On Monday, I taught my first observed lesson for my block placement as an Art Education major.  I have been preparing for this for the past week and I could not have been more excited and nervous at the same time.  For this lesson, I wanted to teach the students about watercolor. I immediately started to search Pinterest for some ideas and I stumbled upon a comment on a beautiful watercolor piece that said it looked like it was a part of Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species Posters.  I took that comment and ran with it to create my lesson, as I also love Warhol’s work.

The painting was originally from a lesson that was posted to the NAEA Digication website by a retired art teacher, Melissa Walker.  When I saw the Pinterest post’s comment that another teacher was reminded of the Endangered Species Posters, I looked it up and decided to create a lesson out of it!

For the lesson, my students will be researching an endangered, threatened, or extirpated species.  They received a list of animal species that are endangered in Pennsylvania, but if they had another animal in mind they could utilize that if they proved it was endangered in another place.  After that, the students will do three study sketches from a reference photo of their animal, and pick one to enlarge on a 16X16 piece of watercolor paper.  They will also be required to complete a grid of 16 watercolor techniques.  Here is a preliminary image of me working through the process for my project example:

The students started this project today, for the sole reason that I was being observed.  There was some confusion because not many of them were ready to move on, so when I introduce the project to the other section of the class it will only be the introduction PowerPoint and those students who are ready will be able to start while the others will continue to finish up their previous project.  That is one thing that I love about the art room, every student is at a different point in their projects and that is exactly what is supposed to happen because everyone has a different pace for their creative process.