Nesterets Natalya
Teacher Name: Nesterets Natalya (with the assistance of the 3d year student, Motolova  Anastasia, group 335, Syktyvkar State University).

Art Work: Pottery and Baskets: c.1100-c.1960
Theme: Creativity and Ingenuity
Level: High Intermediate/ Low Advanced Secondary Students
Lesson Plan Title: Description of Pottery and Basketry artworks of 1100 till 1960 cc.
Skills Covered: These classroom activities are focused on practicing speaking, reading and writing while the students learn about the ancient American pottery and baskets.
General Goals: Students will become familiar with language related to pottery and baskets handcrafts and they will be able to describe some artworks of prominent craftsmen, using appropriate language and grammar structure (active and passive voice tenses, comparative and superlative degree of the adjectives).
Specific Objectives: Students will develop arts-related vocabulary, learn structures used with arts vocabulary, use language to describe the process of pottery or basketry making and decorate and describe their own painted works.
Materials/Visual Aids: The text, posters or copies from the book “Picturing America” in Power Point version, unpainted clue jars or sheets of paper, watercolors, crayons, colored pencils.
Language focus:
Vocabulary: adjectives to describe the artworks (e.g., durable, crooked, enriched)
Grammar: active and passive voice tenses

Instructional Procedures:

• Warm-up activity. (5minutes)

This exercise will remind students the materials from which a certain number of objects are made. The students are asked to have a close examination of the lesson images and discuss what they think pottery and baskets things are made from. Then ask students to do the matching exercise on their own or in pairs.

Exercise 1.1. What is the main material usually used in these items? Appendix 1.

                                       
1. a bookshelf                                               6. a sweater
2. a magazine                                                7. a T-shirt
3. a mirror                                                    8. a basket
4. a pottery jar                                               9. a ballpoint pen
5. a microwave oven                                      10. gloves

I. Study a new vocabulary
Ex.1.2. (5 minutes total)

a) Find synonyms to the following words. Appendix 2.

b) Find opposite pairs. One word is an extra one.

c) Make up your own sentences with these words.

II Reading
Ex.2.1. (5 minutes)
Read the text and find which parts of it are about these things. Appendix 3.

This exercise helps students draw their attention on the certain parts of the texts. The sentences emphasize one of the main ideas of each part and help students divide the text logically. Students do the exercise on their own. They do not need to read the whole text translating all the unknown words. The task is to extract the ideas from the given text and it will be easier for the students to discuss a certain object further. Early finishers can check answers in pairs. Check answers with the class.
1) This pot has geometrical decoration on the exterior, but greater attention is focused on the interior.
2) The body of this thing is glossy and is enriched with a pattern of white stitches grouped in twos and threes.
3) These artworks are both useful and beautiful examples of handcrafts handing down and improving upon through generations.
4) This couple tried to find a way to reproduce the style of some of the ancient pottery.
5) This thing is shaped like a slightly squashed sphere and opposing visual forces create tension.
6) To make their surface smooth those people used their hands or scrapers.
7) This craft is made in a form of a tray.

Nesterets Natalya
 (From “Picturing America” teachers resource book, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1a Pottery and Baskets: c.1100-c.1960 pages 3-6)
Part A.
“Anasazi Cylinder Jars, c. 1100
A thousand years ago, American Indians used….. a remarkable American Indian culture that flourished there”.
Part B
“The Anasazi people were farmers who….. the Pueblo peoples who now inhabit the region”.
Part C
“By the mid-1300s, Sikyatki potters….. in Hopi pottery that continues today”.
Part D
“MARIA MONTOYA MARTINEZ (1887–1980) and
JULIAN MARTINEZ (1879–1943), Jar, c. 1939
Just as Nampeyo was reviving….. in Pueblo history and traditions”.
Part E
“LOUISA KEYSER (c. 1850–1925), Beacon Lights, 1904–1905
About seven hundred miles northwest….. from utilitarian objects to works of art”.
Part F
“CAESAR JOHNSON (1872–1960),
Gullah Rice Fanner Basket, c. 1960
In coastal South Carolina, an important tradition….. make the disk appear to rotate”.
Part G
“CARL TOOLAK (c. 1885– c. 1945), Baleen Basket, 1940
Although an ancient tradition……. his head above icy water”.

