Ninth graders read the play, "A Raisin in the Sun," and participate in a class discussion about "identity." They discuss racial identity and examine and interpret how community influences a personal identity. They demonstrate how...

Sixth graders identify and use the concepts of shading, outline, and watercolor wash. They design a unique sequential still life painting with pencils and watercolors.

Students take a field trip to a Botanical Gardens. They observe plants and the seasonal changes they go through and create their own scroll painting.

High schoolers compare and contrast translations of Greek literature. In this dramatic literature lesson, students read and perform passages from four different translations of Euripides's Hecuba. High schoolers discuss how the...

Pupils watch segments of a video to explore portraits. They create a self portrait using mixed-media.

Students listen to Caribbean folk music and discuss maracas and their role in music. They construct and design pairs of maracas using paper mache, then perform a Puerto Rican folk song using their maracas.

Students make story telling plates or tiles based on David Stabely's technique. They are shown slides of original work contemporary artists who are using nontraditional approaches to the clay surface. Students are shown work that David...

Students investigate zen. In this design instructional activity, students use ideas from zen to create a study area. Students understand how different environments affect work habits. Students research how students in other countries...

Students demonstrate the proper steps in sequence to the Native American Friendship Dance.

Learners create various design drawings using parallel, oblique, and divergent lines and the medium of black paper and colored gel pens.

Learners identify the concerns of people caught in desperate times during the Great Depression. They make connections between The Grapes of Wrath and historical images from the Great Depression. Students make connections between the...

Students select books to read that include disease as a plot or theme component. They fill out a matrix for the disease in their novel and write a five-paragraph paper about their book. Students use the rest of the week's classes to...

Students create their own personalized amulet necklaces after viewing images of artifacts from different cultures.

Young scholars analyze the conventions used in Noh plays and write an introduction to a Noh play of their own. In this Noh play lesson, students identify the conventions of the Noh form and analyze the realizations the main character...

Students examine a variety of gold weights used by the Asante in West Africa. In groups, they discuss the purpose of the gold weights and practice saying proverbs associated with different pieces of art. To end the lesson, they...

Students compose haiku poems and recognize how cultures value nature and natural forces through the study of Japanese poetry. This instructional activity includes a bibliography of resources.

Third graders view examples of previous miniature stain glass designs. After making their own frame out of craft sticks, they create their own design using colored paper. They outline each piece with a black marker and share them with...

Visual arts lesson emphasizing pattern and design in individual student mosaics made with paper and reviewing line, shape, space, and color. The individual mosaics will be used to create a border for a group mosaic in another lesson.

Students examine a variety of portraits and distinguish them from other art forms such as landscapes and still lifes. They investigate why artists make portraits and why patrons wish to have portraits made.

Students analyze Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise and the competition for their design in which Brunelleschi's design was refused. The lesson concludes with students creating new doors for the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

Sixth graders are introduced to the technique of Arashi Shibori and its history. In groups, they discover how to perform this process and examine how to do hachimaki. To end the lesson, they make their own hachimaki to wear and share it...

Learners research women's roles in agriculture's history and how they have changed. They create a paper "crazy quilt" using a variety of colors and pattersn to help them explain the role of quilts in women's history.

Students conduct research on a chosen African-American artist. They research how the artist's community influenced his art, analyze how themes are conveyed through the art, and create a collage depicting the artist's themes.

Young scholars use non-fired clay and posterboards to create and display examples of Haniwa and kofun in this exciting lesson for the Social Studies, Humanities, Asian Studies, or Art classroom.