Lesson #2
Example #1: Mirroring Identity (Time: 1 hr, 5 min)
Aim: How does reflection affect one’s identity?
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Materials:
“Mirrors” Sylvia Plath; Drawing Mirrors

Opening:
Students will define the following terms: art, self-portrait, identity and representation. After sharing these definitions in pairs, all students will participate in a whole group discussion focusing on these terms.

Classroom Post-Visit #2:
Objectives: To have a culminating experience tying together all previous 5 lessons. To share the products of the partnership with their peers. To self-evaluate how their students' personal writings relate to their self-portraits.

Description/questions/activity:
The students have worked on final personal writing pieces with Nina and Mark. They were allowed to use any of the writing pieces we read and any
of the artworks we saw as inspiration, in addition to further poems and
prose pieces that read in class.

We hung the self-portraits and did a read-around of the final pieces. We asked the students to jot down notes and comments about each other's
work to share after the read-around. The teachers and I team-taught the final critique, integrating the following questions into the discussion:

Has your self-representation evolved or changed since starting this partnership?  How?

How do your writing pieces relate to your self-portraits? Do they overlap in content?  Do they relate stylistically?

For you, which piece—writing or visual—do you feel more fully expresses your identity?   Which piece do you connect to more?  Which piece of yours do you like more? Why?

How about to other viewers – which piece do you feel communicates your identity more fully to others?  

How did your final writing piece evolve? What styles did you experiment
with along the way?   Why did you gravitate toward one writing style over another?

Educator comments/suggestions: (possible alternatives, future use, adapted use for age groups, etc.)  The idea to have Museum visit, post-visit #1, post-visit #2 format came at Mark and Nina's suggestion. Because of the scheduling, they knew they would not have a chance to begin their personal writing unit before cycle 2 got underway, so they thought the Museum visit would be a nice segue from the art studio self-portrait exploration and a nice kick-start to the personal writing unit. Although not our traditional format, I think it ended up working well because the students were able to see a clear connection between the first semester's visual arts focus and the second semester's writing focus by actively writing at the Museum surrounded by the artworks.