8 levels, each a complete unit with a teacher version and a student version. The teacher version names the specific learning outcomes, what each looks like in a learner’s work, and the Texas standards it meets. The student version is the same unit in the learner’s own words, ready to hand out or read aloud.
8 levels
Teacher and student versions
Aligned to the TEKS
From preschool to university
The levels
Each level builds on the one before: from tearing and flipping a shape, to cutting on purpose, to designing with value, color and proportion, to a portfolio of studies at college level.
the sheet’s front a flipped piece, showing the back the ground
Ages 4 and 5
Preschool
Dark and Light Are Friends
Four-year-olds paint a light ground, tear a big shape from the edge of a dark square, open it like a door to find its light twin, and take a short studio turn beside an adult.
Four sessions of 15 to 20 minutes
7 outcomes
2022 Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines, Fine Arts: Art (VIII.A)
Kindergartners cut circles, squares and triangles from the edges of a dark square, flip each into its mirror twin, name the shape and the space, and describe a classmate’s crest.
Children cut a shape from every side of a square, flip each piece into a mirror image, sort geometric from organic shapes, and meet paper cutting from China and Mexico.
Four 45-minute sessions
7 outcomes
TEKS §117.105 (Art, Grade 1) and §117.108 (Art, Grade 2)
Students plan an expanded square in thumbnails, test symmetrical, asymmetrical and radial balance in the studio, cut it from paper over a painted ground, and explain it in an artist statement.
Figure or Ground? Asymmetry, Nested Cuts and a Third Value
Students test figure against ground, balance one large cut with smaller ones, cut a shape from a flipped piece, add a third value, and critique in Feldman’s four steps.
Five 50-minute sessions
7 outcomes
TEKS §117.202, §117.203 and §117.204 (Art, Middle School 1, 2 and 3)
Massing Dark and Light: Notan as the Ground of Composition
Art I students mass dark and light as Arthur Wesley Dow taught, develop studies into a notan in the studio and in ink and cut paper, then apply, critique and document it.
A Series and a Voice: Chromatic Notan from Your Own Photographs
Advanced art students turn their own photographs into a series of three-value chromatic notans, make one by hand, research a designer of dark and light, and curate it with a statement.
Five 90-minute blocks (or ten 50-minute periods), plus work outside class
7 outcomes
TEKS §117.303, §117.304 and §117.305 (Art, Levels II, III and IV)
Figure-ground as a Design I problem: perception and design history, constrained notan studies in the studio and in cut paper, a hinged relief, a final to presentation standard, critique and a formal analysis.
Five studio meetings of 2 hours 50 minutes, plus assigned outside work
8 outcomes
Texas ACGM, ARTS 1311 Design I (with a relief study toward ARTS 1312 Design II)
Preschool: the Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines, Fine Arts domain.
Kindergarten to grade 8: the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for Art, 19 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 117, Subchapters A and B.
High school: the TEKS for Art, Levels I to IV, Chapter 117, Subchapter C.
University: Texas has no TEKS for college; the unit follows the state’s course outcomes for Design I (ARTS 1311) in the Lower-Division Academic Course Guide Manual.
Every outcome in a teacher version lists the standards it meets, and the page quotes each one word for word with a link to its source. Teaching outside Texas? Each activity also lists the National Core Arts Standards it meets.
Print
Worksheets and the rubric kit
The printable worksheets that go with the levels. Each teacher version says which ones suit it.