III. Grammar
Ex.3.1. (10 minutes total for Ex.3.1. and Ex.3.2.)
a) State the tense and the voice of the following underlined predicates. Appendix 4.
1) Each object exemplifies a craft and a tradition that were handed down and improved upon through generations. 2) Between 900 and 1150, they dominated the region. 3) The geometric designs, painted with black lines on a white background, give the pots their individual character. 4) The slimmest pot is made to look even thinner by vertical striping, and the two widest pots appear even broader because their designs twist from the vertical and move diagonally across them. 5) By the end of the thirteenth century, the Anasazi had abandoned the area and migrated south and east to smaller settlements. 6) The meaning of the symbolism of Sikyatki pottery has been forgotten, but the Sikyatki style was given new life at the end of the nineteenth century, when a young Hopi-Tewa potter named Nampeyo (c. 1860–1942) drew inspiration from Sikyatki pottery designs for her own pieces. Just as Nampeyo was reviving the Sikyatki style in her community west of Chaco Canyon, another Pueblo potter was reviving an ancient style in her Tewa community, one hundred miles east of Chaco.
b) Make up questions to the underlined predicates (all types of questions). To make the activity more interesting divide students into 2 teams and give them time to list the questions. Take the teams turns to ask and answer questions. Keep score of how many questions and answers each group gets right.

Ex.3.2.
a) Make comparative and superlative degree of the following adjectives. Appendix 5.
Slim, broad, thin, wide, small, beautiful, long, fat, tall, durable, great, high.
b) Find these adjectives in the sentences of the first 2 parts and say in what degree they are used.
c) Make up your own sentences with these adjectives.

IV Speaking
Ex.4.1. (10 minutes)
Fill in the table with the following contents:
The author of an artwork, the name of an artwork, the place where it was found, how the tribes used it, the museum where it is exhibited, adjectives can be used to describe.
Ex.4.2. (15 minutes: 10 minutes- for a guide, 5 minutes- for spectators)
Play a guide.
The posters are hung on the wall around the classroom, with artists’ names written below each one; appropriate Indian background music is played. Divide students into 6 groups (6 artworks). Each group chooses a student to be a guide. A student describes a curtain artwork according to the main points given in the previous exercise. Spectators (the other students from each group) can ask questions and replace the guide if he has any inaccuracy with the description of those artworks. All the groups work simultaneously. The teacher watches, monitors and helps with grammar.
Extra-Class Work/ (Homework)
V. Writing
Ex.1.Write an art review or a review of Pottery and Baskets exhibitions. Appendix 6.
You are a journalist and you have just visited this exhibition. You think this collection is worthwhile advertising. (120-180 words)
Read 4 samples of exhibitions reviews from the world known museums which can help you perform the task.
Plan:

1. Describe the collection briefly. Use plenty of adjectives to describe
2. What makes this collection special?
3. Why we should all visit and enjoy it.
4. Do not forget about your own feeling about it.

Samples
1) Pottery making was among the earliest of American crafts. Everything needed for the production of pottery was present in America -- clay, abundant wood for firing kilns, and capable craftsmen. This exhibition provides a discussion of examples selected from among the watercolor renderings in the Index of American Design; the images are intended to illustrate the great variety of pottery made in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
This collection consists of approximately 18,000 watercolor renderings of American decorative arts objects from the colonial period through the nineteenth century. (National Gallery of Art)

2) This collection will display a wide-ranging selection of works representative of most of the diverse Native American regions and periods. Objects on view will range from authoritative masks and headdress frontlets of painted wood made by peoples of the Pacific Northwest, to splendidly ornamented deerskin shirts and smoking pipes of the high Plains, to delicate and carefully wrought works of the Northeast region made with a clear understanding of European taste and acquisitiveness. (National Gallery of Art)

3) Several Northeastern groups are represented by objects in a wide variety of media and date. The exhibition features a number of "fancies," or cross-cultural objects illustrating the directions taken by Native American artists when European tastes began to be catered to in the 18th century. Also on view are birchbark letter cases and trays with floral designs of moose-hair embroidery, boxes and chairs decorated with dyed porcupine quills, and pincushions encrusted heavily with glass beads. Baskets of ash splint, from the region between Maine and New York, are included as well. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

