Mini Lesson 2- Anna

Title of Lesson: Ideal Silhouettes.

Enduring Big Idea: Ideologies /visual culture

Essential Questions:

• If you could change your body in any shape of form, what would you change?
• Who decides what the perfect body image is?
• Who influences the idea of the perfect body?
• What role does the media play in pushing the idea of the “ideal body”
• What does the ideal male body look like?
• What does the ideal female body look like?

Objectives:

• The students will explore the Big Idea of body ideologies based on the visual culture. Students are exposed to ideal body images every day, either through television, magazines, ads, models, etc. Infomercials are constantly aired on TV for ways to lose weight, gain muscles, and to look great. The visual culture is continuously defining the “perfect body”. Students will explore this idea through magazines, other artists work, and by creating ideal silhouettes.

Lesson vignette:

Anticipatory set-

• I will start by handing out magazines to my students. I will want them to look through the magazines and make lists of characteristic that all of the models have in common.
• Students will share their findings with the rest of the class and we will discuss whether or not these describe the ideal image. We will discuss how other forms of media portray the same ideals and ideas.
• Students will view the artwork of Kara Walker. This will include her silhouettes and the students will need to pay attention to the amount of detail she uses in images that are only one color.

Body of lesson-

• Students will begin brainstorming ideas for their own silhouette artwork. There artwork will need to include an actual silhouette of their own body, and a silhouette of how their body should be based on the media.
• The students will be able to choose how their silhouette will be positioned and the size of their artwork. (They can be standing next to each other, back to back, one standing and one sitting, maybe looking in a mirror, etc. The choice is up to the students).
• The silhouettes will be drawn on/produced on black paper.

Closure-

• Students will record their decisions of their artwork in their journals, emphasizing how the media has played a role in their decisions.
• The students will then have a gallery walk to view the artwork and read each other’s discuss each others’ decisions. They will be able to discuss commonalities between all the artwork.