Art Education Daily: Curriculum and Planning

3D poster about local architecture created by D. K. Grimm in "Art At The Museum" This poster also comes with a hidden compartment containing Art Card Games about architectural elements and their definitions. Photography by Grimm.

"Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up." A. A. Milne

Effective instruction is sometimes dependent upon the way in which curriculum is communicated. Individual needs of diverse learners can be addressed through the following variety of traditional lesson plan models. Each of these lesson plan models encourages the growth of particular content knowledge standards. I will include a link to both a lesson plan prototype and an example of how I used the prototype in my own pre-service experience.

1. The cooperative Learning lesson plan emphasizes the importance of group activities. Students must, in fact, work in a group in order to complete the task given them. Ideally, students will not be able to complete the lesson unless every student does his or her part. Cooperative projects are very challenging for teachers and students because the teacher needs to develop aspects of a cooperative project so that one person does not do the work of many and also so that the excellence of one individual is not “down graded” because of team members who refuse to participate. My ATC lesson plan is developed especially for the purpose of supporting a community effort among my art students but, it also flatters the talents of uniquely talented individuals. I will link to it here in the near future.

2. A direct instruction lesson plan is developed for the primary purpose of teaching a skill-set. I've included under this category a lesson plan about slab construction in ceramics. Art teachers develop specific demonstrations for the introductory activity instead of using a lecture. In contrast, direct instruction lessons do not use inquiry-based learning until after students observe and discuss the formal demonstration.  This lesson plan type is a kind of "methods" lesson plan.

3. Presentation lesson plans showcase the practice of informing, persuading and encouraging students to establish a form of trust in the instructor. Presentations may be delivered as interviews, reports, encounters, training sessions, and my favorite, storytelling. The teacher has many possible scenarios to choose from in order to develop this kind of a lesson. The presentation artifact that I will include here in the future is based upon my reading of "The Village Basket Weaver."

4. While developing concept lesson plans, I wrote a lesson about abstract and realistic portraiture. I had to provide examples of portraiture, urge my students to ask themselves questions about those examples, teach them to define images by sets of ideas, compare other sample artworks to those they understood already, and then help them to assess their own learning process. All of these processes will in time develop the higher-order-thinking skills that the state of Missouri requires it’s teachers to cultivate in the minds of their students.

5. In the writing of sample discussion based lesson plans, I learned how to share objectives about the story with attention gaining methods and how to prepare students to participate in both small and large groups. In “” I wrote questions that would help students to describe the legend and lay a foundation of literary observations around inquiries about Native American folklore. I also described how I would monitor the student interactions, keep records of their participation and enforce ground rules when conducting the discussion. I also had to describe how I would summarize the discussion at the end of the session. Questions about limiting negative responses from inappropriate remarks were also included along with even more class discussion based upon each student’s individual examination of the materials.

6. In the sample problem-based lesson plan,”” I learned to provide materials to my students that would help them accomplish research using both technology and cooperative small groups. Advanced planning was necessary in order to teach the materials and methods that each group of students would need to research in order to make presentations of the topics assigned to them. The methods of research and the content of those presentations are both important to the growth and development of art students. The greater the ability a student has in discovery and problem solving, the more likely he is to produce artworks that are both meaningful and relevant to his own culture and time period.

7. In my Theory To Practice, I learned how to develop lessons around objects, themes and visual culture. The lesson called "" is my example of a typical object based lesson plan. It is important for art students to be inclined by natural curiosity in order for their enthusiasm to feed art in practice. By selecting an object that is a toy, I automatically establish a common interest between two groups of children who live half a world apart. I believe that teaching art many times is more successful when educators lean towards subjects that are naturally pleasing to their young students.

8. Thematic lesson plans are constructed around a central idea or message. The message could be about society, human nature, or important life topics. These ideas/messages are usually implied rather than stated in an obvious fashion. The theme that I chose to build a lesson around was recycling product and conservation. The aim of the lesson is to teach students to portray the environment (a landscape) with the very material that would normally be disposed of in the environment.

9. Visual culture lessons usually include a combination of several academic subjects such as: cultural studies, art history, critical theory, anthropology and/or philosophy. All of these subjects are somehow related to visual images that are consequently explored, analyzed, and manipulated by the students who study the significance of a people's particular attachment to the visual images being studied. I include in this set of artifacts a visual culture lesson called, "." I later taught the lesson at a state high school when my cooperating teacher asked that I include a lesson based upon film. The lesson connects the interplay of satire/parody in our contemporary American teen films.

10. "American Children of The Great Depression" is a collection of sample lesson plans I developed for elementary students integrating American history with fine arts. In integrated studies, teachers design lesson plans that combine two or more subject areas. This kind of formulation uses art to reinforce memory, knowledge, and comprehension skills by more than one method. Students learn a broader spectrum of information about a particular time period in history as well. Integrated studies lessons are among the very latest innovations being introduced to American public education programs today.

11. The studio methods lesson plan focuses primarily on studio processes. Unlike direct instruction lessons, these are not based upon a teacher’s demonstration but upon the principles of constructivist practice. Although, the teacher may ask questions of very young students in order to stimulate their curiosity in some cases. This kind of lesson focuses on self-teaching activities and small group explorations. Teachers guide the learning experience but do not dictate to their students “how” the end product should look. The teacher may apply an underlying theme but he or she does not insist that students should look at a teacher sample and develop a similar product.

12. Lesson plans emphasizing principles and elements of design are used to teach specific singular practices used in the manipulation of materials. As student artists mature, more than one principle is combined together to enhance the quality of the art assignment. This is also a kind of "methods" lesson plan.

Art classes that are subject specific and designed for entire semesters need also to include a class syllabus that includes an introduction to the course. Goals, objectives, an outline and project descriptions should also be a part of an attached schedule. I also include information about the books that are used in my courses, e-mail contacts, disciplinary measures for tardy work, and point values for papers, tests, sketchbook and art project assignments in the artifact demonstrating all of these specifics for a fashion design course that I wrote during my Fall Semester at UMSL in 2010, a curriculum unit that may be viewed through my private livetext account. This kind of information will keep students on task and help eliminate confusion.

Tactile and visual information to be produced by art students is taught through teacher demonstrations and by observations of those materials and teacher samples made available in the art classroom. Below, I have included many photographs of my teacher samples that demonstrate my interests in including many visual and tactile references in the art classroom.

Curriculum resources like slide shows/power points, films, art reproductions, time lines, art posters, bulletin boards and classroom literacy center displays are a big part of the visual curriculum that I develop for my classroom too. Above, I have included a architectural elements poster that I designed for my "Art At The Museum" course in the Fall Semester of 2010. I have included many more photos and descriptions of these curriculum resources throughout this portfolio as well.