4) Baskets on view are the work of the Pomo peoples of California, whose compelling basket-weaving tradition incorporates bird feathers and is often acknowledged as among the finest basketry made by any indigenous people. Southwestern pottery includes a "Chungo Brothers" dough bowl made a decade ago by the Cochiti Pueblo artist Diego Romero (b. 1964), who has achieved fame as a master satirist in fired clay. Romero both continues and elaborates on the ancient tradition of pottery making. In this particular bowl, he gently ridicules the non-Native approach to academic archaeology. The ancient peoples of the Southeast will be represented by personally scaled stone objects of utilitarian function and symmetrical form, such as banner stones, works that can date back as far as the fourth millennium B.C. in eastern North America. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Learning objectives
At the end of the lesson students will be able to:
1. Explain what the ancient American pottery and basketry things are made from.
2. Describe some artworks of prominent craftsmen, using new language vocabulary and structure.
3. Describe the process of pottery or basketry making.
4. State and use grammar structures (active and passive voice tenses, comparative and superlative degree of the adjectives) with arts vocabulary.

Extensions/ additional exercises
Ex. 1. Match these words with their definitions. Appendix 7.

Ex. 2.
Ask the students to choose one of the artworks and tell a few words how this thing is made (the technology of its making). They can use the text at this stage.
For example – to make each pot the Anasazi people 
1) took circular coils of clay
2) -

Ex 3.
a) Fill in the gaps with the correct form of these verbs in box. Appendix 8.

About seven hundred miles northwest of Four Corners,
another group of American Indians ___commercial
value in some of their creative traditions. The Washoe people
and their ancestors ____as nomads in the area around
Lake Tahoe for several thousand years. Their way of life ____
suddenly with the 1848 California Gold Rush and the discovery
of silver in the Comstock Lode in 1859. Travelers to California
____  by settlers who ____ the Washoe area
around Virginia City, Nevada. The settlers ___trees, ___roads,
___ fences, and ____ ranches. Adjusting to the new cash
economy, the Washoe ____ their nomadic life and ____
to work for wages.
b) Rewrite this text in the present tense making all necessary changing.

Ex.4.
Warm-up. Write a short (5-6 sentences) and funny story on the topic “My last visit to the museum” using at least 10 new words listed above
Ex.5.
Game-What kind of object is there in the bag? Objects of different surface and quality are placed inside the bag. Students take turn to take an object and to determine what kind of it is without seeing this object. (This exercise can be used in teaching visually impaired students).
Ex.6.
Find the objects in the class which are smooth, rough, resilient, pliable crooked, utilitarian cylindrical, asymmetrical, symmetrical, knobby, glossy, stiff, flat, bulging.
Ex.7.
Why were the new pottery jars more valuable then the old ones?
Ex.8.
Short info about pottery, basketry
Ex.9.
What museums are all of these artworks exhibited? Use web-sites to find information about the museums and in what hall or room you can find them visiting the museums.
Ex.10.
Multiple choice. Choose the right synonym. Appendix 9.

1. Dominate

a) build           b) prevail         c) surround
2)   Squirming
a) twisting       b) prominent   c) distinct
3) Revival

a) rebirth         b) growth        c) birth
4) Interaction
a) desire          b) replacement  c) cooperation
5) Marshy
a) boggy          b) foggy          c) damp
6) Pliable
a) stiff                         b) writhing      c) flexible
7) Flourish
a) degrade       b) reinforce     c) prosper

