Spencer Museum of Art The University of Kansas

Teacher Resource

Language Arts

The Language Arts revolve around mastering the concepts and skills involved in reading and writing. Two separate units were created for the middle school level and the high school level. This was done to accommodate developmental differences. The middle school level has a unit focused on just the topic of global warming and its role in the climate change at the Poles. Included are related articles at varying readability levels, which were incorporated into a Jigsaw Activity. An educational website (with an online simulation activity) is included for students to explore. Being able to work in cooperative groups and explore on the computers is intrinsically motivating for middle school students. Students will write a persuasive essay on global warming for their final project in order to incorporate the concepts of global warming and the writing process.

The high school students will read Antarctica: Escape from Disaster by Peter Lerangis (2000). This book wasn’t necessarily 100% aligned with the overall theme of climate change, but it did have a connection to the journals on view at the Spencer Museum of Art exhibition. It is fairly easy to read, so students should finish it within the first half of the unit, leaving them the last half to create their final project – an original narrative journal of art based on a character of their choice.

Standards

This unit will incorporate the following Kansas State Standards in Language Arts:

Middle School Level (6-8)

  • Standard 1 – Reading
    • Benchmark 3: The student expands vocabulary.
    • Benchmark 4:
      • Indicator 2: The student understands the purposes of text features and uses such features to locate information in and to gain meaning from appropriate-level texts.
      • Indicator 5: The student uses information from the text to make inferences and draw conclusions.
      • Indicator 8: The student explains cause-effect relationships in appropriate-level texts.
      • Indicator 9: The student uses paraphrasing and organizational skills to summarize information from appropriate-level texts in logical order.
      • Indicator 12: The student established purposes for both assigned and self-selected reading.
  • Standard 1 – Writing
    • Benchmark 4: The student writes persuasive text using the writing process. (All indicators under this benchmark can be taught.)

High School Level (9-12)

  • Standard 1 – Reading
    • Benchmark 3: The student expands vocabulary.
    • Benchmark 4:
      • Indicator 3: The student uses prior knowledge, content, and text type features to make, to revise, and to confirm predictions.
      • Indicator 4: The student generates and responds logically to literal, inferential, evaluative, synthesizing, and critical thinking questions before, during, and after reading the text.
  • Standard 1 – Writing
    • Benchmark 1: The student writes narrative text using the writing process. (All indicators under this benchmark can be taught.)

Resources