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The Guernica unit has finally wrapped! We actually finished right in time for winter break. The final assessment was an oral presentation / cultural comparison. The instructions that I gave my students are shared below along with a recap of what worked and what didn't. But first, here's their amazing artwork. In total, there were 27 beautiful pieces of art on a variety of themes, but in the image below, represented are: Top left to right: Health Care Access, Global Warming, Plastic Bottle Overuse Middle left to right: Homelessness, War, Genetically Modified Foods Bottom left to right: Abortion Access, Religious Freedom, Ocean Pollution.  As students were finalizing their projects, I gave them the handout below concerning the final assessment for the unit. All the summative assessments in our class mimic or are strongly tied to the free response tasks of the AP test. Guernica Unit Assessment PROMPT: Compare and contrast your work of art to Picasso’s Guernica. Speak for 2-3 minutes. This task is similar to what you’ll see on the AP test, but also different in that the prompt is highly specific; you have much more time to prepare; and you’ll be speaking in front of an audience. You should:
EVALUATION CRITERIA = organization of ideas, substance of ideas, control of language, appropriate vocab use, fluency, pronunciation, eye contact, etc. Here are key resources we’ve used during this unit (Then I linked everything that I wrote about in My Guernica Unit Lesson Plan: Part 1 blog post, plus the links below): Cómo hacer la comparación cultural:
Sample student cultural comparison transcripts on past AP tests
What worked1. The art came out really cool. The gallery director at my school is helping me frame and hang their work in the lobby of our performing arts center for all to see —students having a larger audience has become increasingly important to me. I think intrinsic motivation increases when students know that their work will be viewed by more than just me and their classmates. 2. To that end, I also invited some teachers (anybody that I knew who spoke Spanish on our faculty + anyone I had asked for advice in some way about the project) to watch the presentations. In the end, both librarians came as well as our Dean of Faculty! 3. A lot of students stepped up to the plate and wowed me with their presentations. I mean really wowed me! They basically delivered TED talks in Spanish. I really wish I had filmed them -- I meant to and forgot. 4. The content was interesting. Not only did I enjoy learning facts about students' chosen topics, but I also appreciated hearing how they related their ideas to what was happening in Guernica. The way they thought about the symbolism of their issues and connected their images to what was happening in Guernica was clever and sometimes moving to hear. I've shared a sample student "Artist Statement" at the end of this post. 5. Students described the experience as: immersive, challenging, fun, creative, free, enriching These were the reflection questions I had them fill out on the last day before break:
What didn't exactly work1. The art-making took too long. I need to condense the time frame and set a hard deadline for next year. I think it will help them pick up the pace and stay focused. Once I gave them a concrete deadline, I saw things speed up...but I just didn't have a sense of how long everything would take the first time around. In total, I think the slowest ones spent six or seven classes making art, which is way too long! Yikes! 2. Kids suggested being given the presentation guidelines earlier -- I agree. 3. I started off saying they could have a notecard, then changed that idea once they began working on their presentations in class. It became clear that a slide show would work best for students as both a visual aid and as a reminder of what to say — but the fact that I had ever uttered the word "notecard" caused problems. Despite reminding them many times that they couldn't have a notecard, some said they didn't realize the rules had changed. That definitely caused a headache! Likewise, I ran into a few compliance issues that made grading complicated for me:
But overall, these issues accounted for about five students; the other 20+ presentations definitely hit the mark. RubricWhen it came time to grade, I scrawled notes on a piece of paper as each student spoke. I wrote lots of observations -- things I liked, grammar notes, etc. and gave a ballpark estimate of what I thought the grade would be. I also had students fill out little feedback slips after each student's presentation -- this gave me time to record my thoughts too and not feel rushed. Then during my planning period, I transferred my notes to the AP cultural comparison rubric that I had adapted. Here's the actual AP rubric and then my project-specific adjustments are below:  I wanted to work off the actual AP rubric for the cultural comparison in order to stay consistent with how I've assessed my Spanish IV Honors students in the past. For the first criterion, I defined "task" as "Speaking for 2-3 