Lesson #2:
3D Inner Self Portrait
Date: 10/18/21
Lesson Idea and Relevance: What are you going to teach and why is this lesson of importance to your students? How is it relevant to students of this age and background?
- Students will each be given a blank, styrofoam head, and they will have an opportunity to utilize a variety of additive items, to create something that represents themselves. It can be a literal self-portrait to some or more of an inner-portrait of how they feel inside. Students aren’t just limited to their current physical attributes and are encouraged to take liberty with the appearance of their portrait. We will help the students understand this inner self portrait concept by showing and giving them examples on how to observe how they feel inside. We will ask them guiding questions that will help the students understand how to observe themselves, questions like : what are your favorite colors? if you could choose to have yarn or poof balls as hair which would you choose? why? if you could choose your eye color what color would they be? By asking these guiding questions both during the demo to the entire class and also asking them personally while they are working on their projects will help guide them towards a general understanding of this lesson.
Essential Understanding (s): What are the “big ideas”? What specific understandings about them are desired?
- Students will identify and experience new ways to express their emotions through a multi-sensory activity. The overall “big idea” for this project is the sense of self, self-identity, and what makes you *you*. Students will look and examine what they like and dislike as individuals and use that found knowledge and apply it to their three-dimensional self-portraits. This project is much more than the standard “ideals' ' one, or society has about themselves and expands further into the concept of what would you look like if you would be able to choose. For example: what would you want your skin color to be if you could pick any color? (blue, pink, red, green, purple ect..)
Essential Question (s): What provocative questions will foster inquiry, understanding, and transfer of learning?
Some leading/essential questions we can ask:
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How is our Identity shown on the outside, as well as on the inside?
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Think about how we could reinvent our own identity…
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How can we embrace what makes us different, and show it in a self-portrait?
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What parts of our Identity do we want to let others know about, that they might not see?
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What is something new we would like to add to our portrait? Is it silly? Serious? Scary?
Outcomes: Students will know...What key knowledge and skills will students acquire as a result of this unit? ...Art history and culture; expressive features and characteristics of art; art materials, tools, and techniques? What should they eventually be able to do as a result of such knowledge and skill? ...Compare and contrast artwork; analyze sketches?Students will be able to:
- Students will be able to examine their inner selfs and make a self portrait out of these inner qualities they observe about themselves. Students will be able to learn how to manipulate different materials to build this self portrait.
- Students will acquire a basic understanding of what they like and value as individuals, and have the opportunity to express these personal emotions and feelings.
- Students will also acquire a new set of techniques through the experimentation of working with new and different materials in new ways to create their self portrait.
- The main art knowledge will be related to manipulating a 3D sculpture, and additive skills. They will be able to use these skills in the future when they are creating both 2D and 3D portraits. They will be in a group setting, which will help them look around and give and receive input, which can help the art process.
- Students will observe the styrofoam head which will help them see the proportion of the head and face, and they can use it as a blank canvas to think about how each part of the head correlates to their own physical bodies and emotions they feel inside.
- Students will take a three-dimensional form, and problem-solve how to add various materials to that form. They will use step-by-step procedures to build these inner self portraits that more so reflect what the students are feeling inside, rather then how they look on the outside . They will also look at items and materials that don’t initially look like facial features and accessories, and be able to imagine how to apply them in a way that makes sense for the project that expresses their inner feelings of themselves. Ultimately students will think of new ways to use crafting materials by experimenting with them and observing the in class demo that goes over various techniques that can be used with these materials to create their inner self portraits.
Student Reflective Activity: Through what authentic performance task(s) will students demonstrate the desired understandings? How will students reflect upon and self-assess their learning?
- Students will be a part of this important conversation: How the artist creates artwork about themselves, as well as their examining their emotions and values as individuals.
Assessment Instrument (s): By what criteria will “performances of understanding” be judged?
- Students will be able to acknowledge that the head is a representation of themselves and list some of the reasons that they added certain items to the piece. Students will also be asked questions like: why did you decide to paint your person that color? why did you do the hair the way you did? why did you include the certain aspects you did? By asking students these questions we as teachers will be able to know if they are understanding the outcomes for this lesson. For the one or two students that have difficulty expressing their reasons verbally we will ask them yes or no questions which are much easier for them to be able to communicate with us, in that way we as teachers know that everyone in the class is understanding the general understandings in this lesson. Some of these yes or no questions would look like: is blue your favorite color? Do you see yourself with this color hair? Do you like the yarn as hair? Do you like the pipe cleaners as hair? Do you want to look at the materials to see which ones you like the most?
Pre-assessment: How will you help the students know where the unit is going and what is expected? Help the teacher know where the students are coming from (prior knowledge, interests)?
- Based off of the first lesson with this group of students, most of them have the abilities to pick out their materials and communicate why they picked out those certain materials. We will have one table of materials we will pass out and then another table in which students can come and grab various materials that they like.
- We as teachers will help students know where the lesson is going by asking them motivating and ideation questions to help them generate ideas for this lesson. By asking these questions we as teachers can know if they are gaining a general understanding of the key ideas for this lesson.
