Curated OER
Advanced Art – Cultural Place-setting Still life
Upper graders view a series of films that depict rituals or celebrations as they occur in different cultural settings. They conduct a cultural investigation about one culture, brainstorm and research objects that have cultural or...
Curated OER
Compare and Contrast Photograph Art
Take a trip down Pearblossom Highway with this lesson about comparing and contrasting. Using David Hockney's Pearblossom Hwy and another image of the same highway (photograph or other image), students compare and contrast the two...
Curated OER
About Life: The Photographs of Dorothea Lange Going to the Promised Land
To better understand the migrant experience during the Great Depression, pupils analyze two primary resources: photographs by Dorothea Lange and a U.S. Map that shows the Dust Bowl. They compare and contrast Lange's images to Steinbeck's...
Curated OER
Still Life
Students investigate still-life drawings. In this visual arts lesson, students draw each other pretending to be frozen making sure that they do not simply see the object as the object, but seeing the drawing as the negative space around...
Curated OER
A Glimmer of Beauty: Lesson Plan
Fully analyze the elements of art and unexpected beauty in the William Merritt Chase's Still Life with a Fish. The class will examine the painting very closely, then use photography to express unexpected beauty in still life. This is a...
Curated OER
Famous Photographers
Student explore, research, and discuss the life & artwork of famous photographers. They analyze & critique the artwork, photographers through a presentation. They recognize and identify technological developments in the...
Curated OER
Activity Plan 3-4: Still Life Artists
Students find that still life's are a great way to jump-start art. For this early childhood art lesson, students examine famous still life paintings, discuss still life art, and create their own still life piece.
Curated OER
Double Exposed Photographs
Students create double-exposed photographs, poetry, and multimedia presentations. In this artwork lesson plan, students explore cameras, poems, and other art forms to understand line, light, and other attributes that contribute to artwork.
Curated OER
Emblems of the Land I Love
Students explore the histories of American patriotic emblems and examine ways in which patriotic artwork uses these emblems to reflect the ideals that they embody. They find a common or popular patriotic image and design a modern...
Curated OER
The Treaty Trail: U.S. - Clothing That Talks: Meaning and Material Culture
Students investigate the cultures of Native Americans and Euro-Americans through their clothing. In this photograph analysis lesson, students observe historic photographs and analyze the style of clothes people wore and how it signifies...
Polk Bros Foundation
American Presidents
Emanuel Leutze's painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Alexander Gardner's photograph of Abraham Lincoln. What do these works of art tell us about the character of these American Presidents? After examining the techniques the...
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...
Curated OER
Exploring Photographs
Students explore the basic tools for analyzing images using description, reflection, and formal analysis. In this photography analysis lesson, students analyze a photograph as a class and then in small groups. Students write descriptions...
Curated OER
The Photographs of Dorothea Lange
Young scholars research social-documentary photography using Dorothea Lange’s documentary projects. In this photography analysis lesson plan, students analyze examples of photographs by Dorothea Lange and research one or more of Dorothea...
ReadWriteThink
A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative
A picture's worth a thousand words—and even more inspiration! A visual activity uses photographs to inspire writers. The process teaches aspects of narrative writing, such as point of view and characterization.
Curated OER
Lesson: Looking Closer: The Artwork of Martha Rosler
Have a class discussion to better understand the art of Martha Rosler. Young art critics consider Martha's art as it is used to express issues of political unrest and social awareness. They look at each of the five images and use the...
Curated OER
Picture This
Give your littlest learners the opportunity to learn how to discuss, observe, and visualize. First, they determine if the image they are looking at is a photograph or a painting. Then they work together to brainstorm words that describe...
Curated OER
The Photographs of Dorothea Lange
Students examine theme in the photography of Dorothea Lange. In this photography lesson, students analyze photography taken by Dorothea Lange and identify themes that run through each. They design an exhibition that shows how the theme...
Curated OER
About Life: The Photographs of Dorothea Lange Image as Metaphor
Students define metaphor in both art and writing. In this metaphor lesson, students examine a photograph by Dorothea Lange and discuss the metaphor that is displayed in the picture. They write about an object that symbolizes a personal...
Curated OER
Exploring Photographs: Methods of Visual Analysis
Students use the methods of description, reflection, and formal analysis for a study of images. In this image analysis lesson plan, students work in teams to interpret and analyze an assigned work of art. Students write responses to the...
National Gallery of Canada
Me or You in the 30's?
Take on portrait painting and tertiary colors with a plan focused on recreating a photograph. After viewing several pieces of artwork, class members follow the instructions included here to create portraits or self-portraits in a...
Curated OER
Vanishing Environment: Exploring Changes in Landscape
To discover the impact of urbanization on the environment, learners compare landscape paintings from the past with contemporary photographs, create found poems from descriptions of artwork, design backyard or public garden spaces,...
Huntington Library
Light in Painting
How do painters use and manipulate light in their artwork to give emphasis and establish mood and emotion? Pupils will analyze a few examples of landscape and portrait painting in order to explore the how light is used in art, and will...
Curated OER
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...