Lesson Plans

    Here are some lesson plans for student teachers to use. They are welcome to adapt them to their specific class situation.

    Lesson 1

    Portrait making

    Let children select a theme of their choice such as The Universe and I, or My Room or My favorite sport where they show themselves in an environment.

    Using a graphics program such as Photoshop or Corel Draw and have them create a landscape connected to that theme and ask them to place themselves in that landscape.

    The concept is to see how children place themselves in familiar surroundings. Encourage them to scan images if they want to and let them have prints of their work which can be added to their portfolios.

    Lesson 2

    Painting a landscape

    Let children take two portraits of anyone (they could be portraits done by long dead artists) and have them scan them.

    Using Photoshop, have them cut parts of each portrait and put them together such that a new portrait is created.

    Ask them why they chose the two initial portraits and what they think about the new one. Take prints and add to their portfolios.

    Lesson 3

    Research Project

    Have children browse through various museum and art related sites.

    Let them pick out an artifact or an artist's work of their choice. Ask them to find everything that they can, on the object or work selected.

    Ask them to present their findings in any way they like.

    Further, they could build a virtual gallery of their choice works by putting them all together in one place, on the web or any layout program, and giving a short introduction to them.

    Lesson 3

    Research Project

    Have children browse through various museum and art related sites.

    Let them pick out an artifact or an artist's work of their choice. Ask them to find everything that they can, on the object or work selected.

    Ask them to present their findings in any way they like.

    Further, they could build a virtual gallery of their choice works by putting them all together in one place, on the web or any layout program, and giving a short introduction to them.

    Lesson 4

    Design Project

    Let children design their own letter heads and business cards.

    Also let them do write ups on themselves and present them in the style of a resume. They can describe their accomplishments, likes and dislikes here.

    Lesson 5

    Bookmaking (This is a big project and should take several classes)

    Divide children into groups of two, three or four depending on class size and availability of resources.

    Ask each group to select a story of their choice- they could write a story themselves.

    Children to type the story in a word processing program such as Microsoft Word and lay the text out in PageMaker.

    They should further work on illustrations which they can draw and scan or draw directly on the computer.

    They should also design an appropriate cover for their books.

    Once ready, the pages should be printed out and nicely bound.

    Multiple prints should be taken so that each child who designed the book gets to keep a copy.

    Lesson 6

    Historical research project (This project may not be limited to the use of computer)

    Let children pick up an important event from History.

    Discuss individually what they think about the event and have them research for more information on the web.

    Ask them to depict the event in a medium of their choice, i.e., they could draw it on computer or they could make a sculpture or a collage.