Academy of American Poets
Teach This Poem: "Violin" by Nikki Wallschlaeger
Nikki Wallschlaeger's Violin is the featured poem in a lesson that uses music and multiple readings to delve deep into its analysis. After a writing warm-up, learners watch and listen to a video that showcases Regina Carter Quintet's...
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Picasso's Three Musicians
This lesson has students read or be read a book about Picasso and the technique of Cubism. They are shown a sample of what they are doing to be doing and discuss the drawing process. Using a photo of a musical instrument, they sketch it...
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Chinese Opera
Young scholars study Chinese opera by sketching pictures of Chinese opera characters and musical instruments. They watch the film A Night at the Peking Opera, noting the elaborate costuming, the sparse staging, and the highly developed...
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Lesson: A Garden Party of My Own
Kids look at a beautiful work of art to practice grammar, make connections from life to art, and sketching. They identify all the parts of grammar they see in the image, discuss what they see and do on a picnic, and then draw an imaged...
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Meet Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov!
Students listen to music and review instruments of the orchestra. They explore musical terms, solo, texture and theme of the music and discuss other features of the music. Students research and discuss the life of Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov.
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GUITARS AS SCULPTURE
Students discuss guitars, pointing out different parts of the guitar, compare/contrast guitars from different times, imagine they are designers hired to build a new age guitar, create many preliminary sketches, choose one, and begin...
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Sketching Cylinders
Students create nets of cylinders. In this geometry lesson, students calculate the surface area of cylinders and other solids. They show their understanding of three-dimensional shapes by solving problems.
Novelinks
The Dark Is Rising: Guided Imagery
To launch a reading of The Dark is Rising, the second novel in Susan Cooper's award winning contemporary fantasy novel sequence for young adults, class members engage in a guided imagery exercise that asks them to visualize the setting...
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Clay Gargoyles and Grotesques
Grotesques or gargoyles are wonderful subjects for stories or art projects. Here is a simple "how to" for creating a lesson about sculpting clay gargoyles. Tip: Have learners research gargoyles throughout history.
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Personal Clay Box
Students search for and sort ideas for content in their artwork, explore African art, and create and assemble a lidded box-like form from slabs of clay half way between soft and leather hard.
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Rain Sticks
Artists of all ages construct a three-dimensional form and fill it with rice to make gentle, percussive sounds. They discover that Native South American tribesmen would harvest dead branches from cactus plants, fill them with small...
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Arranging Patriotic Songs for Chorus
High schoolers examine the melody of a patriotic song by playing it on the piano and having them sing it back to the teacher and are assigned a specific patriotic song to arrange for voices. They create their own four-part choral...
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Multimedia Stained Glass Window Design
Students construct and display a stained glass gothic window box made from cardboard boxes, color tissue or colored plastic sheets of mylar, and glue.
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Art and Sole
First graders discuss how culture can be transmitted from generation to generation. In groups, they create a bust of themselves after viewing various artists artwork. They also develop their own dance routine and perform it in front of...