East Detroit Public Schools
Lesson Design

Author: Fran Hobbs
Subject: Visual Arts
Grade: Four
Course: Fourth Grade Elementary Art
Title: African Ceremonial Masks

Length of Unit: Four or Five 50-minute class periods
Materials Needed:
Computers in a lab setting
Software: Encarta, Logic Blocks, With Open Eyes, Tenth Planet (Mirror Symmetry)

Practice worksheet
Cardboard mask base
Hole punch
Raffia
Poster board for mounting
Stapler
Permanent markers
(black, green, yellow, red, blue, purple)

Standards-Based Outcomes (MDE):

Mathematics:

I. Patterns, Relationships, and Functions

Content Standard I, 1: Students recognize similarities and generalize patterns, use patterns to create models and make predictions, describe the nature of patterns and relationships, and construct representations of mathematical relationships. (Patterns)

1. Recognize, describe, and extend numerical and geometric patterns.
2. Represent and record patterns and relationships in a variety of ways including tables, charts, and pictures.
3. Use patterns to describe real world phenomena.
4. Explore various types of numeric and geometric patterns (repeating, growing, shrinking).
5. Apply their experiences with patterns to help solve problems and explore new content.

II. Geometry and Measurement

Content Standard II, 1: Students develop spatial sense, use shape as an analytic and descriptive tool, identify characteristics and define shapes, identify properties and describe relationships among shapes. (Shape and Shape Relationships)

1. Recognize and name familiar shapes in one, two, and three dimensions such as lines, rectangles, and spheres and informally discuss the shape of a graph.

2. Describe the attributes of familiar shapes.

4. Draw and build familiar shapes.

Content Standard II, 2: Students identify locations of objects, identify location relative to other objects, and describe the effects of transformations (e.g., sliding, flipping, turning, enlarging, reducing) on an object. (Position)

2. Locate and describe objects in terms of their orientation, direction, and relative position, including up, down, front, back, N-S-E-W, flipped, turned, translated; recognize symmetrical objects and identify their lines of symmetry.

3. Explore what happens to the size, shape, and position of an object after sliding, flipping, turning, enlarging, or reducing it.

5. Use concepts of position, direction, and orientation to describe the physical world and to solve problems.

Social Studies:

II. Geographic Perspective

Content Standard II, 1: All students will describe, compare, and explain the locations and characteristics of races, cultures, and settlements. (People, Places, and Cultures)

2. Locate and describe diverse kinds of communities and explain the reasons for their characteristics and locations.

Content Standard II, 2: All students will describe, compare, and explain the locations and characteristics of ecosystems, resources, human adaptation, environmental impact, and the interrelationships among them. (Human/Environment Interaction)

4. Explain how various people and cultures have adapted to and modified the environment.

Arts Education:

I. Performing-Visual Arts

Content Standard I, 1: All students will apply skills and knowledge to perform in the arts.

21. Use materials, techniques, media technology, and processes to communicate ideas and experiences.

22. Use art materials and tools safely and responsibly.

23. Use visual characteristics and organizational principles of art to communicate ideas.

24. Be involved in the process and presentation of a final product or exhibit.

II. Creating-Visual Arts

Content Standard II, 2: All students will apply skills and knowledge to create in the arts.

16. Apply knowledge of materials, techniques, and processes to create artwork.

17. Apply knowledge of how visual characteristics and organizational principles communicate ideas.

20. Know different purposes of visual art to creatively convey ideas

III. Analyzing in Context-Visual Arts

Content Standard III, 3: All students will analyze, describe, and evaluate works of art.

21. Generalize about the effects of visual structures and functions and reflect upon these effects in personal work.

22. Identify various purposes for creating works of visual art.

23. Understand there are different responses to specific artworks.

24. Describe and compare the characteristics of personal artwork.

25. Understand how personal experiences can influence the development of artwork.

IV. Arts in Context-Visual Arts

Content Standard IV, 4: All students will understand, analyze, and describe the arts in their historical, social, and cultural contexts.

1. Know that the visual arts have a history and specific relationships to various cultures.

2. Identify specific works of art as belonging to particular cultures, times, and places.

3. Demonstrate how history, culture, and the visual arts can influence each other in making and studying works of art.

V. Connecting to Other Arts, Other Disciplines, and Life-Visual Arts

Content Standard V, 5: All students will recognize, analyze, and describe connections among the arts; between the arts and other disciplines; between the arts and everyday life.

