Title
Document Type
Teacher Resource
Publication Date
2015
Unit Name
Art, Beauty, and Aesthetics
Abstract
The activity is part of an Art, Beauty, and Aesthetics unit. First, students read a short text about the notion of the window, and how looking through a window frames or changes our perspective. Students then read and analyze Charles Baudelaire’s prose poem “Les fenêtres”. Students are provided copies of teacher selected paintings and photographs, each of which features a window. In class, they write any words that the image evokes for them. From this initial writing, they write an original poem inspired by the painting or photo. This activity encourages vocabulary development, close observation of one work of art, and is a creative writing experience. Surprisingly, the actual subject of a student’s poem is not always a window.
Grade Level
Secondary Education, French IV-V
Acknowledgements
I expanded on an activity I learned while attending an teacher workshop at the Art Institute of Chicago in April 2014, called “Art & Language: Visual Literacy and Foreign Language Learners”
Recommended Citation
Crosby, Brenda, "Poetry Inspired by Art" (2015). French. 1.
https://digitalcommons.imsa.edu/french_tr/1
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons, Poetry Commons