Picassohead

With my Second Graders we've been working on understanding the importance of giving credit to ourselves and others for creative works.  We used the My Creative Works Lesson from Common Sense Media, I adapted part of this to better fit my needs.

Instead of creating a time capsule I created an online gallery of my photos in my 500 account .  I deliberately omitted dates, titles and the author.  I showed the gallery to to the students taking care to hide my name; we talked about each image.  As we viewed each image I asked if they knew who took the photos or when it was taken or what the title of the photo was.  Each time the kids noted they didn't have anyway of knowing.  At the end the kids commented that they really wish they knew who took the photos. I shared that I was the photographer and that it's important to let others know about the works you create.  We talked about why it's important to give credit to the creator.

Next, I introduced the website Picassohead and we talked briefly about who Pablo Picasso was.  Much to my surprise, only one student in one of my three second grade classes had ever heard of Picasso.  I talked a little bit about Picasso's style of artwork and I molded briefly how to use the features of the site.

We then talked about the importance of putting our name, date and a title on all our works.  They saw in the Picassohead Gallery that all works had a date and title, some of the works were by "unknown" artists so this reinforced the importance of putting their names on their works.

With their instructions in mind they headed to their computers and got to work creating Picassoheads. When they finished they saved their work to the Gallery and explored the Gallery, some went back a created a second work of art.

To wrap up I asked them how to give credit to a creative work that they make or find? Without any difficulty they were able to tell me, put the author's name, title of the work and date it was created.