12. Explain how visual arts have inherent relationships to everyday life.

15. Identify connections between the visual arts and other disciplines in the curriculum.

Prior Knowledge:

Students must be familiar with patterns, geometric shapes, colors, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, symmetry, relationships of color, form, size, shape, and position, Africa, different cultures in our world, and basic art criticism.

Cue Set:

Students view large, bright, colorful masks in the art room, examples of the finished product they will make. Students see and hear about masks using With Open Eyes software on the computer/monitor. Students identify the location of Africa on the map in relation to the United States. Students see prints of colorful African masks while they hear that the making of masks is a primary artistic outlet in many cultures, and that masks from Africa, Oceania, and Native American Cultures are highly prized by art collectors. A brief history of masks, and an explanation of symmetry as it relates to masks follows. A discussion of the decorative and ceremonial purposes and cultural-traditional celebration purposes of masks is featured as students realize art speaks to all people across time, language, and culture.

Best Shot Instruction:

A. In the computer lab with the media teacher:
Students review, see, and understand mirror symmetry in two 25-minute lessons centered on two software packages.

1. Logic Blocks-
an interactive computer program which allows students to practice mirror symmetry with circles, squares, and triangles in horizontal, vertical, and diagonal mirror symmetry
2. Mirror Symmetry from the program Tenth Planet-
a demonstration computer lesson using African masks

B. In the art room under the direction of the art instructor:
Students learn about the history and culture of masks, mirror symmetry as it relates to masks, and African ceremonial masks. Students will plan and create an African ceremonial mask in three 50-minute class periods by drawing a plan, transferring that plan to the mask base, black markering the drawing, filling it in with color marker, tying on raffia, and then viewing and discussing the finished mask display.

Reteaching and Enrichment:

At the beginning and end of each formal art class period, a group discussion is conducted which includes aesthetics, art history, basic art criticism, and the ongoing production of the African ceremonial masks. The lively class discussion allows students to look at the progress they are making on their own mask-art, as well as to reflect, rethink, compare, and plan. They can revise and refine their own daily production based on self-assessment.

The teacher carefully leads these discussions, identifying strong and weak art production, as students make the following connections:

• Aesthetics: Students discover and understand the varieties of meanings and values of artwork, specifically their masks.
• Art History: Students acquire knowledge about the contributions that African artists and art make to culture and society, as well as the contributions of their own masks.
• Art Production: Students make masks; they learn to express ideas and feelings in visual form
• Art Criticism: Students respond to and make judgments about the properties and qualities that exist in their masks.

Review and Closure:

• Students use visual and design elements of line, shape, color, texture, pattern, and repetition to plan and create an African ceremonial mask in mixed media and low relief.
• Students demonstrate the use of space and mirror symmetry to design an African ceremonial mask in mixed media and low relief.
• Students use the vocabulary of line, shape, color, texture, pattern, repetition, positive and negative space, symmetry, African ceremonial mask, materials, and tools.
• Students build skills and flexibility in creating expressive and colorful ceremonial masks
• Students recognize the role of technology in their mask making by reviewing mirror symmetry, completing interactive computer lessons on shape, space, and symmetry, and using the Web as a resource
• Students see why Africans created masks and understand that art speaks to all people across time, language, and cultures. They see that art will always be a part of their lives.

Assessment:

Discussion for assessment begins when masks are complete:

1. Check mirror symmetry of lines, shapes, and raffia.

2. Students use vocabulary of line, shape, color, texture, pattern, repetition, positive and negative space, symmetry, African ceremonial masks, materials, and tools in a class discussion when viewing the completed display.

3. Students discuss the masks at home. The family discussions relating to their mask-making are then shared in class.

4. Students see that art will always be a part of their lives, and speaks to all across time and culture.

Parental pride and student pride is always a part of this lesson as parents see these beautiful masks displayed in the halls at school.

Further Study:

1. Students write fictional stories based on these masks.

2. Students play “20 Questions” about masks.

3. Students write 3 to7 adjectives to describe each mask and then try to identify the masks described.

4. Students nominate choices for: most puzzling, most exciting, took the most time to complete, personal favorite, one that “matches my bedroom”, etc.

5. Students write titles for each mask.

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