Important steps In Designing UnitsStep 1: Determine & Unpack Standards
Step 2: Group Standards into Units Step 3: Identify Enduring Understandings tied to standards Step 4: Decide Themes & Big Ideas to frame the unit Step 5: Design Essential Questions within the Unit Theme - Essential Question Examples Step 6: Create Unit Performance Assessment to Assess Priority Standards Step 7: Write Lessons that Build Skills to the Assessment |
Topical Essential QuestionsSample Unit Essential Questions
Unit: Our Community Grade Level: Kindergarten Time Frame: Ten 45-minute class periods over the span of 6 weeks Unit Description: Students will explore the theme of community in this unit to gain an understanding of the role they as artists have in the local and world environment. Students will explore how artists influence and are influenced by their communities in attempt to express group identity, record history and improve the visual beauty of a community. Essential Questions: How does art represent a place? How do artists work to create a community? How do artists record history of our world? Unit: Communities Grade Level: 2nd Grade Time Frame: Fifteen 60-minute class periods over the span of 9 weeks Unit Description: In this unit, students will investigate the theme of community by exploring their place within their community. They will examine the importance of taking care of the art room, tools and supplies together as a classroom community, the importance of constructed environments for communities, and how art can help bring a community together. Essential Questions: How can you express your connection to your home, school, or community through art? Where do you see artwork in your own community? Where would you add artwork to your community? How is taking care of your art tools and being safe in the art room related to being part of a community? Unit: Discovery Grade Level: 4th Grade Time Frame: Twenty-eight 60-minute class periods over the span of 18 weeks Unit Description: Discovery changes artists by facilitating a growth in understanding, skills and self-awareness. Through observation and investigation, students will discover how artists’ artwork has changed and evolved throughout time because of discoveries of new techniques, media and the ever-changing world. Students will uncover the artistic process as they observe and engage with creative challenges. In sketchbooks, students will document their experiments, failures and growth as a part of their personal artistic process.The students will explore the big idea of Discovery and address the questions: “How can I brainstorm multiple approaches to a creative art or design problem?”, “How can I explore and invent art-making techniques and approaches?” and “How can I interpret my art by referring to contextual information and analyzing relevant subject matter, characteristics of form, and use media?” Essential Questions: Where do artists get ideas? What is the process of creating art? What affects an artist’s style? How does media, process or presentation affect choices of an artist? What role does persistence play in revising/developing? How can you share/present art? What makes art meaningful? How do artists communicate ideas, culture, context? How have artists impacted their culture? How has technology influenced art? How is art influenced by community traditions? How can I brainstorm multiple approaches to a creative art or design problem? How can I explore and invent art-making techniques and approaches? Unit: De/Construction Grade Level: 5th Grade Time Frame: Twenty-eight 60-minute class periods over the span of 18 weeks Unit Description: Students will deconstruct their idea of self and how it is shaped by the world around them. Students will investigate their culture and how it pertains to the way they view their world. Students will be able to deconstruct the artistic process to develop skills and practice communicating ideas. Students will construct new and innovative ways to create art that is personal and meaningful to them by investigating an idea or concept deciding how to bring the audience’s attention to a particular focus. Students will generate innovative work by combining multiple ideas and practice developing technical skills. Students will construct artist’s statements to deconstruct the thinking behind the creation of their artwork. Essential Questions: How do artists generate ideas? What makes an idea innovative? How does pop culture influence our daily life? How does art reflect culture? How can art/artists influence culture (informing or changing beliefs, values, behaviors of society)? How do artist’s combine different ideas to create a new idea? How can you convey powerful meaning through your artwork? How do artists communicate ideas, culture, context? What influences our interpretation of an artwork? Why does our interpretation change from one person to another? How can art change our ideas about a culture? How can deconstructing an idea or problem help create a deeper understanding? What criteria can be used to evaluate art? Unit: Discovery Grade Level: 6th Grade Time Frame: Daily 50-minute class periods over the span of 9 weeks Unit Description: Throughout this unit, students will experiment with new and familiar art media and techniques. They will be exposed to innovative ways to apply the media. Students