Artful Assessment

Grade 5 Language Arts and Visual Arts Lessons

In Winslow Homer’s Weatherbeaten, we are confronted by turbulent tides, dark seas, irrepressible rock, wild wind, and stormy skies. It is easy to use our senses to imagine the experience of being out in weather like this: the deafening sounds of the sea and the wind, the smell of the sea, the taste of the salt air, and the slippery feel of the jagged, wet granite. In the visual arts lesson, students will consider this image and others that deal with the elemental forces of nature. After a class discussion, the students will create a landscape or seascape collage that expresses a mood or emotion. In the language arts lesson, students will learn to describe and interpret Weatherbeaten. After reflecting both personally and as a class about the painting, the students will pair up and role-play different characters interpreting the scene. In this way, students will be creative in imagining what nature and the ocean mean to different people.