Art Lesson Plans: Creative Ways to Teach History, Culture and Society

By Nikki Tuting

This cross-posted blog story from Nikki Tuting also appears on the Planbook.com blog. This blog features posts aimed at helping teachers in their planning, pedagogy, and development of their classroom environment. It also features many posts on implementing various types of technology in the classroom.

Art class is much more powerful when it has a meaning or life lesson behind it. Whether honoring a historical figure or re-creating an ancient technique, combining art with history, society and culture enhances student learning across multiple subjects. Here’s how to master your art lesson planning so that students can create art that’s both expressive and informative.

Elements of a Strong Art Lesson

Creating an effective arts classroom starts by establishing positive relationships with your students. Art teacher Jordan DeWilde says opening up to students about your interests will make them more willing to share their own. Plus, this facilitates a relationship of trust between you and your students and between students in the class.

He suggests that topics such as the outdoors, travel, animals, sports and pop culture will encourage students to share a bit more about themselves through creative expression.

Having worksheets and exercises on hand is another smart idea in case a lesson gets disrupted or there’s a substitute teacher in the room. This will ensure that your art class continues to go smoothly and that students see it as a place of learning.

One helpful website for art printables is The Student Art Guide, which offers ideas, projects and strategies for art teachers and students. In particular, they have handouts explaining painting techniques, line drawing techniques and perspective drawing. The line drawing guide is accompanied by a step-by-step explanation and worksheet covering multiple types of line drawings. These include blind contour, continuous line, contour, cross contour and planar analysis.

Another way to create meaningful lesson plans is to connect to your local art resources. Kirstin Baxter, author of “Creating Vibrant Art Lesson Plans: A Teacher’s Sketchbook,” explains that it’s important to…