Part of LDT 527 was dedicated to education frameworks and how we could apply them to our own lesson plans. Design Blueprint 3 was a fourth-grade unit plan about Impressionism and Impressionist painting that was designed using the Project-Based Learning framework. The design blueprint begins with student learning goals that define what students will understand by the end of the unit. For this unit, the students will understand the difference between an art style and an art movement, what criteria define the Impressionist style of painting, how to apply the Impressionist style of painting to their own individual work of art, how to reflect on their own artwork based on the criteria discussed in class, and how to discuss the artwork of others based on the criteria discussed in class. The content of this unit is aligned with the main goals of the Pennsylvania state standards for art because it focuses on themes of production, history, criticism, and aesthetics.
The most difficult part of Design Blueprint 3 was determining what scientific practices students were engaged in during the course of the unit. Since this is an art lesson, there are ties to science, but they are all indirect. The scientific practices tied to this unit are: analyzing and interpreting data, engaging in argument from evidence, constructing explanations, and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. The design blueprint finishes with a description of the way this unit can be used collaboratively, how technology can be used to support learning, and what artifacts students will create.
A link to the project is below.