SEE THINK WONDER REFLECTION Stephanie Greene, Towson Cohort

2nd Grade, Monday October 24, 2016 24 students; 20 minute lesson

Marc Chagall
When my students arrived, I asked them What do you see in this painting?

The first student said that he saw an angel. I asked him what makes you say that is an
angel? He said the the wings on the person flying made him think it was an angel.

I repeated the question what else do you see in this picture? The next student said that
she saw lots of houses. I asked the student to tell me what made her say that was a
house? She said that there was a roof and windows. I asked the class to raise their hands
if they also a house. We talked about the shape of the house the triangle for the roof,
the squares for the houses themselves and that there were many repeated
houses/shapes around the painting. Another student then said that he saw a bed. I asked
him what made him say it was a bedthe shape? Another student mentioned the
pillows.

Next, I asked what else do you see in this painting? Another student said a chicken.

Then, I asked what colors do you see in this painting? One student said that she saw
pink. I pointed out the pink on the blanket. I said that pink was considered a warm color
and we discussed why the blanket might be pink. I asked what other colors do we see?
Another student mentioned white for the wings and the pillow. I asked if there were any
other warm colors? Then I asked if there were any cold colors? They noticed that the
whole background with the houses were cold.

Then we moved to What do you think is happening in this painting? A student said that
there was a person flying. Another person said that this painting was fiction because only
helicopters and airplanes can fly. We talked about how a painting can tell a story and it
doesnt always have to be real. The students started wondering why there was an angel
flying in the picture and why the background was blue.

I could tell the class was starting to get fidgety so I told them that this was actually a
painting of a dream by a famous person named Marc Chagall. That he liked to paint
dream pictures. That dreams and paintings tell a story. That these stories were things
about him. This was how I introduced the concept of Personal Narrative which is a story
about something that happens to us.

Then I went into a lesson discussing personal narrative and read the book When Cats
Dream by Dav Pilkey. We discussed the bright warm colors, the shapes, the cold colors.
They commented on the funny things that the cats did in their dreams. They also noticed
that at the beginning of the story, the illustrations were in black and white and were very
realistic but that in the dream the colors were crazy.

I also pointed out during the story that the author/illustrator adapted paintings from
famous artists into the dreams of the cats. (I pointed out the one by Marc Chagall
although there are others they would not recognize.) At the end of the story, they
noticed the illustration of the Mona Lisa with a cat in her lap.

I explained that a dream can be a personal narrative, or a story about themselves,

because we are always in our dreams.

I handed out blank paper. The activity involved drawing and coloring one of their own
dreams. I asked them to include warm and cold colors where appropriate (I gave
examples) and asked them to have shapes as well. (Mostly focused on colors to help tell
the story.)

We shared some of the art work before we cleaned up. They had about 15 minutes to
work on their dream paintings. I circulated around the room and the students described
their dreams to me. I asked them why they chose certain colors. Some students felt that
by drawing their dreams, it was actually a wish that they were drawing. Some of the
paintings had floating people and objects, some had drawn on a horizontal ground.

It was interesting, as I was going around the room, looking at their different artistic
development phases. My almost blind student actually drew two bright yellow suns in
her dream. My student who was emotionally and physically challenged scribbled with
many different colors. Some of my students were very detailed with their characters,
some had a background. Most of the students wanted to keep their drawings.

I would have liked to have taken the See Think Wonder strategy farther with additional
questions to further the discussion of how and why the artist might have used the colors,
shapes, and characters to tell his tory. I would have liked to have gone back to the
painting to interpret the dream