Charity

Summary

Introducing the Big Idea, Charity, students learned about the Brazilian artist Christine Drummond.  Her abstract art is influenced by the long tradition and bright colors and patterns  of Carnival.  Students learned the history of Carnival and created a tessellation pattern similar to the patterns Christine Drummond uses in her Carnival series.   Christine Drummond donates to charities in Africa and in the US, students learned about local charities and brainstormed ideas how they could raise money.  They choose a charity they would like to donate to and created a persuasive brochure complete with illustrated cover design and a written persuasive paragraph.  Their tessellation drawings were made in to key chains, which they sold to raise money and learn the basics of cost and profit.

Project’s Big Idea: Charity

Essential Question:

Cultural References: Christine Drummond (visual artist); Lemonade for Sale, by Stuart J. Murphy and Tricia Tusa, (Mathstart, Level 3 book), History of Carnival

Objectives | Students will:

Language Arts:

• Choose a charity in their community to donate to and successfully write a persuasive paragraph describing why people should donate to that charity.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of their paragraph, by participating in a peer critique of their persuasive paragraph to improve their projects by acting on advice given through critique.

Art:

• Draw the cover for a persuasive brochure, planning the composition with image, headline text, and supporting text. 
• Participate in peer critique, focusing on the composition and understandability of their brochure cover. 
• Successfully discuss the elements of art, specifically pattern, color and shape as seen in Christine Drummond’s paintings, and compare and contrast their use to other examples of tessellations.
• Successfully create a 9” x 12” tessellation composition with pattern fills and use this to design fundraising key chains, as part of a class effort to raise money for their chosen charity.

Math:

• Investigate how area is measured and rearranged in the creation of a tessellating shape.
• Explore how to raise money for a charity using actual facts and numbers from their project, such as cost of materials and profit.
• Effectively apply their knowledge of cost and profit in raising money for charity in similar word problems and describe their experience as a word problem.

Overview:

Learning Segment 1: Students participated in an exercise to define the word abstract.  They related it to writing, math and art and considered, Why do people make abstract art?  Christine Drummond’s work was then introduced through a looking and talking activity with an image of the painting “Festa do Samba.” The discussion emphasized potential subject matter shown in the piece and how the elements of art used in it were combined to create a celebratory feeling. 

Learning Segment 2: After looking at Dummond’s collection of paintings inspired by Carnival, students learned about the history, origin, and meaning of Carnival, and viewed a brief National Geographic Kids video about Brazil and the famous Rio De Janeiro Carnival samba festival, which is the largest in the world. Students also viewed different types of artifacts, such as masks, and photographs of how Carnival is celebrated differently around the world in locations such as Venice, Italy, Poland, Spain, France, Puerto Rico and the United States.

Learning Segment 3: Students were introduced to the word charity through Drummond’s website, which describes how she donates to charity by selling her artwork to raise money.  Students discussed why people give to charities, how charities help our community, and identified local charities.  As a class, students chose charities and brainstormed ideas about how donations of time or money can help these organizations.  In groups of 3-4, students brainstormed and listed ideas of how to raise money or how they could give time to help a charity.

Learning Segment 4: Students reviewed information about the artist, discussed essential questions, and reviewed definitions for charity and donation. Students prepared to write persuasive text about a chosen charity by using a T-chart graphic organizer to describe an introduction, major points, and a conclusion.

Learning Segment 5: Students discussed what brochures are used for and were introduced to a tri fold brochure design. Many examples were shown and students analyzed the composition of the image, headings, sub-text as well visual qualities such as, overlapping and eye catching colors.  In their visual journals, students drew a cover for a brochure for the charity they picked, including an image, heading and sub text, and effective use of composition techniques identified in the examples.  After completing their first drawing, in pairs, students discussed and critiqued each others design. Once completed, critique pairs shared their plans for improvement with the class.  The students were given 20-25 minutes to redraw their compositions, and then volunteers showed and explained how they improved with their second design.

Learning Segment 6: In the art room, students reviewed Drummond’s abstract work and talked about pattern, line, shape, color and her inspiration, Carnival.  Recognizing Drummond’s paintings as examples of tessellations, students looked for other examples of tessellations within the room, like the floor, ceiling and brick wall. After viewing more examples of tessellations in artworks, students were then challenged to create their own tessellation piece. Given a 3” x 3” piece of card stock, students found perimeter and area, and then cut and reassembled the square to make their tessellation piece.  In future sessions, the students traced their tessellation piece to create a full composition. Students also designed pattern possibilities for their pieces, reflected, evaluated, and revised based on which would be the most practical and effective to include in their composition.

Learning Segment 7: In the classroom, students learned about profit and cost and viewed examples of how bar graphs are used through reading, Lemonade for Sale. Students worked through examples of figuring cost and profit, referring back to examples from their original brainstorming about raising money for and then using details related to the actual cost of the materials for their project and different scenarios for how they might sell their artwork (in keychain form) to raise money for the chosen charities. This segment concluded as students composed their own cost and profit word problem and worked through it to determine an answer.

Learning Segment 8: As a closing activity, several students read the persuasive text from their brochures in front to the class for each of the different charities that were picked.  Then, the students voted which charity would ultimately receive the money raised from the key chains.  This information was recorded as a graph, and as the classroom teacher picked the votes out of the hat she added them to the graph as a bar graph, the students recorded it in their visual journals.

Assessment:

Formative Assessment:

Peer critique of brochure cover.

Rubric for rough and final drafts of persuasive brochure text.  

One-on-one reinforcement with math word problems.

Summative Assessment

Criteria aligned to unit objectives and based on rating scale to assess culturally relevant art integrated lessons. 

Teachers: Classroom teachers Cynthia Vasquez and Christina Wade; Art teacher Laurie Navarro; Supporting teachers Ashley Dalton and Ryan Krippendorf