“Picasso’s Faces”

Samantha Rapp

PSY 205

Lesson Plan Analysis

In elementary school, I remember having a similar lesson taught to me about the imagination and originality of the artist Pablo Picasso. The lesson that I examined touches on how Picasso brought to the world a new and uninhibited style of creating faces. Now studying Art Education, I am thankful for that lesson as it introduced me to a world where I found my passion.

Art class captures the visual part of learning in an extensive way. Since the teacher begins this lesson with reading stories about Picasso and showing pictures of his artistic works, he or she touches on the concept of elaboration. Elaboration is very important in the memory of information for the students. Giving stories about Picasso’s life and showing visual examples of his paintings allows for the student to attach associations to the name Pablo Picasso. Visual examples are great for this lesson as it allows for a great attachment to the style of Picasso to be remembered. At a later date, it will be easier for the students to retrieve information on Picasso by pulling up pictures of his work that they had seen in this class lesson.

Before the activity, the teacher asks the students to brainstorm about Picasso’s work. The students are also encouraged to figure out how they could make faces like Picasso did. The brainstorming activity is another part of the concept of elaboration. Brainstorming provides organization of information for the brain. This allows for easier access to the information. When the teacher plans for the students to do this organization before completing the activity, he or she is allowing the information to make sense to the students. This pushes the understanding of the way Picasso created his faces, and helps the students to not feel lost as they begin to create their own Picasso inspired face.

Examining Picasso’s works allows for Inductive Learning to take place. Showing examples of Picasso’s paintings and asking the students what they think about the paintings begins the process of inductive learning. Through inductive learning, the students induce or discover what the common variables are in the artwork of Picasso. This is effective in understanding the information better, gaining ownership of the material which allows for the information to be easier to retrieve, and makes the activity engaging and fun. Inductive learning continues throughout the lesson as the teacher will ask, “What style does he (Picasso) use? Why do you think he uses the colors he does?” In this style of learning, the teacher provides examples of Picasso’s famous art works and asks the students their opinions on it. The students are also encouraged to find themes in Picasso’s art. This allows the students to discover common variables between the works of Picasso. In this lesson, it has to do with the style of how Picasso painted faces.

Although inductive learning is taking place, deductive learning is occurring as well. There are advantages to both, but in this lesson deductive learning allows for a quicker introduction and control over the activity. Deductive learning occurs if the students do not mention the colors or style used when Picasso created his many faces. After the class is asked about the pictures, and if they do not offer these observations then the teacher plans to tell the class about the colors that Picasso used and the style he used to create his faces. The teacher is then giving the rule to the students and they can now create their own examples and interpretation of Picasso’s faces.

Picasso’s imaginative faces allows for decentration to be explored. The lesson targets children in the third through fifth grade, which would fall into the concrete operational stage Piaget researched. Decentration occurs in this stage, allowing the child to grow into flexibility in his or her thinking. When the activity starts, the students are asked to make two different faces. These two different faces will later be combined to create one face, which is in the Picasso style. Imagining how the two different faces will go together later in the lesson enables the students to think of transformation. The student might address the question of what two faces should I make? How will they look when each is cut apart and put together with the other half of another face? The teacher does a good job of allowing this process to take place when letting the student decide how to make his or her own inspired Picasso face.

When the teacher introduces the style of faces Picasso added to the art community, the teacher is changing the schema the students might already have about art. If a student has never seen a Picasso style portrait, then the schema of the student will change. If the Picasso style of faces is entirely new to the student, then the teacher is assisting in assimilation of art for the student. The student is still using his or her existing schema of what art is, but the new found information on the style of art Picasso is added to the pre-existing schema. The lesson has now added to the student’s schema, or mental representation of thought, more information about a particular artist and his style of art.

The entire lesson allows for this specific style of art to sink into the student’s mind, which addresses the consolidation theory. While working on the activity of making a face in the way Picasso made his faces grants information to be processed on the stories of Picasso and the style of art he brought to the world. In the span of thirty minutes, information is transferred from short term memory to long term memory. Accurately assuming that working on the activity and asking questions about it would take at least thirty minutes, permits for this information to be transmitted into long term memory. This lesson plan is effective in the sense that the student will most likely recall important aspects about Picasso because of the time frame and allowing the short term memory to be transferred to long term memory.

However, I do believe this lesson could have taken the actual activity of creating art inspired by Picasso a little further. At the beginning of the activity, construction paper, markers, and crayons are used. At the time of third through fifth grade, I think more artist materials could be increased. Scaffolding could easily have been added to this lesson by adding the use of paints and pastels. Paints and pastels allow for richer color and texture to appear on the paper, which would aid in the process of capturing the essence of Picasso’s style. In a short demonstration in explaining how to use paints and pastels, the teacher could introduce more art materials to the students. Walking around the room and encouraging the students in their new found creative process and offering suggestions and help with the new materials would allow for scaffolding to take place. In this lesson, the students could gain a good sense of how to use paints or pastels. Once this knowledge is internalized, then the scaffold could be taken away. Thus, the class would have gained more knowledge not only on a specific style, but also on art materials as well.

In this lesson plan, the knowledge gained is on the brilliance of Picasso’s approach to faces. He was able to bring to the forefront of the art world a new style, which is not easily achieved. Introducing students to this style that changed the art world is giving them a glimpse of what incredible creativity lies in front of them in their future art lessons.