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The idea of my lesson is to push students to a point of a little discomfort in how they think. Students tend to want to find definitive answers in textbooks or look to the teacher for continued guidance when forming new opinions or ideas from previous knowledge. My goal is to push students to use their own eyes, thoughts, and opinions to complete the assignment with little more than encouragement from the teacher and guidance from the worksheet, explanations on the quest itself, and a trust that they can think critically and form an opinion of artwork and why it is good. I believe that students should be graded on an honest effort and not on being necessarily "right" or "wrong". There is no 100% correct answer if there is a well thought argument as to why the student thought what they thought. A good class discussion after completing this process will allow for teachable moments in opening a students eyes to what truly is strong about a piece contrary to what they thought, or saw initially. It would be good to review the elements of design with students and discuss how some people interchange other elements for the traditional 7 taught in schools in our part of the world. This assignment really encourages students to look at art, appreciate it, and gain an understanding of what art is and even what it isn't. Teachers should be aware that I have included a permission slip for parents to approve this project since the ArtSpan website that I used shows several pieces that contain nudity. I feel this is not a problem since students should be exposed to all of the arts and realize that nudity in art is not about eroticism but the human condition. If you feel parents will not approve of the potential for students to stumble across the images you may want to create your own quest based on this one but using several single artist sites as a substitute for this one site. I chose this site because it contains vast amounts of information along with a huge database of images. The goal that I have in mind for the teacher is to use some of the information gathered in the worksheet to guide either future or closing discussion. This assignment will reveal a lot about the students prior knowledge, comprehension, and critical thinking skills; this information will aid in creating future assignments. The vocabulary list should also be addressed by class discussion. I advise that nobody knows who stated they did not know the meaning of a word but just allow the class to help each other explain the meaning. Students should be assessed for effort and individual ability when thinking about the areas of the worksheet asking opinions on the part of the student instead of fact. These areas are not accounted for on the rubric specifically but in general they should be well thought sentences and that is addressed. Hopefully you can find time to share the artists and their work with the entire class and review common misconceptions and/or perfect examples.
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