- We will use the initial moments of class, when we introduce ourselves, to prompt students to think about their identity. The instructors will explain some things that identify us, and how we might express those things. We will use this time to help get the students thinking about what they might say, so they don’t get their styrofoam head and have a creative block.
Motivation: How will you hook all students and hold their interest?
- We will hook the students' interest by asking them motivating and personal questions about their personal interests and hobbies. Talking to the students about how they view themselves and what they like as individuals is another huge motivator in this project because it is a three-dimensional self-portrait. We will notice students' work, and encourage them to keep developing their ideas that they have started.
Ideation: How will you equip students, help them experience the key ideas, and explore the issues to generate ideas for their artwork?
- We will help equip students for understanding the general understanding and key idea of identity by asking them motivating questions to help guide them towards their own preferences as individuals.
- We will also give them an in class demo on how to express these inner thoughts and how to use new and different materials and techniques to create these inner self portraits.
- Some of these main ideation questions we will be asking students to help them explore and generate ideas for their artwork are: what is your favorite color? what skin color would you have if you could pick? how would your hair look if you could pick, what color would it be? what kind of eyes would you have if you could pick, what about ears too?
Procedures: How is the lesson organized to maximize initial and sustained engagement as well as effective learning? Provide opportunities to rethink and revise their understandings and work? Allow students to evaluate their work and its implications? Include literacy and numeracy?
This lesson is designed to maximize the students' engagement by looking at their own personal interests and using craft to express how they are feeling and how they view themselves. Students will be able to also evaluate and discuss the artworks of themselves and others in a gallery walk where the students are free to view everyone's work after completing the lesson (if they want).
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First, we will re-introduce ourselves to the class as a whole and then describe project, big ideas, and overall guidelines. We will also show the demos each of us made while explaining the lesson to the students.
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After showing the demos and explaining the lesson to the students we will then show them all the different materials they will be able to use on their 3-D self-portraits.
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After showing the few pre made teacher examples of the project the leading teacher will give the entire class a demo on how to use different techniques on how to apply these different new found materials to the mannequin heads. In this demo the leading teacher will start to ask prompting questions to the class as a whole like what kind of ears would you have if you could pick? and what type of skin color would you have if you could pick?
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Then the students will be able to ask questions about the project and will start to work on their 3-D styrofoam self-portraits.
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Student teachers will then walk around and help students out, and they will ask motivating questions to the students to help guide them through the process of looking at ones inner self so that they can generate ideas for the project.
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After the project is complete there will be a gallery walk in which all the students will walk around and observe everyone else's works and have the opportunity to discuss their work and others. This is also a great time for teachers to ask the students why they did what they did on their portraits.
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After the gallery walk, everyone will help clean up the classroom!
Materials, Resources, Safety: What is needed to complete the learning plan?
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Styrofoam head (1 per student)
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Pipe cleaners
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Paints (acrylic)
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Sequence
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Tissue paper
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Sparkles
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Yarn
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Glue
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Feathers
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Pom-Poms
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Paintbrushes
Accommodations/Differentiation: How is the lesson tailored (personalized) to the different needs, interests, and abilities of learners? ...Access (Resources and/or Process) and Expression (Products and/or Performance)?
- For learners who have trouble picking out materials there will be ready made "grab bags" so that they can pick from there table instead of getting up to look at the materials at the back table.
- For learners who have difficulties expressing their inner selfs teachers will ask them what materials and colors they are interested in and then will go and pick some of those specific materials out and ask them guiding questions to help walk them through the lesson and its understandings.
- For learners that might have more mobility and fine-motor challenges, there will be plenty of additive items to choose from that don’t take as much precise detail and focus.
Documentation
Teacher Examples:
Student Work:
In this teacher example above, you can see different painting techniques used in the 3d self-portrait that also shows different ways materials can be used, like using puff balls as eyeballs.
In this teacher example above, you can see how different materials can be used in different ways, like using pipe cleaners as whiskers.
In this teaching example above, you can also see how different materials can be used in different ways, like punching yarn into the head to create hair strands.
Demo
In the picture to the left, this student has just finished painting the skin tone of his mannequin head with blue paint and is now working on a new technique with pipe cleaners. He is pushing the pipe cleaners into the styrofoam head to create hair that sticks out straight.
In the picture, to the left this student is working on his self-portrait based on his favorite movie which is the conjuring. He wanted to express how much he loved this movie by basing his self-portrait off of it and had a lot of help doing so from the lead teacher, Sophie. I think it's really cool he went a different route in comparison to everyone else and based his portrait off of his favorite movie.
In the picture to the left, you can see that these students are finishing up their paintings on the heads and are starting to apply different materials to the heads like using foam balls for the eyes. They are all fully engaged in this project because so much can be done with the individual self-portraits.
In the picture to the left you can see that one student is applying colored poof balls to his head, which is comparable to the work he did in the first project because he uses many of the same colors. The student working on the yellow head is starting a new technique that involves pushing yarn into the head with a pick to create strands of hair, similar to how doll hair strands are made.
