Lesson One: Using One of Jacob Lawrence's Techniques
This lesson will be undertaken after pupils are familiar with many of Jacob Lawrence's creations. The will have viewed and discussed at least two of his series paintings, one of which will be The Migration. They will also be familiar with the units theme of examining ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Subject Matter Areas:
research, language arts, art, and social development
Vocabulary Development:
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mural, extraordinary, sketch, hardboard, recollections
Objectives:
Students will become familiar with the basic techniques Jacob Lawrence used in creating a series of paintings.
Students will realize the importance of individual accomplishment within their own family, things as ordinary as preparing for a picnic or going to work each day.
Students will gather information on some area of accomplishment within their family.
Students will write a narrative based on the information their research yields.
Students will create an individual visual series of paintings depicting the subject of their research.
Students will employ some of Jacob Lawrence's techniques as they create their paintings.
Students will present their final product (written piece and art work) through display and oral presentation.
Procedure:
While viewing and discussing many paintings by Jacob Lawrence, students will become familiar with Lawrence's general approach to the creation of his final product.
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* Initially his topic is well researched.
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* Notes are expanded into a story which will accompany the art work.
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* Preliminary sketches are made.
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* The final picture is sketched in pencil on white paper or hardboard.
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* Water-based paint is used to create colors.
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* He uses one color at a time. If he is doing a series, he paints the first color on each board of the series, doing the same with each other color.
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* Some places are left white.
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* Later, some changes will be made and colors may be painted over others before the final picture has been created.
Throughout, emphasis will be placed upon students being able to identify Lawrence's ability to depict the dignity of ordinary people in his paintings. This will flow into a discussion of the seemingly ordinary things which seemingly ordinary people we know do in their daily lives each day, things such as working, caring for others, participating in church and community, supporting the school, and taking care of one's self. Students will be asked to decide upon a topic which fits one or more members of his or her family and gather some written detail on what it takes to perform that activity. The written notes from those discussions will then be expanded into a brief essay for which the student will sketch a related drawing. The student will then be given appropriate paper or hardboard. (The amount and type will depend on the individual situation and available funds.) Students will then follow the general approach used by Jacob Lawrence in creating a series of paintings.
When the series of drawings has been completed, along with the written narrative which will accompany each painting, the resulting creations will be shared with the rest of the class, other classrooms, and parents. They will be displayed and a more formal showing held for parents, principal, and other relevant adults. Students will have opportunity to practice their presentations before speaking in front of an audience outside the realm of their own classroom.
Lesson Two: Using Unit content to Develop Degrees of Reading Power
Subject Matter Areas:
reading and social studies
Vocabulary
context clues, mob, (Other words will vary with each lesson developed.)
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Objectives:
Students will develop skill ar using various context clues to identify unknown words and, as a result, develop greater reading power.
Students will reinforce their understanding of information related to some aspect of the unit's content.
Procedure:
The goal of developing independent readers is a primary objective of the elementary school. One means of achieving this goal is through an approach which teaches pupils to look for various clues within the context of the material being read in order to recognize and understand unfamiliar words which the student may encounter. Besides teaching these techniques for unlocking unfamiliar words, this approach trains students to read more carefully, resulting in an overall improvement in comprehension. All New Haven elementary teachers are familiar with this program designed to increase pupils' "degrees of reading power."
There are a variety of materials available to use while working with student in such a program. Basically, these materials provide paragraphs where key words have been omitted. Students are asked to find the appropriate missing word from among four choices, all of which could "fit" within the sentence's structure, but only one makes sense within the context of the larger piece. Students learn to explore the context before and after the missing word in order to find clues which will help in identifying the missing word. The important skills developed here are procedures used to explore the content for clues and developing the ability to recognize these clues.
In this lesson plan, I provide an example of how material related to the unit's content will be used to create original worksheets which will help to develop the reading skills discussed above. This sheet and others I will create will have the advantage of serving as reading instruction material as well as being a source or a review of information related to the unit. Its primary function, however, will be to improve the student's reading ability. Initially, the type of lesson which follows will focus on the context that leads one to the appropriate missing word. Discussion relative to content will follow. It is best to use material with information that pupils have not yet encountered, since this will eliminate the use of previous knowledge of topic as the only means of identifying the word. If, however, this happens to be the case, the experience of finding the context clues which unlock the missing word is still of considerable value. The completed worksheets will be saved in folder for future reference related to this unit's content.
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Here is a brief sample related to the experiences of Ruby Bridges.
A Brave Little Girl
Read each of these paragraphs about Ruby Bridges. Where there is a missing word, select the most appropriate word from those listed after the blank. Be ready to identify the clues which led to your selection. You may underline those words which helped you make your choice.
Later that year, two white boys _______________ (a. helped b. joined c. left d. lost) Ruby at the Frantz Elementary School. Their parents were tired of seeing the boys get into mischief around the house when they could have been in school and ________________. (a. playing b. eating c. learning d. sitting). They were worried about their academics. When this happened the mob became very __________
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(a. happy b. quiet c. lost d. angry). They even yelled at the white boys.
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By the time Ruby was in the second grade, the ___________ (a. mobs b. students d. soldiers) had given up their struggle to scare Ruby. She eventually graduated from Frantz school and then went on to graduate from ____________________. (a. first grade b. home c. high school d. elementary school)
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Lesson Three: Gathering Information to Graph Family Movement
Subject Matter Areas:
math, social studies, social development
Vocabulary:
migrate, relocate, survey, compile, data, motivation
Objectives:
Students will be aware of African American migration from the South.
Students will gather information on birthplace of their parents/guardians and the parents/guardians of other students whom they will survey.
Students will compile data in order to create a bar graph illustrating the family movement of students who they surveyed.
Students will develop the ability to read graphs and draw conclusions from the material read.
Procedure:
Using both art work and written material, pupils will have developed an understanding of African American migration from the South to northern areas of the United States. Discussion will then move towards examining the possibility of more recent movement, beginning with the students themselves. A classroom graph shows whether a change of residence has occurred between the time of birth and the present. There will be three categories: Moved to another city, moved to another state, and moved to a different country. Intermediate changes will not be included.
Next, the survey will move toward examining the movement of their parents since birth and the present. The survey will also expand to include other students from classrooms where the teacher is willing to have student gather the information from their parents/guardians. The same type of graph will be compiled based upon the information gathered. A more detailed graph will then be constructed showing the adult's place of birth. Information illustrated on these graphs will be discussed and relevant conclusions drawn and discussed. Graphs and resulting conclusions will be shared with the students in cooperating classrooms. They will also be displayed on hall and classroom bulletin boards.
Students within my classroom will then interview their parents about possible movement and the reasons why residency was made. This information could also include previous movement made grandparents, great grandparents, and possibly beyond. Pupils will then create a written narrative chronicling the movement of their family. Students whose family has made no change will discuss changes in the city and neighborhood which parents/guardians have noted. These will be shared among classmates. A means of sharing results with parents/guardians will developed by the class.
