Developed by Leslie Rogers
Stivers School for the Arts, Dayton
Language Arts with Visual Arts
Grade Level: 11
Introduction
A long standing trend in instructional technique is to partner with another teacher to make a lesson richer in content and in technique. That is especially true if the experience and learning for students promises to be richer. Thus we were particularly pleased to receive this plan from Leslie Rogers, one of the art teachers at Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton, who partnered with the photography teacher to allow students to explore a wonderful technique that she learned from Ping Chong & Company at the Muse Machine Summer Institute in 2016. Leslie knew that the students often created their own silhouettes in the photography class, but wanted to add student created poetic descriptions to the visual art pieces. She also included ideas that she gained during ATTS 2016 at The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in New York City as inspiration for the poetry. The resulting art work is now on display in the Stivers School for the Arts permanent collection. We hope that you will be as enthused as we were to see the work of the students in this particularly enticing lesson!
Non-Arts Discipline
Content Statement
Level of Inquiry (confirmation/structured/guided/open) Circle and describe.
The inquiry is structured, since the final product is of the silhouette photo with written piece about ones identity typed over photo. The use of the Noguchi sculpture and concrete objects for symbolism are the intended scaffolding materials. The teacher will guide students through the process, with the opportunity of freedom of choice in which items will symbolize their identity and the style of the written piece.
Arts Discipline
Creative Writing
Content Statement
Enduring Understandings
Students will be able to use symbolism to effectively express in writing how the pieces of their identity come together as a whole. Students will understand how humans are not just one thing or the other; they are more than the sum of their parts.
Progress Points
in-class discussion, brainstorming, rough draft, peer review, final revision, final photo product
Strand/Process
(Standards)- The lesson will cover 7-10 lessons
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11.3d: Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11.5: Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.
Essential Questions
What makes up the identity of a human?
How can I capture multiple parts of my identity in one piece of writing?
Content Elaborations
Students will learn how:
- To use concrete objects to explore symbolism of their identity
- To master the writing process of brainstorming, drafting, peer reviewing, and revising.
- To use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to describe their identity in writing
Expectations for Learning
Students will demonstrate this learning by:
- Participating in class discussion
- Completing brainstorming activity by choosing two items from a basket that symbolize a piece of their identity
- Complete brainstorming by completing the “River Story” activity
- Write a draft poem or descriptive piece that blends the two concrete items into a symbolic description of aspects of their identity
- Peer review drafts
- Revise drafts
- Have silhouette photo taken by photography teacher and send her the final revision so she can place the words over the silhouette
Instructional Strategies
Students will be engaged and supported in learning by:
- Taking part in a safe-space discussion about identity
- Examining teacher model before writing own work
- Taking part in multi-discipline project
- Exploring how artists blend multiple parts of their identity into one piece
- Having a choice of what concrete objects they use to represent their own identity
- Being encouraged to write a draft piece and take risks
- Providing and receiving positive and constructive feedback for revision of drafts
- Knowing their pieces will be on display in main hallway
Assessment (Pre and/or Post)
Students will know how well they are learning by:
- Consistent feedback from teacher and peers
- Self-assessment based upon rubric
- Applying feedback of draft to a revision
- Comments from all who see final pieces on display
Materials & Resources
Materials list for Teachers:
- MUSE Summer Institute Resource Materials
- Photos from multiple angles of Fudo (sculpture by Noguchi in NYC- teacher
- learned about during ATTS 2016)
- Teacher models throughout process
- Own River Story
- Photographer teacher (and the materials she uses: camera, film, photo paper, editing/graphic design software, printer)
Materials list for Students:
- Invitation/Guideline sheet for “Noguchi/Identity Piece”
- Baskets of random concrete objects
- Peer review guidelines
- Paper, pencil, computer, flash drive
- Peer review sheet
- Peer review reflection sheet
Key Vocabulary
- Identity
- Symbolism
- Concrete object
- Sensory details
- Figurative langauge
Student Performance Tasks
- Analysis/guided questions of Fudo by Noguchi to warm students up to the idea of using pieces of identity to create a cohesive work
- River Story adaptation to get students to think about identity (pebbles in the river are not specifically events, but aspects of their identity)
- Teacher model choosing two objects from basket that represent her identity and verbally explaining them
- Students choose 2 objects and explain to partners how they symbolize their identity
- Students write a brainstorm of all of the aspects of identity that the objects represent and draw specific connections to student character, culture, personality, experiences, etc.
