Title: Photography and the Self-Portrait
 Subject: Art
 Grade Level: 6th

Overview: Students will analyze the photographs of Gordon Parks and they will create a self-portrait with a digital camera

 Purpose: Students will begin to understand the important contribution Gordon Parks made to the world of photography. Students will begin to apply their knowledge of Gordon Parks by photographing themselves in an environment that expresses their personality.  The students will learn how to edit their own photographs using I-Photo program.

Resources and Materials:  Gordon Parks, Half Past Autumn,a Retrospective, a transparency of Gordon Park’s “American Gothic,” a transparency of Grant Wood’s, “American Gothic,” four or five digital cameras, four spotlights

Activities:
        The teacher will show students overhead transparency of Gordon Park’s “American Gothic,” and Grant Wood’s, “American Gothic.” The students will compare and contrast social similarites and differences.
         The students will get into groups of four and each team will have one spotlight and one digital camera.  Each student being photographed will have to dictate to the other memebers in the group where the light should hit, and how they would like to be posed.  The photographer will also have to make sure the subject being photographed will be in 75% of the frame. 
        At the end of class, each student will have to download their picture into the computer and they will have to save their photograph in their folder on the server.
        The next week, the students will learn how to edit their photo in I-Photo.  They will learn how to rotate, crop, adjust red-eye, and turn their picture into black and white.  The students will have export their final picture into their folder in the server.
        The teacher will download all the students’ photo and burn on a disc.  The teacher will get these photos professionally developed.

Evaluation: Art Project Rubric, Weekly Art Grade Rubric