View the Project: Frida
Kahlo: A Look in the Mirror (The Art of
Self-Portraiture)
How
it works:
A Look In The Mirror is a unit that allows the students to
express themselves freely while encouraging them to really put
some thought into their work. Although it is primarily a visual
arts themed unit it develops a lot of skills, social and
academic, that transfer to other curricular areas, and are just
good "plain old common sense, daily life" skills, such
as the Internet safety skills that can be applied almost to
anything.
In this unit the students learn about a famous Mexican female
artist and her style of painting. They learn what a
self-portrait is by making one of themselves, and learn to look
at art by criticizing their own work after analyzing it.
One of the most exciting things about this unit is the
creation of an online mini museum in the form of a web site. The
students feeling of achievement is very intense when they see
that they can create web sites on their own, and that they can
be experts in different aspects of web creation, such as the
preparation of graphics by photographing the artwork, then
editing and renaming the files.
Popular with the students during this unit is the use of the
chatroom for communicating their knowledge and ideas.
Assessment:
Each lesson has a rubric for scoring the work.
All children will gain different skills and concepts from
this unit. The best assessment is teacher observation. Some of
the work from this unit can go into portfolios.
Standards:
LA: fluency, vocabulary development, comprehension,
writing.
Visual arts: Respond to works of art. Use art vocabulary
to express observations. Apply art processes and skills. Mix and
apply tempera paints. Analyze the role of visual arts in
cultures. Identify successful and less successful qualities of
their works of art and describe what might be done to improve
them
Software or Materials Used:
Computer, Internet Connection, E-mail
capabilities (optional), digital camera, scanner, Microsoft
Office, Netscape Composer or other Web-authoring software.
Keywords:
Frida Kahlo, self-portraits, art
The
Students:
The students that participated in this unit were 22 third
graders, mostly second and third generation Hispanics (México -
no other countries represented) and four philipino. From 2 to 5
are advanced students (one identified as a GATE [Gifted And
Talented Education] student, the others referred only), 2
resource students, 5 students with SSTs (Student Study Team).
Half the students are bussed in from other neighborhoods.
For the lessons in this unit the students were group as a
whole class or worked with individually (one-on-one). For some
of the Internet activities they were in pair or small groups
(3-5 students).
One third of my class was very adept at using the computer
and the Internet. The rest of the class had some experience with
computes and were not afraid to dive right in with the exception
of two timid students that needed a peer "expert" to
encourage them along.
Overall
Value:
This unit can be very introspective, relaxing and fun. The
students get to communicate with others through
telecommunications and this can be very rewarding and exciting.
The major goals of this unit are:
Technology:
- to expose the students to the many uses of the Internet
and encourage the use of "Netiquette" for safety
and manners
- to expose the students to other technologies such as
scanners and/or digital photography
- to give the students practice in using tools appropriately
(Technology)
- to teach the students how to create a virtual museum using
web-authoring software
Academic areas:
- to provide the students with practice reading and writing in
different genres, for different purposes
- to help the students learn grade appropriate visual art
skills
- to give the students opportunities to make choices and
judgments
- to encourage students to share their ideas orally and in
written form to give the students practice in using tools
appropriately (Art)
Subject Area: Language Arts and
Social Studies, Fine Arts
Starting Grade Level: 3
Ending Grade Level: 8 (with
modification)
Tips
for the Teacher:
- Check out the websites before you need them because they
are constantly changing.
- Create a hot list with the sites for the students to go
to.
- Teach students to be "experts" in the different
technologies, so that they can relieve the teacher from
having to help all students individually
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