- Teacher displays 2 model drafts. One a poem and one is an expository piece. Class analyzes how the pieces use the objects to represent their identity
- Students writes draft based upon given criteria
- Class reviews guidelines and expectations for peer review
- Students complete peer review sheet for designated partner’s draft. They then discuss, providing positive and constructive feedback
- Students reflect on the peer review feedback and how they will apply it to their revision
- Students revise
- Students have photo taken by photography teacher who will develop the profile photo and edit it to look like a silhouette. She will then place the words of their final revision over the corresponding student’s silhouette
- Products will be displayed in main hallway by office
- NOTE: The concrete objects chosen do not have to be apparent in the writing; they are just a starting point. Some students do include their objects (keychain, or beads and solo cup), but some do not.
Career Connections
- Sculpture
- Photography
- Confidence in self-identity
- Expressive, symbolic writing
Diverse Learners
How will instruction be differentiated according to learner needs?
- Students have a choice in the objects they choose and how complex they want their symbolism to be.
- Peer review partners will be deliberately chosen based on skill level.
- Teacher models will be provided
Interdisciplinary Connections
How can the lesson be integrated with activities from the SI 2016 to strengthen student learning? (Identity, belonging & space)
- Entire project involves identity exploration (SI)
- River Story adaptation (SI)
- Sharing items and writing that represent own identity (SI)
- Noguchi sculpture photos and activity of choosing 2 concrete items that symbolize two separate pieces of ones identity (ATTS)
Technology Connections
Ideas for using technology in conventional or novel ways to facilitate/assess/document learning.
- Projection of sculpture photos taken at ATTS
- Photography, editing, and graphic design technology
- Computers for typing drafts and revisions
Home/At Work Connections
Describe work that will be assigned to students outside the classroom.
Naguchi
Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was one of the twentieth century’s most important and critically acclaimed sculptors. Through a lifetime of artistic experimentation, he created sculptures, gardens, furniture and lighting designs, ceramics, architecture, and set designs. His work, at once subtle and bold, traditional and modern, set a new standard for the reintegration of the arts.
In 1942, Noguchi set up a studio at 33 MacDougal Alley, in Greenwich Village, having spent much of the 1930s based in New York City but traveling extensively in Asia, Mexico, and Europe. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the backlash against Japanese-Americans in the United States had a dramatic personal effect on Noguchi, motivating him to become a political activist. In 1942, he started Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy, a group dedicated to raising awareness of the patriotism of Japanese-Americans. He also asked to be placed in an internment camp in Arizona, where he lived for a brief seven months. Following the War, Noguchi spent a great deal of time in Japan exploring the wrenching issues raised during the previous years. His ideas and feelings are reflected in his works of that period, particularly the delicate slab sculptures included in the 1946 exhibition “Fourteen Americans,” at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Noguchi did not belong to any particular movement, but collaborated with artists working in a range of disciplines and schools. He created stage sets as early as 1935 for the dancer/choreographer Martha Graham, beginning a lifelong collaboration; as well as for dancers/choreographers Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, and George Balanchine and composer John Cage. In the 1960s, Noguchi began working with stone carver Masatoshi Izumi on the island of Shikoku, Japan; a collaboration that would also continue for the rest of his life. From 1960 to 1966, he worked on a playground design with the architect Louis Kahn.
Whenever given the opportunity to venture into the mass-production of his interior designs, Noguchi seized it. In 1937, he designed a Bakelite intercom for the Zenith Radio Corporation, and in 1947, his glass-topped table was produced by Herman Miller. This design—along with others such as his designs for Akari Light Sculptures which were initially developed in 1951 using traditional Japanese materials—are still being produced today.
In 1985, Noguchi opened The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (now known as The Noguchi Museum), in Long Island City, New York. The Museum, established and designed by the artist, marked the culmination of his commitment to public spaces. Located in a 1920s industrial building across the street from where the artist had established a studio in 1960, it has a serene outdoor sculpture garden, and many galleries that display Noguchi’s work, along with photographs and models from his career. The museum was visited by Muse Machine advisors during ATTS 2016.
Ping Chong & Company
PING CHONG & COMPANY is an award-winning, not-for-profit arts organization, founded in 1975. Working in partnership with theatres, museums, universities and community organizations, Ping Chong & company creates innovative works of theater and art for diverse audiences in New York and around the world. Ping Chong & Company (originally Fiji Theatre Company) gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Arts International, ART/NY Fund for small Theaters, the Phillip Morris Companies Inc., the New York Community Trust/Lila Acheson Wallace Theatre Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1998/99 season.
Undesirable Elements is an on-going series of community-specific works by Ping Chong, exploring the effects of history, culture and ethnicity on the lives individuals in a particular community. The piece is made through a collaborative workshop process involving Ping Chong and a group of individuals who vary in many ways but share the common experience of having been born in a particular culture. Ping Chong and Company uses the vehicle of “river stories” as a means to understanding one’s life and the many important events along the way that make us who we are right now. Even very young students can use this reflection device to assign meaning to events in their lives.
