- Before teaching Kindergarten Learning Support, I taught K-8th art at a charter school as a long term substitute for a few months following student teaching. I had to student teach four times at the end of undergraduate school in order to earn three certifications (and take seven tests). One of these certifications was in K-12th Art. During this time, one of the projects for 8th graders was a research project (PowerPoint) about a famous artist. I decided to revamp this lesson since my students are too young with not enough skills to do a social bookmarking lesson. I chose this lesson based on what I remembered from the lesson that I did with the 8th graders. I knew that this would be a great lesson to integrate more technology with since they were already researching on the iPads. The students, at that time, had an iPad cart that was shared between the specials teachers.
- The advantage of using technology for various parts of the lesson is that it will make students more engaged in the content since they are having to respond in various ways. Another advantage, specifically about Symbaloo, is that it will help the students to keep their resources all in one spot and it will be easy to access. I had much trouble with students plagiarizing and not citing their source since they forgot to copy and paste the webpage during research. I honestly copied and pasted each slide from all of the PowerPoints with suspicious wording into Google. I want them to use good digital citizenship by quoting who they got the information from.
- The disadvantages of using more technology in this lesson plan is that it may take more time so I added in 1-2 extra weeks just in case. Back then, I was very surprised at how long it took 8th graders to come up with a very short PowerPoint presentation and their lack of knowledge on PowerPoint. This disadvantage is that the other specials teachers may have needed access to the iPads if I kept using them for a longer time period. However, these days many schools have one-to-one technology now so I am anticipating having that for this lesson plan.
| Title | Social Bookmarking about Famous Artists 8th Grade Art |
| Time | 5-6 art classes (depending on presentation length) |
| Standards | Standard – 9.2.8.D: Analyze a work of art from its historical and cultural perspective. Standard – 9.2.8.A: Explain the historical, cultural and social context of an individual work in the arts. Standard – 9.3.8.A: Know and use the critical process of the examination of works in the arts and humanities. Compare and contrast Analyze Interpret Form and test hypotheses Evaluate/form judgments |
| Objectives | Students will create a presentation of choice (PowerPoint, Google Slides, Prezi, screencasting (to present their presentation if they art virtual and asynchronous), or otherwise pre-approved method) that investigates the historical context of an artist and analyzes the work of an artist. The student will be able to analyze the work of an artist using the critical process of examination and the perspective of the historical context of the time the artwork was created. |
| Introduction | Week 1: Students will be asked what the positives and negatives are about research projects. They will respond on a Pear Deck slide by typing or writing with a finger. Students will then be shown a series of statements one at a time and will drag their manipulative on Pear Deck to true or false. For example: It is not important to know the historical factors from the time period an artwork was created. It is helpful to know the cultural and social aspects of a society that the artist was living in. It is not beneficial to know biographical information about the artist. Anonymous responses will be discussed as a whole group and there will be a discussion about research in relation to the arts. Students will discuss methods of analyzing artwork from previous lessons for recall of knowledge using example pictures of the rest of the Pear Deck presentation. Students will be introduced to Symbaloo, a social bookmarking site, after the discussion. I will show students how to navigate through Symbaloo and the various options provided by the site. The main focus of instruction will be creating a webmix and adding titles to their webmix. Students will put tiles about the artist’s time period in general on the left and tiles about the artist and their work, specifically, on the right. |
| Lesson and Activity | Week 2: Students will shown Symbaloo again and asked to make an account. They will be given a list of artists that were discussed this school year as well as other famous artists that were not discussed. Any student wanting to research an artist not on the list will need pre-approval as some artists have used nudity in their artworks which should be avoided. Students will have some time to think, pair, share with a classmate about which artist they will be selecting before telling the teacher. Students will begin researching and adding tiles to their Symbaloo. The link to their Symbaloo will be posted to the class discussion forum by the end of the class so I know that they at least created an account. Week 3 & 4: Students will continue researching. They will begin to create their presentations during week 2. They must have 10 slides on their project plus title and resource pages. Their slides must include biographical information about the artist, information about the time period (historical, social, and cultural), at least three pictures of artwork, and their own analysis of the artwork based on their research). Students should be finishing up their projects. Students who are finished early can come up with an extra media to add into their project in order to get bonus points (such as making their own Pear Deck, survey, video, and etc.). Presentation and Conclusion: Week 5 & 6: Students will present their projects and post them into the discussion forum. Students will reflect on their project with an exit ticket using Pear Deck (two questions per week) and make a comment on two peer’s posts. Example: What do you think you did well with and how? Did you improve with analysis of work this school year, why or why not? Did knowing the historical information make it easier to analyze artwork, why or why not? What can you still improve with? |
| Resources | https://pdesas.org/standard/view/ www.symbaloo.com Pear Deck Slide Add-on for Google Slides and Microsoft Office PowerPoint Online |
What a fabulous lesson! This is an excellent use of Pear Deck and Symbaloo! Love it!
Thank you so much! I think Symbaloo would be a great visual for them! 🙂