Yet another pet peeve - "can I have your lesson plan?"

For several years, I have willingly and openly used this blog to share projects I've done with my students, including instructions.  And I will continue to do so.  But instructions are not the same thing as lesson plans!

Often, particularly in various Facebook groups, someone will post images of a really cool project they've done.  It is not unexpected that people will get excited and want to know how it was done.  But more often than not, the request is "can you share the lesson plan?"

So today's post is a little reminder about what is and what is NOT a lesson plan.  "How-to" instructions  and lists of materials are NOT lesson plans.  A lesson plan will usually outline objectives, using whatever jargon is appropriate.  It might be that your objectives are written as Essential Questions and Student Outcomes, or Big Ideas, or SWK (student will know) statements, etc.  It might include Anticipatory Sets, Guided Practice, and so on.  You may need to include the Standards being addressed in the lesson.  There are many formats for writing lesson plans; a lot may depend on your education and training, the philosophy of the school district where you teach, and so on.

So, when you see a post of an interesting project by me, or by someone else, and you are intrigued and would like to try it out, think about what you are asking for.  I will gladly give you my instructions, a "how-to", but I will NOT give you my lesson plan, because your lesson plan should be unique to your situation.  Plus, if I give you my lesson plan, I'll feel like I'm doing your job for you.  And I don't want to. 

For example: I recently posted tooling foil samples.  Many people asked me for my lesson plan.  I gladly gave instructions, via some videos, some photos and text, and even a Google doc.  But none of those things were lesson plans.  What might my lesson plan have been?  My lesson objectives are individual to me and my unique needs, according to my teaching philosophy, my schedule, my student body makeup, and so on.  Perhaps my objective is for my students to learn to use tooling foil with appropriate tools to achieve deep relief.  Perhaps there's an expectation for my students to learn the vocabulary of working with tooling foil.  Perhaps the objective is to use the medium of tooling foil to create masks that share various characteristics used in African masks, like symmetry, use of geometric shapes, exaggeration, and decorative pattern.  Perhaps the objective is to discover how tooling foil can be used in a collage, whether as an animal, a robot, or whatever.  Perhaps the objective is to use the foil to explore the tooled metal folk art of various cultures from around the world.  Do you get my point?

And maybe there will be, in your situation, a written companion piece to the art-making project.  Perhaps your lesson plan will include how an objective about completing the piece for display.   Maybe there will be a critique element to your lesson plan.

Lots of times, I see projects that seem to exist for the fun of the project, and nothing more.  In my current business teaching after school art to kids who simply want more art-making time, this is absolutely OK.  If anyone were to ask for my objective, it would simply be for my students to explore various materials, and have a positive art-making experience.  But that might not be enough in your school.

 By the way, if you want some instructions for any of the projects pictured in this post, please feel free to ask.  Just don't ask for my lesson plan!

A Tale of Two Workshops: Tooling Foil and Bead Weaving

I had the pleasure of teaching 2 studio workshops at the recent NAEA convention.  The first was called Wampum-Inspired Bead Weaving for Modern Times, and the second was Oh What a Relief - Fabulous Tooling Foil! The pic above is a piece made by a participant during the tooling foil workshop.  Nice, huh?  This is me, below, by the way.   I probably should update my profile pic on this blog one of these days.... 

Anyhow, for the most part, I think both workshops were pretty successful.  I'm not going to go into full "how-to" details about the projects here, because I will direct you to them elsewhere on the blog, in previous posts and such, because both are projects I've posted about several times.  Instead, I want to tell you about some stuff that happened in each workshop, one good, one not-so-good.

In the bead weaving workshop, I spoke briefly about the need to be sensitive about cultural appropriation.  I made the point that these are not "wampum belts", but instead are a modern bead weaving INSPIRED by the wampum bead weaving of the Eastern Woodland tribes of Native Americans.

