Mount Katahdin | Lessons for Grades 8-12
Grade 8
Visual Arts and Language Arts
Your Place in the World
Bonnie Clymer and Jotham Oliver
Molly Ockett Middle School, Fryeburg, Maine
Emphasizing personal reflection, students write and paint to represent themselves and their own sense of place. Students study Mount Katahdin from Millinocket Camp and read a variety of stories and poems, as well as understand the biographies of the artist and writers, as examples of self-expression and place in art and writing.
Language Arts Curriculum Unit (pdf)
Visual Arts Curriculum Unit (pdf)
Visual Arts Research Sheets (pdf)
Writing Samples (pdf): Student 1 - Student 2 - Student 3
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Grades 9 through 12
Visual Arts
A Sense of Place in Painting and Photography
Lucy-grace Sargeant
Sanford High School, Sanford, Maine
This unit focuses on art fundamentals of color and composition studies using a variety of media. Mount Katahdin from Millinocket Camp serves as the inspiration, as students make detailed color studies of the painting, explore their own environment and take photographs, manipulate those photos in Photoshop, then use those images as the basis for landscape paintings.
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Grade 11
Visual Arts and American Literature
Seeking Transcendence: Romanticism and the
Transcendentalist Ideal in America, 1860—1960
Liz Vigue
Nokomis High School, Newport, Maine
This unit traces what it means to be an American as depicted in the following works of art: Mount Katahdin from Millinocket Camp by Frederic Church, excerpts from The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau, excerpts from the essays of Henry David Thoreau, and an excerpt from Lonesome Traveler by Jack Kerouac called “Alone on a Mountaintop.” As an anchor work, Mount Katahdin from Millinocket Camp will facilitate student activities structured around the following concepts:
- Examine how certain print and visual texts explore the human experience and condition
- Identify how the arts shape and are shaped by prevailing cultural and social beliefs and values, particularly the American experience during the Romantic/Transcendental period
- Utilize the characteristics of a particular work to reflect upon and assess the characteristics and merits of art works and literature
- Develop an understanding of what it means to be an American today through multi-genre creative expression.