LEARN NC

K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

What portraits reveal

http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=255

A lesson plan for Grade 8 and 11 English Language Arts and Visual Arts Education

Provider: National Endowment for the Humanities

About this resource

Appropriate grades
8 and 11
Provider
National Endowment for the Humanities

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This lesson is designed to help students recognize that portraits, whether paintings or photographs, can tell us more about people of the past than just what they looked like.

Students first compare portraits of three Presidents of the United States to note how changes in style can reflect changing social attitudes, in this case changing American attitudes toward the Presidency. Next they examine portraits of Americans from the Revolutionary War era in order to learn how portraits can tell a person's story, both through details of the portrait itself and through evidence of why it was produced or (in some cases) how it has been altered. Finally, students consider how portraits can be manipulated to express a specific point of view, examining caricatures, monuments, and artworks that turn the representation of individuals into statements about what they stand for. To conclude the lesson, students gather portraits from their own homes and prepare a report explaining what these items might tell a future historian about life in our times.

This lesson can be found on the EDSITEment website.

North Carolina Curriculum Alignment

Visual Arts Education (2001)

Grade 8

  • Goal 3: The learner will organize the components of a work into a cohesive whole through knowledge of organizational principles of design and art elements.
    • Objective 3.01: Understand how artists use the elements and principles of design to impact their environment.
  • Goal 4: The learner will choose and evaluate a range of subject matter and ideas to communicate intended meaning in artworks.
  • Goal 5: The learner will understand the visual arts in relation to history and cultures.
    • Objective 5.01: Consider the history, purpose and function of visual arts and analyze their impact on various cultures.
    • Objective 5.02: Explain the impact of a particular culture, time and place on a specific work of art.
    • Objective 5.03: Compare and contrast relationships of works of art to one another in terms of history, aesthetics, and cultural/ethnic groups.
    • Objective 5.04: Explain the impact of art movements, periods, and styles.

English Language Arts (2004)

Grade 8

  • Goal 1: The learner will use language to express individual perspectives through analysis of personal, social, cultural, and historical issues.
    • Objective 1.01: Narrate a personal account which:
      • creates a coherent, organizing structure appropriate to purpose, audience, and context.
      • establishes a point of view and sharpens focus.
      • uses remembered feelings.
      • selects details that best illuminate the topic.
      • connects events to self/society.
    • Objective 1.03: Interact in group activities and/or seminars in which the student:
      • shares personal reactions to questions raised.
      • gives reasons and cites examples from text in support of expressed opinions.
      • clarifies, illustrates, or expands on a response when asked to do so, and asks classmates for similar expansion.

Grade 11 — English III

  • Goal 1: The learner will demonstrate increasing insight and reflection to print and non-print text through personal expression.
    • Objective 1.02: Reflect and respond expressively to texts so that the audience will:
      - discover multiple perspectives.
      - investigate connections between life and literature.
      - explore how the student's life experiences influence his or her response to the selection.
      - recognize how the responses of others may be different.
      - articulate insightful connections between life and literature.
      -consider cultural or historical significance.