Friday, May 18, 2018

Word Ladders Inspired by Jasper Johns

Second Grade Art
3 Class Periods
Word Ladders Inspired by Jasper Johns, Second Grade Art Lesson
About the Artist:
Jasper Johns
American painter Jasper Johns is best known for his paintings of numbers, letters, targets, maps and flags.  He was born on May 15, 1930 and currently still alive today.  For this project we were inspired by his piece entitled Colored Alphabet.
Colored Alphabet by Jasper Johns.
The following is also a YouTube clip that I shared with students about the artist.  I did not show the very last part since it related to a different project inspired by the artist.
               Brief Biography of Jasper Johns

Day 1:  


To begin this lesson students learned about artist Jasper Johns.  We discussed details about his life as well as examined several pieces of his artwork.

I had done some prior investigating with the second grade teachers to see if students were familiar with word ladders. I was excited to hear that students at my school did have a basic knowledge of this topic.  Thanks to this, I was able to begin the lesson with more of a review approach.  We reviewed the concept of word ladders (taking a word, changing one letter to make a new word, and then continuing the process to form new words).  As a class we created a word ladder together.  I then gave students a handout for them to create their own word ladders.  Each word had to be 4 letters long.  I had numerous examples on display and informed students that they could also copy one of the many examples I had on another handout that I had provided to the students.

I had  students glue various size pieces of newspaper to their 12 x 18 inch paper before they traced their letters. I recommended gluing five pieces down.  Piece could overlap.  I informed students we were more interested in the text then photographs.

Students used stencils (3 inch wide) to trace the letters of their words on a 12 x 18 inch piece of paper.

Oil pastels were used to color in the letters.

Coloring in letters with oil pastels.


Day 2:

Students that needed to finish coloring in their letters with the oil pastels continued to do so.

After letters were colored in, student painted the background of the composition using liquid tempera paint.  Students were encourage to explore the many possibilities paint offered by mixing colors and experimenting with brush strokes and brush size.
Painting compositions.

Day 3:

On this day I shared this YouTube clip on the artwork of Jasper Johns.  It is a song that I found quite catchy and the students enjoyed it, too! Jasper Johns Song

Students were allowed to finish painting today.


If paintings were complete, students were asked to go back into their composition with the oil pastels and touch up any letters that were hard to see.

Student Examples:













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