Lesson Plans
Choose Your Own Adventure
This is a choose your own adventure class. 3 guided activity options are provided at the entrance of the classroom. The student will have the opportunity to choose from Wander, Muse, or Examine. Each activity has an activity level rating. They will engage their curiosity in a way that is meaningful to them in their current state of being. They will be prompted to choose a journey at the beginning of the class and will have 20 minutes to explore the assignment.
We are water protectors | SEL
How often do you think about the clean water that you have access to and use everyday? How often do you think about water being medicine and the key to all living things? Maybe sometimes, maybe never... Together we will uncover the importance of clean water and the impact of community activism to maintain access. We will meet in groups to discuss our findings, keep a journal about what we find in nature, and create our own protest posters to hang up in Boston on a special field trip. Together we can make a difference.
Community Spaces | CRSL
Students will choose a community space from their Artists walk. This could be a building that they identified on their artists walk or a creation of their own inspired by elements in their neighborhood. They will create an original linocut block and make several prints on their own handmade paper. After printing, students will select one of their favorite prints to be displayed in the showcase. These prints will be cut out and fashioned into a unique cityscape. The cityscape will be displayed in one of the showcases in the school hallway. The lesson will close with a celebration where students will act as docents for their families and community.
Art Brain Break
Today we will shift our focus to something fun and instantly gratifying to reward ourselves for the hard work and focus we have put into our artwork, our school work, and ourselves over the last few months. Like life, sometimes art is a slow and concentrated build up to our final product — Other times we make a mark and are immediately in awe of our transformation.
Anthotype & Cyanotype
Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a distinctive blue-colored image, while it’s cousin the Anthotype uses plant matter to create a similar sun powered print. In this lesson we will explore both processes, experimenting to find out which emulsion produces the best result. This lesson is infuses art and science in a magical way.
Personal Narrative Collage
For several centuries, collage has been the ultimate method of bringing together shapes, colors and materials to form complete works of art. The process of collage encourages the young artist to explore a whole new realm of creativity and coordination. It also helps the artist begin to learn the importance of positive and negative space as well as spatial organization with shapes.
Extraordinary Prints from Ordinary Objects
Create dynamic prints using ordinary materials. As artists, sometimes we use unexpected materials in our work. Some of these materials are things we have lying around our house or things we might save from a journey to the landfill. By exploring these materials with an artists eye — we may discover textures and compositions that we otherwise wouldn’t have come up with.
Larger than Life Contour Flowers
Have you ever drawn with a Experiment with scale and color in this contour drawing and acrylic paint exercise.
Suminagashi
Suminagashi is the ancient Japanese technique of decorating paper with inks. It is believed to be the oldest form of marbling, originating in China over 2,000 years ago and practiced in Japan by Shinto priests as early as the 12th century. Suminagashi, which means literally "ink-floating" involves doing just that.
Unit Plans
Time & Change
Developed for grades 9-12
Time is one of our most coveted "possessions" as a modern society. Humans have sought to understand the interwoven nature of time and change from the beginning of humankind. We always seek to make more of it and often struggle to embrace the flux between temporary and lasting impact. Through this theme students will explore and seek to better understand the dependence of change on the concept of time, the origins, & how we might learn/grow from past, present, and future perspectives. After all, the present future will become the past eventually — time and change are an inevitable force.
Saturday Studios
Ceramics | Grades 6-8
Now in its 92nd year, the Saturday Studios program at Massachusetts College of Art and Design serves a dual purpose: offering elementary through high school students an affordable opportunity to engage in the process of art making, and supporting the development of MassArt students as art educators.
Classes are taught by MassArt students majoring in Art Education and supervised by MassArt Art Education faculty. Courses in a variety of disciplines and media are available by grade level for Grades 3-12, allowing students to explore and strengthen their creativity and creative problem solving.
