Dot Paintings, Connecting World History with U.S. History

My Students

In middle school, students are beginning to learn who they are and what they want to be. At this time, they begin to throw around the words "I can't". They give up before they even try. In my classroom, I try to give them the opportunity to be successful, to say "I can!"

My students are a combination of every possible type, a wonderful mix of races, religions, abilities, and talents.

I adore the variety of experiences and interests that they bring into the art classroom. Our school is located in a busy community full of commuters that travel to nearby cities to work. We, as a school, do not have a distinctive presence in this community and we are working to branch out and get our art classes involved to make connections with our community and our country.

My Project

My students will use the canvas boards and paint to create a series of topographical maps of the United States. We are learning about aboriginal art and their dot paintings that served multiple purposes including storytelling, written histories, topographical maps, and a creative form of expression. We will be inspired by these artists to create the story of the United States. Each student will choose a state, research its major features, create symbols that represent these features, and then illustrate their state in a dot painting format. Once finished, we will display at least one example of each of the 50 states in our main hallway with map keys and guided worksheets that history classes can use to analyze the work and learn facts about each state from the student's own artwork. We will also photograph this work and use an online scrapbook tool to make a picture book of the United States that parents can order a copy of and that we can provide to our libraries in the district.

Donating to this project will not only help our students have the opportunity to create and express themselves through painting, but allow them to study and learn about their country in a new and different way.

They will not just create a single painting, but a piece of a larger collaborative work that will be used to teach and inform others. It gives our students the chance to develop their own curriculum for other classes and to share their work with the larger community.