The five lessons that comprise this guide may be used sequentially or as independent units. An introduction to the key principles of each lesson is followed by a close examination of the works, including historical context and information on the artist. Discussion questions based on the images lead students through formal analysis of the artworks and seek to create connections between information and visual evidence. The activities that conclude each lesson encourage students to synthesize what they have learned about the works, and carry the lessons into the broader curriculum or relate it to skills students are practicing in the classroom.

Students will compare and contrast two paintings; understand the term modern as used in an historical and art historical context; become familiar with the terms foreground, middle ground, and background.

Students will become familiar with the industrial developments of the twentieth century and how they affected architecture and society; explore the development of urban environments; compare and contrast graphics and drawings; create works of art that document their neighborhoods from their own perspectives; learn the terms utopian and conceptual.

Students will be able to visually analyze a photographic image; write a headline and a story to accompany an image chosen from a newspaper; and compare what they see in a photojournalistic image to what they read in the story accompanying the image.

This lesson is part of a sequential unit. Students use criteria developed in class to evaluate which of their own sketches would make the best symbolic sculpture. They choose a final design, techniques and materials, and create sculptures based on their designs.

This lesson is part of a sequential unit. Students participate in a class critique of the symbolic sculptures they created. They critique the work of their peers by responding to questions about the symbolic content and applying criteria for sculpture developed in Lesson 1.

This lesson is part of a sequential unit. Students paint the same still-life arrangement from Lesson 2, but in an opaque medium. They compare similarities and differences of working with the transparent and opaque mediums and refine their artist's statements.

This lesson is part of a sequential unit. Students display the two still-life paintings that they created in previous lessons, along with their artist's statements. They write a review of a peer's work and discuss all of the paintings in a group critique.

Students will analyze the sculpture Head with Horns by Paul Gauguin through objective and subjective writing activities and class discussion.