Title - Cooperative Snowmen
By - Tabitha Celski
Primary Subject - Art
Secondary Subjects - Language Arts
Grade Level - K-3
Teacher Intent: To help the students work together as a team to create a finished product without much teacher intervention.
SWBAT:

  • Work together as a team to create a snowperson for the bulletin board.
  • Explain how they worked together as a team to create their snowperson.
  • Write a short story about their snowman.

Materials:

Writing paper with space to draw a picture, small pieces of white paper, large pieces of white butcher paper, scrap papers, various colors of medium sized butcher paper for accessories, crayons or markers, glue, scissors, pencils

Before:

Read the story Snowmen at Night. After the story, discuss the different things each snowman had (hats, scarves, mittens, stick arms, buttons, carrot noses). Discuss the sizes of the snowmen. (They all had three snowballs, could a snowperson have two? Four? One?) Explain that they are going to work together as a cooperative group to create a snowperson for the class bulletin board. They will have to decide as a team what the snowperson will look like when it is done. Say, "The teacher will not tell you how to make it or give you suggestions, you must make it together as a group".

During:

Break up students into cooperative groups. Have students draw a rough draft of what they think the snowman should look like. Have students share their pictures with their group and talk about what parts they would like the group snowperson to have. Remind the class to decide as a group, are you going to make a snowman with three parts, two parts, or four parts? Will he have a hat? Will he have a scarf? What kind of clothes or accessories will he have? What will his face look like? What about his arms? Are his arms made of sticks, snow or something else? Will your snowperson be a boy or a girl? It is up to your group to decide together.

After:

Share the snowpersons with the class. Have the groups tell the class how they worked together to create their snowperson (who’s idea was it for the black hat... etc.)
Write a short story about what your snowperson might do at night when nobody is looking. Your story should have three sentences. One sentence tells about your snowperson, two sentences telling what your snowperson did at night.
Draw a picture of your snowperson doing that thing. The snowperson in your picture should look like the snowperson you made as a cooperative group. There should be at least 4 colors in your picture.

Assessment:

Snowperson:
Did the groups work together as a team? Did they vote on what to put on their snowman? Did they take turns putting him together? Did everyone in the group participate in the project?
Short Story:
Did the story have at least three sentences? Did the story make sense? Did the picture relate to the story? Did the snowman in the picture look like the snowman created as a team? Did the picture have at least 4 different colors?

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From: LessonPlansPage.com