Grades/Level: Adult Learners
Subjects: Visual Arts, English–Language Arts, ESL
Time Required: Single Class Lesson
30–45 minutes
Author: Getty Museum Education Staff

Permissions:
The lesson plan and downloadable materials on this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lesson Overview

Students will make connections between their personal experiences and landscapes.

Learning Objectives

• Students can define a landscape and identify how artists visually evoke the feeling of a place.
• Students use landscape vocabulary to describe visual images.

Materials

• One of the two landscapes below
• Looking at Landscapes Vocabulary
• Student Activity Sheet: If You Were in This Picture

Lesson Steps

• Ask students to close their eyes and think about an outdoor space that means something to them. It can be a place they have visited, their homeland, or a place they have lived in the United States. Ask them to think of all the details they can remember about a typical day at this place, such as the weather, what was nearby, who they were with, what they were doing, etc. Ask them to "freeze frame" that image in their mind's eye (make it still, unmoving).

• Introduce the vocabulary list for Looking at Landscapes.

• Ask students to describe their meaningful place using the new words from the vocabulary list.

• Ask students to re-create this place in their imaginations. What does it look like? What is in the foreground? Middle ground? Background? From what point of view are they seeing thier landscape?

• Tell students that they are going to focus on a landscape. Explain that sometimes artists choose to make images of real places and sometimes they choose imaginary places.

• Display the image so the class can view it.

• Pass out the If You Were in This Picture activity sheet.

• Ask students to answer the questions while looking at this landscape.

• Give students time to work on their answers.

• When students have completed the worksheets, ask them to share their responses.