Unit 4 — Connecting
Description
Upon exposure to various artists, artistic movements, and diverse cultures, students make connections between their personal experiences and artwork and the content and context being taught. Students understand the role, development, and influence of the arts throughout history and across cultures. Students recognize that through art-making and media arts production, people make meaning by investigating and developing awareness of culture and experiences. Students learn how art helps us understand the lives of people from different times, places, and cultures, and how art is used to impact societal views.
Essential Questions
- How does engaging in creating art enrich people's lives and attune them to their surroundings?
- How does art help us understand the lives of people of different times, places, and cultures?
- How is art used to impact the views of a society?
- How do the other arts, disciplines, contexts, and daily life inform the creation, performance, and response to media arts?
Learning Objectives
- Create art that tells a story or describes life events in home, school, and community.
- Compare, contrast, and describe why people from different places and times make art.
- Describe why people from different places and times make art about different issues, including climate change.
- Use personal experiences, interests, information, and models in creating media artworks.
- Share and discuss experiences of media artworks, describing their meaning and purpose.
- Discuss and demonstrate how media artworks, messages, environments, and ideas relate to everyday and cultural life, such as daily activities, popular media, and connections with family and friends.
- Interact appropriately with media arts tools and environments considering safety, rules, and fairness.
Supplemental Resources
- Books and internet resources featuring art from different cultures and historical periods
- Guest speakers and visiting artists from diverse cultural backgrounds
- Student work samples representing diverse perspectives and experiences
- Webpages and virtual images of cultural artworks and traditions
- Newspaper or magazine clippings showing how art reflects and impacts society
Music - Connecting
Media Arts - Connecting
Students engage in identifying elements and principles of art, counting and categorizing visual properties, and recognizing shapes and spatial relationships in artwork.
Students observe patterns in natural and constructed environments, investigate materials and their properties, and explore how design solutions work through experimentation with art materials and tools.
Students create art that tells stories about home, school, and community life, compare and contrast artwork from different cultures and time periods, and understand how art reflects societal values and beliefs.
Students discuss and describe artwork using visual arts vocabulary, ask and answer questions about artistic choices, and express ideas and responses through drawing, writing, and oral communication.
Formative Assessments
- Group work and collaborative projects connecting art to personal and community experiences
- Discussion and question-and-answer sessions about cultural and historical contexts of artworks
- Observation of student connections between personal experiences and artistic choices
Summative Assessment
Students recognize that works of visual art are a reflection of a society's values and beliefs. Using age-appropriate stylistic terminology (cubist, surrealistic, impressionistic) and experimenting with various compositional approaches, students demonstrate how through making art they make meaning by investigating their awareness of culture and personal experiences. Students explain, evaluate, and demonstrate how media arts expand meaning and knowledge and create cultural experiences.
Benchmark Assessment
A short drawing or painting task where students create artwork depicting a story from their home, school, or community and verbally describe or dictate what they made and why. This assesses their ability to connect personal experiences to art-making and recognize that people make art about their lives and communities.
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding through drawing, collage, or sculpture that represents a personal story or community experience, with teacher support through visual examples, hand-over-hand guidance, or simplified prompts. Students may respond to questions about artworks and cultures through gestures, pointing, or one-word answers with visual aids provided.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
Students may benefit from visual supports such as picture cards, simple image-based vocabulary related to cultural themes and storytelling, to help them make connections between their own experiences and the artwork being explored. Directions for art-making and discussion activities should be broken into brief, numbered steps and paired with a visual model of what a finished piece might look like. Students should be encouraged to share responses orally or through pointing and gesturing rather than in writing, and teacher or aide scribing can support students in expressing their ideas about how art reflects culture and personal experience.
Section 504
Preferential seating near the area where artwork is being displayed or discussed can help students stay focused during cultural comparisons and whole-group conversations. Additional time should be provided during art-making tasks that involve connecting personal experience to visual choices, and a low-distraction workspace may support sustained attention throughout longer creative activities.
ELL / MLL
Visual cues such as photographs, illustrated vocabulary cards, and culturally diverse artwork examples can help students access the unit's focus on how art reflects different places, times, and communities. Directions for creating and discussing artwork should be simplified and paired with physical demonstrations, and students should be encouraged to draw on their own cultural backgrounds and home experiences as a meaningful entry point into the content. Use of the student's home language to label or describe their artwork is welcomed and supported.
At Risk (RTI)
Connecting art-making to familiar, personal experiences — such as family routines, community settings, or favorite stories — can help students access the broader themes of culture and meaning in this unit. Reducing the complexity of the initial creative task while maintaining the core concept of storytelling through art allows students to experience success and build confidence before exploring more abstract cultural connections. Teacher check-ins and verbal prompting during discussions can help students articulate what they notice and feel about artwork.
Gifted & Talented
Students who demonstrate readiness can be encouraged to go deeper by exploring how artists from different cultures or historical periods used specific visual choices — such as color, shape, or composition — to reflect a community's values or respond to real-world issues. These students may be invited to consider how their own artwork communicates a message about their community or world, using emerging art vocabulary to explain their choices. Opportunities to examine and discuss a broader range of artistic styles or cultural traditions can extend learning beyond the foundational objectives of the unit.