Each lesson below was written by an elementary teacher from the Los Angeles area. Developed through the Getty Education Department's one-year professional-development program, Art & Language Arts, these lessons were designed to meet California content standards for English–language arts and visual arts.

For more information about the program, please e-mail teacherprograms@getty.edu.

Lessons 1–10 of 36

Still Life Photography: Daily Life
Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will plan and design a still life composition. When composing the still life, students will choose objects that emphasize a variety of shapes and textures, and arrange the objects to reflect balance. Next students will create a photographic still life and use it as inspiration to write a poem. Then students will present the still life photograph and poem to the class.

Fantastical Beasts
Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will learn about medieval manuscripts and artistic representations of fantastical creatures. They will create their own fantastical creature using complementary colors and write a paragraph describing it.

Pretty Ugly? The Grotesque in Art and Poetry
Grades/Level: Lower Elementary (K–2)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will discuss works of art that have grotesque elements and symmetry in their design. They will identify symmetry and line in grotesques. Students will create symmetrical designs for a pilgrim bottle and also design a door panel using grotesques. They will then analyze William Blake's poem "The Tiger" and write their own grotesque-inspired poetry.

How to Draw a Still Life
Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will form two groups, and each group will analyze a still life. Then each student will write a three-paragraph essay describing how to draw the work of art they are studying. Each student will exchange his or her essay with someone in the other group who will draw the still life based on the essay's description. Depending on the accuracy of their peers' drawings, students will add more details to their essays.

The Ultimate Desk
Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: This series of lessons will provide students with an understanding of the Baroque period and help them identify decorative arts and architecture from that period. After studying Baroque paintings, furniture, architecture, and craft guilds, students will create a mixed-media sculpture inspired by Bernard van Risenburgh's Double Desk. Throughout the unit, students will reflect on their experiences in journals.

Narrating a Family Tradition
Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will observe a holiday depicted in a picture from a 16th-century manuscript. They will interview family members and write a paragraph about a family tradition. After a class discussion on how an artist creates the illusion of depth, students will create a collage illustrating a family tradition with a distinct foreground, middle ground, and background.

Python, Python, What Do You See?
Grades/Level: Lower Elementary (K–2)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will discuss the sculpture Python Killing a Gnu by Antoine-Louis Barye. They will use their imagination to visualize a setting for the python depicted in sculpture. Then they will describe their setting, sculpt a clay snake, and create their setting using mixed media.

Illustrating Similes
Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will observe emotions depicted in an 18th-century bust and two 19th-century paintings. They will learn about and create similes based on paintings that depict people waiting and receiving a court verdict, respectively. They will write their own narratives about a time they had to wait, and they will use similes to describe characters' emotions. Students will then create two original works of art that illustrate their narratives.

All in the Family
Grades/Level: Lower Elementary (K–2)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will analyze and describe a painting depicting a family. They will discuss similarities and differences between the setting of the painting and where they live. Then students will create a sculpture of their family doing an activity together and also create a diorama of a room in their home.

In Depth with Pearblossom Highway
Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: Students compare and contrast a photograph and a photo-collage depicting the same highway and write a descriptive composition of both images. They identify one-point perspective in works of art then draw a desert landscape using one-point perspective.

Lessons 1–10 of 36