A woman in the class spoke up and said she and her companion (both pictured below) were Eskimos, attending the convention from Alaska.  Pictured on the left, Stacey told me she lives in Shaktoolik and grew up in Shishmaref, and is a member of the Inupiaq tribe. (I just looked up both of these locations on my map app, and wow, these are remote locations!)  She asked if she could use her family design (I hope I'm using the correct terminology here) for her weaving design, and I thought it was a great idea.  You can see, above, her graph planning it out, and her completed project. She used a red string for her weaving, which she said denotes strength.   The woman pictured on the right is DeAnn, and is the Alaska Art Teacher of the Year! The pattern in her weaving is not symbolic.  I was tickled to meet them both, and loved their enthusiasm.  I wish I'd had more time to chat, because Stacey was showing me pics (on her laptop), but unfortunately there were 18 other participants to attend to, and the 1 hour and 50 minutes just flew by!  Later in this post, you'll see some other pics of participants in this workshop, and their creations.

You can find my handout with instructions at THIS LINK.  The planning graph for making these weavings can be found HERE.  Please be respectful about giving credit as appropriate when using my materials.

 As a presenter, I was initially more confident about the tooling foil workshop, because I'd twice previously taught this at my state convention here in NY.  But still, it is, however, a challenging project to learn about and bring to completion in less than two hours.  But many participants did, and were successful.  I love seeing smiles!

For the workshop handout, go to THIS LINK.   For videos on the process, you'll find them in the post LINKED HERE.  Again, please be respectful about my ownership of these documents and videos. 

I had many examples, and offered many suggestions, based on what works best in the material.  So I was not surprised to see the robot (above), and the masks (below), because they are themes well-suited to the medium.  I'd love to see how the unfinished ones turn out!

This piece pictured below really intrigues me, as a study in texture and repetitive pattern. I think when complete, it will be gorgeous. The black ink that is added to 'antique' the piece will really highlight the detail of all the unique textures.  Really lovely!

But I had one thing happen during the workshop that caught me off-guard.  As I said, I offered many ideas, both in visual samples I that I brought, and in images and text included in the handout.  But three people in the workshop, rather than using my ideas and suggestions as a resource to inspire them, instead chose to trace one of my pieces while I was helping people elsewhere in the room.  Nobody asked permission; if they had, I would have responded that they did NOT have permission to trace my work, but were welcome to use the theme of the piece and create their own versions.  If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you probably know that I'm generally opposed to the use of templates and tracers, except for simple geometric shapes (circles...).  So I was certainly surprised to see my own original creations used as templates. In the interest of keeping the atmosphere of the workshop positive, I let it go and didn't say anything at the time.  But I'm sharing it here, to remind you all that copying without permission is NOT OK. 

Here's my friend Emily with me, showing her work in progress in the bead weaving workshop, and also a couple of my samples.

And some more pics from the workshop!

I love how wonderfully colorful this woman below is!

Lots of smiles!

If you want to see student examples from both the bead weaving and tooling foil projects, there's lots and lots on the blog.  Make sure you are viewing the web view of the blog (using your browser - Safari or whatever).  Then you'll be able to see a cloud of 'labels' (tags) at the bottom of the page.  You can search the cloud for words like "tooling foil" or "wampum weaving" and it will bring you to a bunch of older posts on the topic. Another alternative, also on the web view, is to use the "Search this blog" tool on the right side of the blog.  Type in whatever you'd like, and it will help you find it!

 Please let me know if you have any questions on either workshop/process that aren't answered in my handouts or in prior blog posts.  Thanks for visiting, and remember to be respectful of the work of others! 

Color relationships and a fun optical illusion

Open up the photo above, and step WAY back and look at it.  Squinting a little will help.  How many colors are there?  No doubt you see turquoise, and red, and probably a gold-yellow and a paler yellow.  Guess what!  The two yellows are actually the identical color!  It is an illusion! None of the pieces pictured in the photo below has any more than three colors in it, even though you probably see at least four. 

I posted about this intriguing project way back in 2011, but it's a post that hasn't had a lot of views, and it's a really interesting lesson, so I thought I'd share it with you again.  This project is designed to show the effect that one color  has on another.

