Summary

Lesson 1a: Students write a paragraph about their chosen Hidden Villa mural area

Lesson 1b: Representing Hidden Villa through art

Lesson 1c: Assembling the Hidden Villa class mural

Lesson 2: Illustrating Hidden Villa themes through a class mural

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Lesson Plan

Lesson 1a: Students write a paragraph about their chosen Hidden Villa mural area 

Orientation: Explain to your class that it will be making a huge mural of Hidden Villa to share with others. On the mural, students will represent what they learned about themselves and the environment. Brainstorm with your class all the areas of Hidden Villa that they explored. Remind them to be specific. For example, even in the confines of the garden there are several different areas that provide students with different experiential and learning opportunities. On the farm there are many different animal enclosures. In the forest there are many different trails. Assign or support your students in choosing the area that they would like to represent.

Individual or Pairs: Guide your students in writing a short paragraph about their assigned area at Hidden Villa. Their paragraphs could include an explanation of a fun or interesting experience they had in this area along with the specific information they learned. Students should revise and edit their paragraphs when they are done.

Lesson 1b: Representing Hidden Villa through art

Each student (or pair of students) creates the artistic representation of their area at Hidden Villa separately and then glues them together on the mural. In this way all students can be working on the project at once.

Orientation: Before your students begin, make sure to define how big their illustration should be. Then model and teach how to implement the artistic technique you would like your students to use. (I prefer to push my students' artistic ability and shy away from letting them use markers. For our class murals we have used student-made stencils, Eric Carle style collage and watercolor.)

Activity: Working with other students who have written about their area, students work on their artistic representation. (I recommend requiring a rough draft sketch before students start in on their final illustration. )

Lesson 1c: Assembling the Hidden Villa class mural

Assemble your class mural on large, taped-together pieces of colored butcher paper. Review the concept of scale with your class. "Where should each area go on the mural so that your 'mini-mural map' makes sense to the people who look at it?" Together with the class you could lightly trace in pencil the location of each major area.

Activity: Invite a few students or groups of students to come up one at a time to glue their paragraphs and artistic expressions of their area in the correct location on the mural. Finally: Organize a rotation of students to draw in the background or simply assign a few students this task. Display.

Lesson 2: Illustrating Hidden Villa themes through a class mural

Follow the same steps as above, but make a mural that supports the environmental learning from your integrated Hidden Villa unit(s). For example, your class could create a mural of your community that indicates the location of the possible generation of environmental pollution (e.g.: Storm drains, factory smoke stacks, playground trash, cars on the street, etc.). This same mural could also locate the different places where citizens could make better environmental decisions to protect the environment (ex: bicycles on the street instead of cars, recycling bins in our classrooms, compost piles in our backyards, etc.).