Christine A. Elmore
I am a first-grade teacher at Ross/Woodward Classical Studies Magnet School. The self-contained class of students to whom I will be teaching this unit are a heterogeneous group with varying abilities within the 5-to-7-year-old age range and are primarily of African-American and Hispanic-American descent. Although I have designed this unit with them in mind, I am confident that it could easily be adapted for use by teachers in other primary and intermediate grades as well.
My curriculum unit will be interdisciplinary in scope, including reading, writing, history, art and drama. My students will be asked to work in both small- and large-group settings on the activities included in this unit. The unit lessons will be implemented twice a week for a period of 40-60 minutes over a 3-month period. I plan to divide my presentation of the material into four sections:
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Section One The Pop Art Movement
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Section Two Andy Warhol, Prince of Pop
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Section Three The Glorious World of Lines and Colors
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Section Four Imitating Warhol's Style
In Section One my students will learn about the Pop Art Movement in which Andy Warhol was a leading figure. We will look at art created by artists in this movement as well as in the one that preceded it, Abstract Expressionism, and to which Pop Art was a reaction. In Section Two my students will learn about the life of Andy Warhol through my reading of two children's books as well as through a Readers Theater play about his life which I have composed. One age-appropriate biography that I will use with my first-graders is Mike Venezia's Andy Warhol. I also plan to read a very delightful picture book to them entitled Uncle Andy's. This book gives an amusing and true account of a trip that James Warhola and his family took to the New York home of his uncle, Andy Warhol. In Section Three, I will be leading my young learners through an exploration of both line and color usage, exploring such areas as the various types of lines used to create designs as well as movement, the colors found on the color wheel and how certain colors make you feel (i.e., warm and cool colors). In Section Four my students will try their hand at creating a number of artworks, imitating some of Andy Warhol's techniques.