First Grade 

Summary of Lessons

Throughout this semester in our 1st-grade art class, we have explored storytelling through multi-media creations. Stories have been the drive in our lessons including the story box, pirate ship, dream house and emotion books. In our lessons, students came up with stories to create an artwork about.

• Lesson 1: What's in the Box?

In this lesson, students created a three-dimensional story box by using watercolor paint and clay. Students first thought about a time when they lost a tooth and visually recreated their story. They needed to think about where the event took place, and how it happened. Students who have never lost a tooth thought about how they think they would lose a tooth in the future. Students painted their boxes, then with clay created three-dimensional objects to tell their story. 

• Lesson 2: Ahoy come aboard my ship!

For this lesson, students created a story about how if they were pirates, where would they travel to, what kind of ship would they travel in and what creatures would they run into on their adventures. First students filled out their "lesson menu" to help them come up with their own story. These lesson menus asked about what kind of place they were traveling to, how their ship travels (does it fly, sail, drive on wheels?) and what creatures they would encounter.

After filling out these lesson menus, students created a multi-media artwork by painting the background with acrylic paint, then adding a paper cut-out pirate ship.

To connect to the previous lesson, students learned about the differences between watercolor and acrylic paint. They described watercolor which was used in the story box lesson as "runny" and acrylic paint as brighter.

• Lesson 3: Dream Homes

In this lesson, students explored houses from around the world and created their own dream house that they would live in. Students created stories about their houses and what they would do in their house. Then the houses were put together to create our own city.

Students created a multi-media artwork by visiting several art stations including acrylic paint, watercolors, oil pastels, paper cutting, markers, and colored pencils. These stations introduced materials that the students have used in previous lessons to encourage them to combine and further explore mediums.

• Lesson 4: Emotion Books

In this lesson, students explored how to represent emotions in an artwork. Students created 5 artworks each illustrating a different emotion by telling a story about a time that he or she have felt that way. 

To create these stories, students used a new technique: printmaking. They drew with marker on plexiglass and transferred to paper. This lesson is also multi-media because students were able to add colored pencil or crayon to their prints to include more detail, they also created book covers by using paper cutting and colored pencils, markers and oil pastels. 

 

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The chart above represents the standards that were mainly focused on in each lesson. Below explains how each standard was met in each lesson.

How standards were met in lesson 1:

• Comprehend: Art represents and renders the stories of people, places, or things. After reading a story called The Night Before the Tooth Fairy by Natasha Wing, students observed that art tells stories.

• Reflect: Respond to the stories told in works of art. Students reflected on the story box created by Sami by questioning what was going on in her box and how she lost her tooth based off of the artwork she created. The students were able to think and wonder about the artwork to interpret. 

• Create: Create art to communicate ideas. Students used clay and paint to communicate a story. Students learned how to create three-dimensional elements out of clay to contribute to the story that they were communicating through a visual artwork.

• Transfer: Visual arts relate experiences to self. Students created artworks about a story that they have personally experienced. They also participated in a reflective activity which allowed them to relate to their classmates' artworks.

How standards were met in lesson 2:

• Comprehend: Art represents and renders the stories of places. Students viewed famous artworks of ships and used their own observations to interpret where the ship was traveling to and why. 

• Reflect: Art provides opportunities to respond to the art of other. Students responded to the famous artworks by making their own interpretations.

• Create: Create art to communicate ideas. Students painted a background to convey where they would travel to and created a paper ship to visually communicate how their ship would travel.

• Transfer: Visual arts relate experiences to self, family, and friends. Students shared their stories about their pirate ship artwork with classmates. 

How standards were met in lesson 3:

• Comprehend: Art represents and renders the stories of places. Students listened to a story about the different kinds of houses from all around the world. Students were able to observe the illustrations to explore characteristics from houses in different parts of the world.

• Reflect: Art provides opportunities to respond to the art of others. After reading the book If I Lived Here, students shared their thoughts about the illustrations of houses from around the world by providing evidence about which house was their favorite and why.

• Create: Create art to communicate ideas. Students were able to use multi-media to create their ideas for a dream house.

• Transfer: Visual arts relate experiences to self, family, and friends. After viewing the houses in the book and houses made by classmates, students connected to each other by sharing their dream houses.

How standards were met in lesson 4:

• Comprehend: Works of art express feelings. Students were able to interpret Sami's emotion book by interpreting what emotions she was trying to convey.

• Reflect: Visual arts provide opportunities to respond to personal works of art and the art of others. Students were able to reflect about a time that they have felt the emotions shown in Sami's artworks and the clip from the movie, Inside Out.

• Create: Create art to communicate feelings and emotions. Students were able to create their own personal artworks to communicate their emotions. 

• Transfer: Visual arts relate experiences to self, family, and friends. Students were able to connect to stories told by their classmates by relating to the emotions conveyed in the illustrations.