Topic Taught:
We talked all about architecture!  We started off by talking about the parts of a building and moved towards the parts of a city.  The students were learning in their daily classroom all about government and the city around us (Fort Collins), and how it works.  We figured that we could integrate our teachings in with what they're being exposed to already and then expand on it.  We used many mediums to create one large project.  Our focus was about translating our ideas from 2-Dimensions to 3-Dimensions as well as revision.

Lesson One: My Dream Home
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In lesson one, we talked about what artists do, what they make, and why they make it.  So we began where many artists begin: sketches.  We sketched our dream home.  This is where we started asking the important questions about why we make things by asking ourselves.  So why did they make the house they did?  Where is it?  Why did you add the elements you did?

Lesson Three: Architects Build

This was our lengthiest lesson.  We did a lot of refinement, but mainly focused on turning our homes into a reality through use of 3-Dimensional materials.  It was most time intensive because this was the actual building portion which includes the home from clay, painting the home, the environment of the home (paint and found objects) and revision plays into this as well.  Some of our sketches didn't have many things going on around the home, so we decided to talk about stories and creating the narrative of what goes on in our dream homes.  From there manifested many more ideas of what to add into our new buildings.

Lesson Two: Planning like an Architect

In this lesson, we talked about creating multiple drafts and about how the first run of things may not be the best.  We did this through monoprinting.  We would make a fresh new draft of our homes on a piece of plexiglas and then attempt to improve on it or in some way make it different in our future prints, considering a monoprint allows only one copy of that print.
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Lesson Four: Let's Build a City

​In our final lesson, we added in the element of collaboration.  Now that we have our dream home, we must create our "Dream city" so to speak.  In this lesson, the students learned about what goes into a city, what makes a city run, what types of buildings need to be there, and then they created those things as a team.  From there, we created a blueprint of an entire town, and formatted our homes in a way that would make everyone excited to live there if it were real life.

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Standards Alignment

2-3 Standards
GLE’s Outcomes

Comprehend
1. The identification of characteristics and expressive features in works of art and design help to determine artistic intent
                    a. Hypothesize and discuss artist intent and mood.

                    b. Discuss how art and design impact the man-made environment

                    c. Make artistic choices to communicate ideas
2. Characteristics and expressive features of art and design are used to identify and discuss works of art
                    a. Characteristics and expressive features of art and design are used to identify and discuss works of art.
                    b. Articulate commonalities seen in visual information
                    c. Recognize and describe the differences between characteristics and expressive features of art and design using age appropriate                          art vocabulary

                    d. Describe variations of sensory qualities using age appropriate art vocabulary
Reflect
1. Artists, viewers, and patrons use the language of art to respond to their own art and the art of others
                    a. Recognize and respect cultural differences in works of art
                    b.    Interpret works of art using age appropriate descriptive vocabulary
                    c.    Explain how individuals can have different opinions about works of art
2. Artists, viewers, and patrons make connections among the characteristics, expressive features, and purposes of art and design
                    a. Compare and contrast a work of art and a design product
                    b.    Describe common characteristics and expressive features of art and design in familiar works of art
Create
1. Use familiar symbols to identify and demonstrate characteristics and expressive features of art and design
                    a. Create works of art using familiar and commercial symbols such as hearts, suns, and logos.
                    b. Demonstrate with art media the use of basic characteristics and expressive features in art and design.
2. Demonstrate basic studio skills
                    a. Create two- and three- dimensional works individually and collaboratively.
                    b. Create works of art using various modalities.
Transfer
1.Works of art connect individual ideas to make meaning
                    a. Identify societal ideas found in art such as attire worn in different periods, and purpose of everyday objects and activities
                    b. Articulate the connection between personal emotional responses and ideas that are communicated in works of art
                    c. Develop a list of community cultural arts resources
2. Visual arts respond to human experience by relating art to the community, historical, and cultural events.
                    a. Communicate observational responses to works of art from a variety of social, emotional, and historical contexts 
                    b.  Discuss and describe personal artistic experiences
                    c. Discuss community-based and public art
​                    d. Relate personal experiences to familiar historical and cultural events

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Significance of Topic
Globally: While the unit focused on their personal likes and dislikes in their dream homes, it focused a lot on using the same subject for many different areas in art.  It shows that with one idea, you can create endless possibilities from endless materials.  From paint and markers to clay and found objects.  We also focused in on collaboration, so they also learn to work with different minds and about how to come to an agreement in order to make the best fit for everyone.  
Personally: Knowing that we have such little time with them, seeing them once a week for under 2 hours, it seemed impossible to get to know our students.  This was a really exciting way to learn quickly about individual values and personalities.  I was excited to see the outcomes that would be from this class and to see how different each one of them is.
For this Population: This class is focused on learning about the world around them, specifically in their own back yards learning about FOrt Collins past and present, as well as how government works.  We thought this could be a great way for them to integrate what they know or are learning about how a town runs into their art through working about this knowledge in a more hands on way where they control the outcome.  

See the Documentation HERE!!!