Migration through Art - Navigating Routes and Places
an art unit for upper elementary grades
Key Understandings and Concepts
Migration is an event of survival for all species of the animal kingdom, including humans.
There is meaning, purpose, context and content intrinsically related to art.
Knowledge of art materials, techniques, and processes is used to create original artworks based on ideas, experiences, stories and opinions
Essential Questions to Focus this Unit
Where am I from? What does geography have to do with me?
How does the migration experience contribute to personal and family identity?
In what ways do artists use places to create art work?
How do artists use metaphor and symbolism in art work to tell a story?
Desirable Understandings and Learning Outcomes
Species migrate by moving from one place to another for specific reasons.
Migration is a recurring event in our past and in our contemporary world.
Artists use stories about places they have been, memories and fantasies of places, as themes for art work.
Experience using primary sources for research: maps, personal interviews, and family photos.
Develop research skills such as listening, recording, and note-taking.
Student Engagement with Essential Questions and Art
Art making: Students will create art works addressing personal connections to migration and deeper meanings of identity, place, and evidence of migration in past cultures and the animal kingdom. Gain practical experience with media techniques and processes.
Art criticism: Students will compare a variety of artists’ work and look for evidence to justify thinking using descriptive terms. Analyze metaphor in a contextual background to make meaning of art work.
Art history: Students will analyze a variety of artists’ work from different cultural backgrounds and historical time periods and contexts.
Aesthetics: Students will make meaningful connections through visual art production and experiencing artworks created by others. Develop conceptual strategies for producing art while learning how to reflect upon and assess the characteristics and merits of their work and the work of others.