Students observe and study insects depicted in a seventeenth-century drawing. They identify characteristics common to all insects and those unique to particular species. Students research and draw insects, incorporating a variety of lines and shapes and using value to depict three-dimensionality.

Students examine two of Dorothea Lange's photographs in relation to the universal theme of a journey. They make connections between the photographs and poems about journey and write about a journey in their own lives.

Beginning-level students will compare and contrast different uses of land in the state of California and write a letter about a modern-day environmental issue.

Students explore the concept of work, and work typically assigned to women, through artwork depicting laundresses.

Students write a friendly letter based on their observations of a painting by Poussin. They demonstrate their observation of the painting's content and new vocabulary that they access themselves, using a thesaurus.

This is the second lesson in a sequential unit. In a museum gallery, students practice looking skills they reviewed in Lesson 1. They reflect upon the differences between viewing original works of art and reproductions and interpret a work of art using formal analysis and research done for homework.

This is the first lesson in a sequential unit. Students practice looking and formal analysis skills by studying a reproduction of the work of art they will see on their museum visit in Lesson 2. Prepare students for their trip by reviewing appropriate behavior in a museum and discussing the role of the museum as an institution that collects, conserves, and interprets works of art.

Research activities investigate social-science connections such as trade, societal impact, and style on the production and consumption of porcelain in the period leading up to the French Revolution. Extensions relate to chemistry connections.

The books that were created in the medieval period are the forerunners of modern printed books and have many of the same components. Use the image Initial A: Two Men before a King and a Man Speaking to a Family to learn about the different elements of a manuscript page and as a way of beginning to explore and create illuminated manuscripts with your class.

Students will examine a manuscript page from a Flemish bestiary and discuss how it was used to teach ideas about Christianity. Students will then compare the stories from the bestiary to the fables of Aesop, and culminate with the creation of their own manuscript based on a fable by Aesop.

Students will practice their speaking skills while describing a landscape scene for a partner to draw.

Students discover how visual artists represent a story by depicting a single moment from it.

Students will make connections between their personal experiences and a work of art and use visual analysis to describe a portrait.

Students will "read" a visual image very much like they would read words in a story.

Students will spend more time looking at details and write an imagined interview with a sitter.

Students will examine Charles-Antoine Coypel's "Self-Portrait" and understand what he shows in this work.

Students will use Van Gogh's "Portrait of Joseph Roulin" as inspiration for their own portraits of friends in the classroom.