Marc Chagall

AUTHOR:
Mary Ann Williamson, Barratt, UT

GRADE LEVEL/SUBJECT: 2, art

OVERVIEW:

This is an art lesson that provides practice for thinking skills.

PURPOSE:

To introduce students to the artist Marc Chagall and identify his work.

OBJECTIVES:

1. Students will be able to identify the paintings of Marc Chagall when presented with ten prints, three of which Chagall painted.

2. The students will be able to list four of five characteristics of Marc Chagall's work.

3. Students will paint a Chagall-like picture.

RESOURCES/MATERIALS:

Art prints (I and the Village, Feathers in Bloom, Rain, Circus Rider), paper, tempera, crayons, watercolors

ACTIVITIES AND PROCEDURES:

1. Write the name Marc Chagall on the board and tell about his life.

2. Discuss the prints by Chagall emphasizing the following characteristics.

a. arbitrary color
b. unusual size relationships
c. bright pure color
d. dream like
e. scenes that were memories of his Russian homeland

3. Brainstorm with class; What would be interesting to you to paint with arbitrary color? What would you paint of unusual size?

4. Using the painting, "I and the Village", discuss how he used size to make things more important.

5. Have the students make a painting as inspired by Marc Chagall and paint their village or town using the characteristics of Chagall's paintings.

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER:

Students can also write a composition or story to go with their work. Size relationships and perspective can be studied.

Helpful hints:

Overhead concentration - Run a concentration board on a transparency. Run off a paper with skill to be practiced. This is especially effective for matching answers like words and definitions or math problems and answers. Cut up the paper and place it upside down in the numbered squares on the overhead. Turn the papers over to match. Can be used with entire class or teams. Group response - Place three fingers directly under the chin. Hold up 1,2, or 3 for response to teacher questions. The rest of the class cannot see how many the student holds up but the teacher can quickly group check an entire class. Different way to pair students. Have them line up according to birth date - bend the line and pair with student across from you.

Brainstorming - Use Scategories Dice - roll and use the letter that comes up to brainstorm categories (all mammals that begin with b) good for parts of speech, etc.

Teaching students to write dialogue - Pass out a picture with more than one person in it and write dialogue to go with it. Use a yellow highlighter pen to go over dialogue in an actual text. Mercer Meyer picture books are good to have students write dialogue to go with one or two pages.