Ex 11.
We have several jars in our classroom made by our pottery masters. They have not been decorated yet. Take a paintbrush and paints and try to decorate them yourself repeating the ancient ornament or just creating your own one. Students can draw those pots on a sheet of paper and paint them according to the assignment.
Ex.12.
Write an essay on the topic “Modern art exhibitions are nowadays more popular than exhibitions showing ancient heritage”. Do you agree or disagree with the statement? Why? (150-180 words).
Tips on writing.
Write a short introduction to the essay.
Use words like firstly, secondly, finally, also, furthermore, etc. to list your points.
Support your arguments with reasons (argument – reason 1, reason 2 – argument 2 – reason 1, reason 2)
Make sure you have expressed your opinion clearly.
Ex.13.
Write a letter to your friend. You have just visited American Museum of Natural History, New York. And you want to share all your impressions to your close friend. (120-150 words).
Tips:
Write a natural introduction and conclusion. Do not forget about special framing (Dear…, Sincerely/Love/Best wishes…)
Use linking words and phrases – however, as a result, one reason is…
Ex.14.
Write a short article on the topic “New York and Washington – world museum capitals” (150-180 words)
Tips:
Vary your vocabulary. Try to use synonyms instead of using the same word again.
Good to have a small joke at the end!

Glossary

KEYS
Ex. 1. Match these words with their definitions.

Ex.1.2.
a) Find synonyms to the following words:
1e, 2d, 3i, 4h, 5m, 6a, 7b, 8c, 9g, 10f, 11n, 12k, 13j,14l.
b) Find antonyms to the following words:
1c, 2i, 3j, 4h, 5f, 6a, 7g, 8d, 9b.
Ex 2.1.
A-3, B-6, C-1, D-4, E-5, F-7, G-2.

List of References:
“Picturing America” teachers resource book, National Endowment for the Humanities,
http://picturingamerica.neh.gov
www.cambridge.org/elt/face2face/
http://www.metmuseum.org/
Additional resources:
www.mirknig.com…raymond-murphy-essential-grammar…
www.pottery-hq.com/americanartpottery/
www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/Peterson/…
www.pueblopotteryme.com/learn.htm
audio text from VOA Special English “From Clay to Art: Exploring the World of Ceramics"
http://www.nga.gov/collection/iad/tour_index
www.nga.gov

Appendix 1.
Exercise 1.1.  What is the main material usually used in these items?

1. a bookshelf                                                6. a sweater
2. a magazine                                                7. a T-shirt
3. a mirror                                                    8. a basket
4. a pottery jar                                               9. a ballpoint pen
5. a microwave oven                                      10. gloves

Appendix 2.
I. Study a new vocabulary
Ex.1.2.
a) Find synonyms to the following words. Appendix 2.

b) Find opposite pairs. One word is an extra one.

Appendix 3.
II Reading
Ex.2.1. Read the text and find which parts of it are about these things.

This exercise helps students draw their attention on the certain parts of the texts. Students do the exercise on their own. Early finishers can check answers in pairs. Check answers with the class.

1) This pot has geometrical decoration on the exterior, but greater attention is focused on the interior.
2) The body of this thing is glossy and is enriched with a pattern of white stitches grouped in twos and threes.
3) These artworks are both useful and beautiful examples of handcrafts handing down and improving upon through generations.
4) This couple tried to find a way to reproduce the style of some of the ancient pottery.
5) This thing is shaped like a slightly squashed sphere and opposing visual forces create tension.
6) To make their surface smooth those people used their hands or scrapers.
7) This craft is made in a form of a tray.

Appendix 4.
III. Grammar
Ex.3.1.
a) State the tense and the voice of the following underlined predicates.
1) Each object exemplifies a craft and a tradition that were handed down and improved upon through generations. 2) Between 900 and 1150, they dominated the region. 3) The geometric designs, painted with black lines on a white background, give the pots their individual character. The slimmest pot is made to look even thinner by vertical striping, and the two widest pots appear even broader because their designs twist from the vertical and move diagonally across them.
By the end of the thirteenth century, the Anasazi had abandoned the area and migrated south and east to smaller settlements. The meaning of the symbolism of Sikyatki pottery has been forgotten, but the Sikyatki style was given new life at the end of the nineteenth century, when a young Hopi-Tewa potter named Nampeyo (c. 1860–1942) drew inspiration from Sikyatki pottery designs for her own pieces. Just as Nampeyo was reviving the Sikyatki style in her community west of Chaco Canyon, another Pueblo potter was reviving an ancient style in her Tewa community, one hundred miles east of Chaco.

