Time: 6-8 weeks
Educating the sense of sight is an important part of the visual art curriculum. Just as teachers provide experiences to empower students through written and spoken language, they also provide students with experiences to help them interpret visual information and express themselves using the language of visual art. Students should be encouraged to observe details in their surroundings, to explore the relationships between objects and their environment, and to search for meaning in visual images. This unit focuses on developing the students' perceptual abilities and awareness of the environment.
Sample Topic: "Trees"
Teacher Note:
Almost any topic having to do with the natural environment could be substituted for Trees. The idea is to look, study, and learn about specific objects in the environment. In this way, students become aware of visual detail.
Unit 1 has been developed as the sample unit for Grade 1 (available on CD-ROM and Saskatchewan Learning website).
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
Teacher Note:
The following Starter List of Activities is intended to aid the teacher in planning units. The activities are described very briefly and are just a sample of the many activities that can be developed to explore the theme or topic. The activities are presented as introductory, main, and, concluding activities to facilitate planning.
1. Introductory Activities
The natural environment provides a wealth of visual information for students to explore. Encourage students to continuously add to their repertoire of images, lines, colours, textures, shapes, forms, and patterns by observing and noting the natural environment's ever-changing variety.
Ask the students, “What does a tree look like?” Record their words and/or ideas.
View a tree from far away. What do you see? Move close up. What do you see? Encourage students to notice lines, colours, and textures.
Encourage students to learn about trees and how they grow, and how they eat.
Collect parts of trees. Set up displays and learning centres.
2. Main Activities
Make a large class poster of a tree and its parts (e.g., collage, paint, and found objects). Ask the students, “What can you do with a tree?” Answers may include: climb it, make a swing, make a tree house, decorate it at Christmas, make a totem pole, and a variety of other suggestions. Students can make a tree in the classroom with old branches, paper, cloth, and a variety of other materials. Have students build their suggestions into the tree (e.g., bird nest, swing).
(Note that totems are sacred to the Haida people and it would not, therefore, be culturally appropriate for students to make their own.)
Pick the nearest holiday (or make up one) and decorate the tree accordingly.
3. Concluding Activities
Display and discuss projects. Refer back to introductory activities – words students listed. Do they want to add to the list now that they have studied trees?
Hold a “tree appreciation” day. Read stories and poems about trees.
Sample Topic: "Communicating With Signs"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
People use visual images to communicate ideas and convey meaning. Help develop students awareness of visual information by interpreting and creating signs and symbols.
Look at traffic lights. Look at street signs. Look at warning labels on products. How do the symbols on the signs communicate ideas?
What would happen if all of a sudden stop signs were green? Make up a story about a land where all the traffic and street signs are mixed up.
Play a movement game where students move/stop to green and red signs.
2. Main Activities
Have students decide on symbols for skipping, running, hopping, freezing, and a variety of other movements. Have them make the signs. Play a movement game using the signs. (Adapt, for example, the game known as “Red Light Green Light”.)
Have students role play giving information without speaking. Give them a situation; for example, they are in an airport. Visit an airport. Study airports. Tell students they have jobs at the airport to give directions using signs. What kinds of signs will be needed?
Create an imaginary situation for another such project; for example, the students are tour guides on an imaginary planet.
3. Concluding Activities
Tour the school looking for signs and symbols.
List all the signs students can think of in their communities. Make a display.