Museo para muchachos by Abby Carle

created on Nov 04, 2017 modified on Jun 21, 2018 01:36

description:

This six-to-eight-week project was designed for a class of eight Spanish learners with advanced low proficiency. The learners are enrolled in a course titled “Español Avanzado” at an English-speaking independent high school in an urban setting (Boston, Massachusetts). The course meets five times per week for forty-five minutes each class period and is taught between ninety to one hundred percent in the target language. The overall curriculum of the school has a strong bend toward community service and social justice, and these eight students in particular have a strong affinity for art and a talent for creative expression projects. This project allows them not only to learn more about art and artists from the Spanish-speaking world, but also to design a product that would afford them the opportunity to use their artistic skills to benefit the community. Additionally, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and our school are easily accessible via the same subway line, making a project that connects these two institutions a natural choice.

Learners will investigate how to engage children in the exploration of art in collaboration with Spanish-speaking tour guides at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) located in Boston, Massachusetts in order to create an activity brochure designed for Spanish-speaking children as they tour artwork by Spanish-speaking artists at the MFA. The activity brochures will be submitted to the MFA as a free resource for museum patrons.

 

Academically, learners will engage in sustained inquiry about museum education and visual arts in Spanish based on data and the learners’ interests. As the project unfolds, learners will use the target language to describe artwork by Spanish-speaking artists and design an activity brochure for Spanish-speaking children about the artists and artwork using vocabulary for art and museums and relevant tenses in the indicative and subjunctive mode. Students will likely use the present, preterit, imperfect, and present perfect indicative tenses as well as complex sentence structures to make comparisons and superlatives when describing artwork and artists. However, the specific target grammar will be the imperative and the present subjunctive for giving instructions and suggestions. Students will have been introduced to both the imperative and present subjunctive already, so this unit will serve as reinforcement for this target grammar.

 

Culturally, learners will engage in:

·       observing exhibition design while interacting with tour guides from the MFA,  

·       comparing and contrasting existing models for activities for children at museums in various Spanish-speaking cities, and   

·       critically interpreting artwork by Spanish-speaking artists.

 

Major activities include: (1) Researching, comparing, and contrasting the artists and artwork from Spanish-speaking countries on display at the MFA; (2) Interviewing Spanish-speaking tour guides at the MFA about the artwork and how they design guided tours; (3) Submitting a printed activity brochure that will guide Spanish-speaking children who visit the MFA through the artwork of Spanish-speaking artists.

 

The outcome of the project will be an activity brochure in Spanish for Spanish-speaking children which will be shared with the MFA through a PDF document to fulfill the need for printed guided tours in Spanish for children who visit the MFA.

publisher:
National Foreign Language Resource Center
publish_date:
Nov. 4, 2017
contributors:
copyright:
None
uri:
None

Language: Spanish

Subject Area(s): history, entertainment, education, design, creativity, communities, beauty, visual arts, language and literature

Instructional Context

Product Description:
The eight students in my class will work in pairs to produce four unique activity guides that are designed to help young learners from Spanish-speaking families who visit the Museum of Fine Arts interact with and think critically about the artwork by Spanish-speaking artists on display. In each brochure, consumers will read about four pieces of art and the artists who created them. Specifically consumers will read a brief biography of the artist and a brief overview of their artistic style, and they will complete an activity about the artwork that allows the consumer to engage with the art in a creative way. Each brochure will have its own theme that connects the four artworks featured in the guide as well as images of the art and a map of the museum.

Target Audience Description:
This project was designed for eight Spanish learners (1 sophomore, 2 seniors, and 4 juniors in their fifth year of learning and 1 heritage speaker in 9th grade) with advanced low proficiency. The learners are enrolled in a course titled “Español Avanzado” at an English-speaking independent high school in an urban setting (Boston, Massachusetts). The course meets five times per week for forty-five minutes each class period and is taught between ninety to one hundred percent in the target language. The overall curriculum of the school has a strong bend toward community service and social justice, and these six students in particular have a strong affinity for art and a talent for creative expression projects. I wanted to design a project that would allow them not only to learn more about art and artists from the Spanish-speaking world, but also to design a product that would afford them the opportunity to use their artistic skills to benefit the community. Additionally, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and our school are easily accessible via the same subway line, making a project that connects these two institutions a natural choice.

Audience Location:
The activity guide will be made available at community centers and libraries in Boston, MA. Ideally it would also be made available at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as well.

Heritage Learners:
mixed

Product Target Culture:
Spanish-speaking families in the Boston area

Audience Role:
Consumers of a museum activity guide designed for Spanish-speaking families

Language Proficiency

ACTFL Scale:
8 4 5 6 7 9 10

World Readiness Standards

Cultures
Relating Cultural Products to Perspectives
Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives

Communication
Interpretive
Presentational
Interpersonal

Comparisons
Language comparisons
Cultural comparisons

Communities
Lifelong Learning

Connections
Making Connections
Acquiring Information and Diverse Perspectives

Communities
School and Global

21st Century Skills

Life and Career Skills
Leadership and responsibility
Productivity and Accountability
Social and Cross Cultural Skills
Initiative and Self-Direction
Flexibility and adaptability

Information, Media, and Technology Skills
Technology Literacy
Creativity and Innovation
Collaboration
Communication

Interdisciplinary Themes
Global Awareness

Project Sequence Overview

Preparing for the Project

1. Materials - Resources (articles, websites, and videos) that may be used to supplement teaching throughout the project. more detail

Launching the Project

1. Entry event - A simulation of what it might feel like for a museum visitor who does not have the language skills to understand museum literature more detail

Managing the Project

1. Project Implementation (Sequence of Activities) - Step by step instructions for implementing the project. more detail

Assessment

1. Rubrics and Assessment - Materials for assessing work throughout the project. more detail