Field Trips

Family Tree

Grade Level:
Middle School: Sixth Grade through Eighth Grade
Subject:
Literacy and Language Arts,Math,Science,Social Studies
State Standards:
NATIONAL/STATE STANDARDS:
Connections, Relationships, and Applications

Depicting relationships between individuals in a work of art.

Objective(s)

Students will be able to depict relationships between individuals in a work of art.


Visual Art Standard: Connections, Relationships, and Applications
Benchmark: Apply and combine visual art, research and technology skills to communicate ideas in visual form. 

Materials

Materials needed for this plan include paper, pencil, color pencil, or marker.

Procedure

The instructor will begin by taking the group of students to the Wright brother's photo album room in the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park. The instructor will ask the group to identify the Wright brothers, and then to decipher the relationships between the people in the other photographs. The instructor can discuss the important role that family played in the Wright brother's personal and public lives, and ask the group if they have personal relationships that have deep meaning to them.

The group will also visit the album room for Paul Lawrence Dunbar. A similar discussion will take place here.

After these discussions, the group will return to an activity room. The instructor will show the group a few examples of family trees that show the relationship between the people represented. The group can also work through the process of creating a family tree from scratch.

Once the group has a good understanding of the process, the students will be asked to create a family tree showing their immediate families, and any uncles aunts or grandparents they are familiar with. Students can also be asked to reflect on the role that the people on their family trees play in their lives, and to try to develop symbolic means of showing the importance of the individuals in their family trees.



Students can begin in pencil, and add crayon, color pencil, or marker as the instructor sees fit. 
 

Assessment

The success of this project can be ascertained through the quality of the artwork (authentic assessment). The instructor can also ask a series of questions regarding the objectives of the lesson to determine how well students have comprehended the material.


Alternatively, the rubric below can be used to rate each child's performance during the working period. 

Art Rubric  
Category Possible Points  Points Earned 
Craftsmanship  20   
Time on Task  20   
Following Assignment Guidelines  20   
Use of Materials  20   
Clean Up  20   
 

Park Connections

 The group could experiment with the game "Seven Degrees of Separation."

Extensions

A blank family tree can be drawn out, so that students only need fill in the appropriate spaces. Students who are unwilling to share their true family trees might be allowed to create an imaginary one. If students are making up a family tree, then magazine pictures might be used to replace student drawings.

Additional Resources

Climbing Your Family Tree: Online and Offline Geneology for Kids, by Ira Wolfman


Me and My Family Tree, by Joan Sweeney 


 

Materials

Last updated: March 25, 2020