Appendix 5.
Ex.3.2.
a) Make comparative and superlative degree of the following adjectives:
slim, broad, thin, wide, small, beautiful, long, fat, tall, durable, great, high.
b) Find these adjectives in the sentences of the first 2 parts and say in what degree they are used.
c) Make up your own sentences with these adjectives.
Appendix 6.
Extra-Class Work/ (Homework)
V. Writing
Ex.1.Write an art review or a review of Pottery and Baskets exhibitions. You are a journalist and you have just visited this exhibition. You think this collection is worthwhile advertising. (120-180 words)
Read 4 samples of exhibitions reviews from the world known museums which can help you perform the task.

Plan:

1. Describe the collection briefly. Use plenty of adjectives to describe
2. What makes this collection special?
3. Why we should all visit and enjoy it.
4. Do not forget about your own feeling about it.

Samples
1) Pottery making was among the earliest of American crafts. Everything needed for the production of pottery was present in America -- clay, abundant wood for firing kilns, and capable craftsmen. This exhibition provides a discussion of examples selected from among the watercolor renderings in the Index of American Design; the images are intended to illustrate the great variety of pottery made in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
This collection consists of approximately 18,000 watercolor renderings of American decorative arts objects from the colonial period through the nineteenth century. (National Gallery of Art)

2) This collection will display a wide-ranging selection of works representative of most of the diverse Native American regions and periods. Objects on view will range from authoritative masks and headdress frontlets of painted wood made by peoples of the Pacific Northwest, to splendidly ornamented deerskin shirts and smoking pipes of the high Plains, to delicate and carefully wrought works of the Northeast region made with a clear understanding of European taste and acquisitiveness. (National Gallery of Art)

3) Several Northeastern groups are represented by objects in a wide variety of media and date. The exhibition features a number of "fancies," or cross-cultural objects illustrating the directions taken by Native American artists when European tastes began to be catered to in the 18th century. Also on view are birchbark letter cases and trays with floral designs of moose-hair embroidery, boxes and chairs decorated with dyed porcupine quills, and pincushions encrusted heavily with glass beads. Baskets of ash splint, from the region between Maine and New York, are included as well. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

4) Baskets on view are the work of the Pomo peoples of California, whose compelling basket-weaving tradition incorporates bird feathers and is often acknowledged as among the finest basketry made by any indigenous people. Southwestern pottery includes a "Chungo Brothers" dough bowl made a decade ago by the Cochiti Pueblo artist Diego Romero (b. 1964), who has achieved fame as a master satirist in fired clay. Romero both continues and elaborates on the ancient tradition of pottery making. In this particular bowl, he gently ridicules the non-Native approach to academic archaeology. The ancient peoples of the Southeast will be represented by personally scaled stone objects of utilitarian function and symmetrical form, such as bannerstones, works that can date back as far as the fourth millennium B.C. in eastern North America. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Appendix 7.

Ex. 1. Match these words with their definitions

Appendix 8.
Ex 3.
a)Fill in the gaps with the correct form of these verbs in box.

About seven hundred miles northwest of Four Corners,
another group of American Indians ___commercial
value in some of their creative traditions. The Washoe people
and their ancestors ____as nomads in the area around
Lake Tahoe for several thousand years. Their way of life ____
suddenly with the 1848 California Gold Rush and the discovery
of silver in the Comstock Lode in 1859. Travelers to California
____  by settlers who ____ the Washoe area
around Virginia City, Nevada. The settlers ___trees, ___roads,
___ fences, and ____ ranches. Adjusting to the new cash
economy, the Washoe ____ their nomadic life and ____
to work for wages.
b) Rewrite this text in the present tense making all necessary changing.
Appendix 9.
Multiple choice. Choose the right synonym.

1. Dominate

a) build           b) prevail         c) surround
2)   Squirming
a) twisting       b) prominent   c) distinct
3) Revival
a) rebirth         b) growth        c) birth
4) Interaction
a) desire          b) replacement  c) cooperation
5) Marshy
a) boggy          b) foggy          c) damp
6) Pliable
a) stiff                         b) writhing      c) flexible
7) Flourish
a) degrade       b) reinforce     c) prosper