Skill Building - SHading
One of the primary goals of Plug and Play is teaching life-long independent learning skills. Artists need to be confident in their ability to learn new skills in order to take risks with their artmaking. With that goal in mind, this unit focuses on the research process. Students will learn about shading through this extensive process before using the same process to research a skill of their choice. You can adapt the unit to fit a different skill you feel is valuable to your students, but I recommend choosing a skill that is universally understood. If many of the resources have different definitions of the skill or vastly different approaches, I expect it will be very confusing for students to differentiate between good and bad resources. You want the majority of resources to share similar content. On the other hand, you don't want a situation where every result is high quality. That prevents them from seeing the outliers and determining that those outliers are low-quality resources.
This process will be repeated several times so, it is imperative that every student complete every lesson in this unit correctly before moving on. Every lesson should be graded everyday. I typically grade several times throughout the period on my tablet as I walk around the room checking in on students' progress. This allows you to correct misconceptions and mistakes quickly and avoid frustration later.
VA:Cr3.1.HSI Apply relevant criteria from traditional and contemporary cultural contexts to examine, reflect on, and plan revisions for works of art and design in progress.
VA:Cn10.1.HSI Document the process of developing ideas from early stages to fully elaborated ideas.
Talent And practice
Before starting this unit, I googled "shading in art" and sent our tech team a list of links to everything on the first page of results to ensure they weren't blocked.
Implementation Notes:
Create a copy of Talent and Practice slides
Add translation link ( i )
Import slides into LMS
finding resources
In this lesson, students find resources. The only condition for using a resource in this lesson is that it has a definition of shading on it. They'll assess the quality of the resources they found in the next lesson.
Implementation Notes:
Create a copy of Finding Resources slides
Add translation link ( i )
Import slides into LMS
Comparing resources
In this lesson, students investigate the various resources they found to determine which are the best.
Implementation Notes:
Create a copy of Comparing Resources slides
Add translation link ( i )
Import slides into LMS
using resources
In this lesson, students read their best resource(s) and document what they've learned.
Implementation Notes:
Create a copy of Using Resources slides
Add translation link ( i )
Import slides into LMS
Shading quiz
This lesson is designed to be an equalizer. Not all students will find/document all the same information and they will not document all the information I want them to know about shading. Students will take the quiz to show what they know, either through their research or prior knowledge. At the end, students are then expected to document the content they didn't know on the resources page of their digital portfolio.
Implementation Notes:
Create a copy of Shading Quiz slides
Create a copy of Shading Quiz form
Add link to Shading Quiz form on slide 3
Add translation link ( i )
Import slides into LMS
demonstration
Many students did not find step-by-step instructions to practice when instructed in "Using Resources," but I wasn't always able to tell from their post screenshot. I needed to ensure they all had one before moving on to practice, so I separated that expectation and made it easier to assess. In Canvas, students cannot move past this assignment until they've earned a 100.
Implementation Notes:
Create a copy of Demonstration slides
Add translation link ( i )
Import slides into LMS
practice 1
Implementation Notes:
Create a copy of Practice 1 slides
Add translation link ( i )
Import slides into LMS
practice 2
Implementation Notes:
Create a copy of Practice 2 slides
Add translation link ( i )
Import slides into LMS
practice 3 & 4
Implementation Notes:
Create a copy of Practice 3 & 4 slides
Add translation link ( i )
Import slides into LMS
reflect on skill building
Implementation Notes:
Create a copy of Reflect on Skill Building slides
Add translation link ( i )
Import slides into LMS