interpret data to determine which vessel was more efficient.
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Discovering Peace
Students explore vocabulary related to peace. In this peace lesson, students define the word "peace" and create a poem about peace. Students create a "peace quilt" as a follow-up activity.
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Sacred Space
Students consider the two finalists in the contest for architectural designs for the site of the World Trade Center. They create their own designs for a meaningful public space, then critique each other's designs.
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Olympic Emblems
Students study the history of Olympic emblems. For this Olympics lesson, students examine the Olympic designs and symbols used to represent different Olympic game years. Students then collaborate to create Olympic emblems for a...
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Zen and the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright
Students experience Zen philosophies reflected in artwork, poetry, and architecture. Students will explore these connections and expand the discussion to include a professional author of their choice.
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Creating Comic Strips
Students create comic strips to communicate ideas that cannot be expressed through words alone.
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FDR's First Inaugural Address
Learners, in groups, describe a photo to the class. They determine which New Deal program is depicted in each of the images based on the research they conducted.
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Sketchy Business
Students identify and describe characteristics of contemporary artwork. Then, they create gesture drawings, a drawing technique used to express the action of a subject in a short period of time.
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The Story of an Old Piano
Students read excerpts from The Story of an Old Piano. They choose a personal object and write paragraphs from the object's point of view. Their stories can be bound for the class library.