Russian lesson plan (Intermediate mid/high): Narrating a Painting

Lesson plan: Narrating a PaintingЧетвёртый курс

(approximate level: Intermediate Mid)

Lesson developed for STARTalk 2014@ Middlebury College

Learning objectives

DO:Students will be able to identify story elements in a painting and link their observations into a coherent narrative. (The goal is to move them toward "speaking in paragraphs.")

KNOW:Vocabulary: emotions, family members and related persons (невеста, сваха, etc.)Culture: 19th-c. and early 20th-c. Russian realist painting; some exposure to traditional Russian customs and religion (in limited social contexts)

Formative assessment

By the end of the lesson, students will demonstrate what they can do with what they know by describing a painting and narrating its story.

Materials needed

• Color printouts of three Russian paintings (for pairwork): «Сватовство майора», 1848, Павел Андреевич Федотов; «Неравный брак», 1862, Василий Владимирович Пукирев; «Две матери», 1905-06, Владимир Егорович Макoвский.

• Ability to project painting(s) on a screen.• Vocabulary sheets with questions (see:

www.columbia.edu/~rjs19/russian/emotions.pdf)

Opening activity

Show students side by side images of Borovikovsky's portrait of Catherine II at Tsarskoe Selo with her dog and Malevich's Black Square. (See next slide.)Ask: какую картину вы больше любите? Почему? (2 minutes in pairs; 3 minutes all together.)

Segue (5 minutes)

• Ask: What emotions would you say are expressed in the two paintings shown?

• Brainstorm "emotions" vocabulary on the board (2 teams, one minute).

Incorporating emotional vocabulary into a narrative, 1: whole class activity

Show Repin's Ne Zhdali (see next slide). Ask students: who is the main hero? Who are these other people? What is their relationship/attitude toward him? How do you know? Where do you think he came from? What happened next? Work on forming these observations into a narrative about the painting, introducing vocabulary as necessary.

(10 minutes)

«Не ждали», 1884-1888, Илья Ефимович Репин

Incorporating emotional vocabulary into a narrative, 2: pairs activity

Divide students into pairs. Each pair is given a handout with a famous 19th-century Russian painting (see next three slides for examples). On the model of the group exercise, they collaborate (asking and answering questions) to create an oral narrative about the painting.

(10 minutes)

Incorporating emotional vocabulary into a narrative, 3: scrambled pairs

Pairs are scrambled: each student finds a partner with a different painting. Student A narrates his/her painting (the one s/he discussed with his/her previous partner) to Student B, and vice versa. Teachers circulate in the classroom, listening to students' narration and offering encouragement as necessary.

(10 minutes)

"Wind-down" activity (5 minutes)

Back in large group, ask students what title they would give to each painting. Reveal the paintings' real titles (see next three slides). Thank them for their work.

«Сватовство майора», 1848, Павел Андреевич Федотов

«Неравный брак», 1862, Василий Владимирович Пукирев

«Две матери», 1905-06, Владимир Егорович Макoвский

Homework possibilities

• Send students to the website of a famous Russian art museum such as the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg or the Tretyakovsky Gallery in Moscow. Ask them to select a painting and write a ten-sentence narrative telling its story.

• Ask students to write and perform a dialog between two of the characters in the paintings they discussed.

Just for fun

Students may be amused (and encouraged to think creatively and irreverently about the scenes represented in famous paintings) by the following slideshow, excerpted from the “viral” blog post “Women Listening To Men In Art History.”(http://the-toast.net/2014/06/23/women-listening-men-art-history/)

Женщины, слушающие мушчинв истории искусства

(источник: http://the-toast.net/2014/06/23/women-listening-men-art-history/)

«Сколько бы я ни пила, он не становится более интересным»

«Нет, нет, я слушаю, но я только что заметила, что эти спички чрезвычайно интересные»

«Разве он это сказал? Какой ужас! А потом что случилось? Онду минуточку, моя голова сейчас очень тяжела...»

«Ага, понятно. А куда они поплыли после этого?»

«Почему вы думаете, что я не слушаю? Я разделась и бросила корзину с фруктами потому, что это помогает мне слушать.»

КОНЕЦ

The End