The materials are simple:  each student will need three sheets of  12"x18" construction paper - two dark colors and one light color.  They will also need a ruler, a pencil, a scissors, and glue.  That's it!

Watching students decide which colors are light and which ones are dark is actually pretty interesting.  I guided decisions if I didn't think their choices would work, but sometimes we were surprised at the outcome.  I recommend that the two dark colors be very different from each other - perhaps one warmer and one cooler color.  And as long as the two dark choices are darker than the light color, the illusion should work.  And if someone really wants to use white for their light, or black for a dark, don't discourage them.  You'll never know the result until you actually see it!  I had a huge selection of colors to choose from, not just the bright Tru-Rays, but the paler color pastels from cheaper brands.  (If you only have the 'good stuff', ask an elementary teacher to trade a few sheets for some pale blues, yellows, or pinks perhaps.)

Then, the papers are labeled in a corner - one dark color is labeled 'A', and one is labeled 'B'.  The light color is labeled 'C'.  I gave each student a paper clip to hold the papers together at the end of ar class, so they only need to write their name one one sheet of paper (the C paper).

Also on the C paper, students copy the following color pattern off the board.  Write it on a corner, near an edge, so it doesn't take up too much space on the paper.  Here's the pattern:
A-B-A-B-A-B-C,
B-A-B-A-B-A-C,
A-B-A-B-A-B-C,
B-A... until you run out of paper.  

A simple shape, no larger than a quarter, is cut out of the A paper and glued (we used good glue sticks) on the B paper, starting near a corner but not right on the edge.  Each time a new piece is cut and glued onto the next layer, have them cross the letter of what was cut off the written pattern.  Following the pattern is essential for the illusion to work. 

Use the ruler to find an 1/8", and draw a shape around the original shape, larger by 1/8".  Cut out the shape, glue it back onto the A paper, and cross it off the pattern.  Repeat the process. Over and over again, measuring, cutting, gluing, crossing off, measuring, cutting, gluing, using the A paper, the B paper, and occasionally the C paper as per the pattern.  Following the pattern is essential, as one time the C paper will be between two layers of color A, and the next time it will be between two layers of color B, and so on. 

The most important thing to watch is that the kids do NOT skip all over the paper cutting and gluing, or they will run out of paper too soon.  Start at a corner, and try to snug it in nice and close, each time you glue it down to cut again.  Remember, you only need a border of 1/8".  Very rarely, if a student does not pay attention to this instruction, you may need to give them an additional piece of paper in order to finish the project.  Or, sometimes, if they have a couple of parts of a paper that are too small, you can have them overlap and glue them together to create a larger piece. 

 Once they are done, have kids hold them up at a distance from other students, and then have students taking turns guessing what colors were used.  You'll be amazed.  Kids will guess as many as 7 or 8 colors on one illusion.  You can't see the full effect here on the blog; you have to try it!  The colors chosen will give halos of colors to the others, and the kids will absolutely not be able the guess the only three colors that were used.  It's really pretty amazing.

By the way, the original lesson for this was not my idea.  I found it right here, in the April 2003 issue of School Arts Magazine!

One last thing - follow-up.  Ask the kids how can they think they can use what they learn in their daily lives?   Perhaps in clothing choices?  In colors they pick to decorate their rooms?  I have a purplish carpet in my living room (it is actually subtle blue and red fibers, but visually, it is a dull purple).  Years ago, when we had a royal blue rug, the walls were painted a buttery yellow.  When we replaced the carpet, and I could not find a tweedy blue like I wanted, we ended up with the purplish rug instead.  As a result, because it is next to the yellow walls it looks gray!  I can't believe I didn't think about how that would happen when we picked the carpet!  (Of course the good side is that you cannot see the cat hair... or maybe that's the bad side?)

Anyhow, try one of these illusions yourself, and you'll want to do it with your students!  I did it with 5th graders.  You can try younger, if you think the kids could manage the pattern and the measuring, but be warned - if they make the borders much larger than 1/8", the illusion will not be as effective.  So I'd do this with students who can carefully measure and follow the pattern.  Have fun!