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Projects are co-designed by artist-teacher teams to meet the needs of individual classes.

The following projects demonstrate the power of art to make learning meaningful and engaging. Lesson plans are meant to serve as guides rather than comprehensive instructions. We hope that you find these projects inspiring. Adapt, modify or simplify these projects to best support your students in becoming active participants in their own learning.

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Where We Come From: Cultural Posters

Students assume the roles of interviewers, historians, researchers, thinkers, writers, and artists as they independently create cultural posters to explore their ancestry. In addition to information obtained from their families, students research and depict an array of topics including symbolic colors, landscapes, landmarks, food, and traditional clothing. Each week, students are assigned a topic to […]

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The War That Saved My Life Artists’ Books

Using a variety of illustration techniques, students create richly textured artists’ books as they perform a close reading of The War That Saved My Life, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Through in-depth analytical class discussions and independent construction, students learn to: investigate and assess characters, themes, symbols, foreshadowing, and metaphor, consider the relationship between environmental influences […]

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Things That Grown: A Garden Installation

Students collaboratively research, design, and create a three-dimensional wall piece depicting how things grow. In the three layers of the garden—soil, surface, and sky—vegetables, fruits, flowers, and insects are represented in various stages of growth. Students draw thoughtful parallels between the life cycle of flowers, insects, fruits and vegetables, and themselves. They start to understand […]

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Cultural Assemblages

Students work in groups to create assemblages that symbolically reflect a particular culture in a respectful and authentic way. Aspects of culture to be addressed in assemblage include customs, food, architecture, the arts, landscape, and jobs. Each group is responsible for researching the culture and determining the objects and arrangement of the piece. Additionally, students […]

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Poetry Artist Book

In created multitextured artist books, students learn about various elements of poetry through reading and writing poems filled with imagery, symbolism, rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration.

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Creative Writing Artists’ Books

To assist in their creation of original monster stories, students formulate mixed-media artists’ books. These books function as place to house brainstorming, character sketches, story arcs, language, symbols, and pacing. Weekly in-depth class discussions and independent construction assist students as they imagine, create, and fine-tune their stories.

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Character Transformation Books

Each week, students collectively examine the transformation of characters in Kevin Henkes’s books. Independently, students create weekly pages to be housed in their literary accordion and bookmark books. The first story explored is Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse. Through collage and drawings, students observe Lily’s five emotional transformations as she deals with the consequences of disobeying […]

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Sculptural Star Book: Patterns and Objects in the Sky

As we investigated the Next Generation Science Standards, students created sculptural books about the cosmos. Specifically, we asked the question: What objects are in the sky and do they move? Each week we worked on text and illustration to demonstrate a new concept using an array of artistic approaches. By distilling this vast subject into […]

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Scientific Artists’ Books

In creating scientific artists’ books, students become keen researchers, thinkers, and analysts. Applying scientific observation to their illustrations and text, students investigate an array of topics, including, but not limited to, the properties of elements, atoms and molecules, ecosystems, chemical reactions, and energy transference.

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Animals and Their Habitats

Students create a classroom zoo comprising various box-sized animal containments that the students can take home at the end of the quarter. With the assistance of classroom aids, the teacher, and artist, students create paper sculptures and habitats of animals (selected by them when possible).

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Mapping Our Heritage through Creative Movement

Students embark on a geographical, historical, and cultural journey through concepts of place and belonging. Students analyze their place within their school, their community, and in the larger world. They connect, read, and create maps by researching the cities, states, and countries where their parents and grandparents were born. Students learn regional dances from places […]

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Using the Visual Arts to Examine Characteristics of Fossils

In exploring a unit on fossils, students become paleontologists and botanists by trying their hand at a variety of art activities illustrating the fossilization of ancient plants and animals. “Fossil” techniques include sun prints, crayon resists, freehand drawings, collage, crayon rubbings, and clay imprints. Students record and share their scientific findings after each activity. Discussions […]

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