This is one of thousands of Sol LeWitt’s large scale wall drawings.

One of my first blog posts was about my first teacher artwork sample from last year that I did in the elementary school that I’ll be student teaching in. This semester, I have to teach a lesson for my teacher artwork sample in the high school I’ll be student teaching in…and also be observed by someone who’ll critique my teaching! I’m doing that tomorrow, so wish me luck! Here’s what I’ve got planned. I’m pretty excited about it!

My lesson is about the artist Sol LeWitt and his use of directions to have others create his works of art. It’s also intended to have students question the concept of authorship and whose role is most important when carrying out a cooperative art piece. One of the many questions I’ll be posing to my students is, “If a person conceives the idea for a work of art, but that work is carried out by another person, who is the creator of that piece?”

Sol LeWitt

To start things off, I had my students create a small 4×3 thumbnail using curved, vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines.They then added color to their thumbnails with oil pastels. This is their pre-assessment. I’m trying to ascertain how well they grasp the concept of repetition and pattern in order to move on to the next part of the project.

Right now, I am having them keep their thumbnails a secret from their neighbors. What they don’t know yet is that after my full lesson tomorrow, they’re going to be writing out a list of directions about their thumbnail and swapping those directions with their neighbor. They’ll be creating each other’s work on a larger scale then revealing their original thumbnail sketch to their partner at the end of the project. I’m excited to see how this goes! Stay tuned for a follow up post about this in the next couple weeks. I’ll be sure to share the full breakdown of this teacher artwork sample.