will be provided an opportunity to realize their artistic capabilities and interests by emphasizing learning activities of an exploratory nature in the visual arts. They will discover ways to create meaning through visual art and learn how visual images communicate messages. Students will discover the art of other cultures and how art plays a part in rituals or traditions. Experimentation will lead to the creation of original student work that communicates a message about self-identity. Essential Questions: How does discovery lead to creativity? What is discovery and why is it important? What can we discover about our world by looking at art? How does art communicate with us? What can the art forms of other cultures teach us about ourselves and about life? What can we discover about others through art? How do cultures throughout history incorporate art into their rituals? What kind of rituals or traditions do you and your family participate in? What can you discover about yourself through art? Unit: Tradition Grade Level: 8th Grade Time Frame: Daily 50-minute class periods over the span of 9 weeks Unit Description: Throughout this unit, students will be encouraged to exhibit a willingness to experience new and familiar art media and techniques. Student’s activities will be based on their perception of tradition. They will explore the question, “As an artist, would you follow tradition or break away from it?” Students will examine associations and connections between ideas and meanings. Early stages of the creative process will involve group, cultural, and personal traditions as well as analyzing personal connections made through artwork. Students will discover ways to create meaning through visual art by presenting a personally meaningful tradition and analyzing how they were able to communicate through visual imagery. Students will explore our connections to each other through traditions in art and how artists make statements about society/culture by breaking tradition. Essential Questions: How does an event become a tradition? How do traditions influence how we interact with each other? Why? How is tradition revealed in art? How does an artist break from tradition? What makes art traditional? What makes art a universal language? How does an artist create connections through art? How does an artist connect the viewer to his/her work? How does art from the past connect to the present? Unit: Communication Grade Level: 9th-12th Grades (Introduction to Art course) Time Frame: Daily 50-minute class periods over the span of 4 weeks Unit Description: Students will explore how artists communicate using visual imagery through the creation of works of art. Students will… · Establish a personal identity and self-concept as an artist. · Collaborate and engage in a studio community. · Develop creativity and innovative thinking skills. · Build composition skills using the expressive qualities of the elements of art. · Explore connotative and denotative meaning in images and construct meaning using symbolism (literal vs. figurative meaning). · Prepare artwork for portfolio and present it for display. · Analyze the work of self and others including classmates and professional artists (both traditional and contemporary) through self-reflection, group discussion, and critique. · Connect the work of self and others to personal meaning and wider contexts Essential Questions: How can we communicate without words? What gives an “image” symbolic meaning? How do images convey meaning? What is socially significant to an image? Unit: Transformation Grade Level: 9th-12th Grades (Introduction to Art course) Time Frame: Daily 50-minute class periods over the span of 4 weeks Unit Description: Students will reflect on change by investigating how artists and designers transform objects, systems, places, or designs in response to contemporary issues. Students will engage in the artistic process to explore personal transformations. Students will… · strengthen artistic identity and creative self-concept. · participate in and contribute to a studio community to support creative and critical thinking skills. · apply relevant criteria to examine, reflect on, and plan revisions for works of art. · make, explain, and justify connections between artists/artwork and social, cultural, and political history. · hypothesize ways that art influences perception and understanding of human experiences. · engage in constructive critique with peers and then reflect on, reengage, revise, and refine works of art in response to a personal artistic vision. · determine the relevance of criteria used by others to evaluate works of art. · prepare artwork for portfolio and present it for display. · analyze the work of self and others including classmates and professional artists (both traditional and contemporary) through self-reflection, group discussion, and critique. · connect the work of self and others to personal meaning and wider contexts. Essential Questions: How do artists and designers determine goals for designing or redesigning objects, places, or systems? How do artists and designers create works of art or design that effectively communicate? How might art support the act of transformation or reinvention? What is needed for transformation to occur? Can artists or works of art provoke change or transform our way of thinking? How? |