minutes and creating a visual compare-and contrast slideshow with minimal text." For the second criterion, I defined "target culture" as "the history of Spain's Guernica" and scratched out "student's own community" and changed it to "student's own art." All the other criteria worked, except I replaced the row about "register" with how well the student delivered the presentation to the audience. Grades ranged from C+ to A+ on the presentations. For the art, I gave all A's -- they completed it in class with me and everyone put forth good effort to great results. I made the art worth 25 points and the presentation worth 75 for a total grade of 100. I grade using total points so it wasn't a total necessity to make it out of 100, but I think it worked out nicely that way. Artist StatementsThe only homework I gave during presentation week was to prepare for the upcoming show of our work in the CFA (Center for Fine Arts). I had students write an artist statement in Spanish and give me an explanation of the show in English. Here's what I posted on their homework calendar: (1) Escribir una declaración de artista. Es una descripción que acompañará tu arte en el CFA -- This document is editable, so everyone should add their info onto this same doc under my example. Complete by this Friday. (2) Write an explanation in English (approx. 250 words) for someone who is viewing our work for the first time in the CFA and doesn't know what Guernica is. Explain what we did in class for this unit. I’ll pick the clearest explanation(s) and use it for the show description in the CFA. Upload your doc to myschoolapp for this Thursday. Sample Artist Statement: Alyssa, Access to Health Care¡Hola! Me llamo Alyssa. Me gusta tocar y escuchar música, leer, y construir Legos. Tengo 16 años y soy una estudiante de tercer año en Thayer Academy. Para un proyecto de arte en mi clase de español, pinté mi propia versión de Guernica por Pablo Picasso. Para mi asunto, escogí el acceso igual a la atención médica. Este asunto es importante para mi porque mi mamá es doctora y me dice mucho sobre el sistema de salud. Creo que el acceso a la medicina es un derecho humano básico y en este momento no se considera uno. En mi obra de arte incluí la bombilla en la cima de la pintura como Guernica. También imité la espada rota en el suelo pero con el caduceo. El caduceo es el símbolo oficial de muchos grupos de médico. Estas son algunas similaridades, pero también hay diferencias. Guernica tiene un caballo para el foco central. En mi obra de arte no tengo un foco central. Tengo una escala en el centro, pero no es el foco central. Además, Guernica tiene tres partes o paneles. Este estilo de pintura se llama tríptico. Mi pintura no tiene tres paneles, solo tiene un panel, por lo tanto, no es una pintura tríptica. ¡Espero que te haya gustado mi arte! ¡Gracias! Hello! My name is Alyssa. I like to play and listen to music, read, and build Legos. I am 16 years old and am a junior at Thayer Academy. For an art project in my Spanish class, I painted my own version of Guernica by Pablo Picasso. For my issue, I chose equal access to medical care. This issue is important to me because my Mom is a doctor and she tells me a lot about the healthcare system. I believe that access to medical care is a human right and at the moment it is not considered one. In my work of art I included the lightbulb on the top of the painting like Guernica. I also imitated the broken sword on the ground but with the caduceus. The caduceus is the official symbol of many medical groups. These are some similarities, but there are also differences. Guernica has a horse as the central focus. In my work of art I don’t have a central focus, I have a scale in the center, but it is not the central focus. In addition, Guernica has three parts or panels. This style of painting is called tryptic. My painting does not have three panels, it only has one, therefore, it is not a tryptic painting. I hope you liked my art! Thank you!  This is a slide from Alyssa's oral presentation on health care access in which she compared and contrasted symbols from her artwork to symbols in Picasso's Guernica. Sample Project Explanation (to hang at the art show)A little over a month ago, the Spanish IV Honors classes began learning about Guernica, a mural-sized painting made by Pablo Picasso in 1937. It is a powerful anti-war painting in response to the bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica by Nazi German and Italian fascist air forces during the Spanish Civil War. The artwork depicts the chaos and suffering caused by the attack, featuring distorted, anguished figures, including a mother holding her dead child, a wounded horse, and a screaming figure. The painting is a symbol of the horrors of war, representing not just the tragedy of Guernica, but also the broader human cost of violence and destruction. In order to demonstrate our understanding of the painting, as well as the bombing of Guernica, we were tasked to create our own Guernica-style watercolor painting that illustrated a topic we felt strongly about. We started by picking our topic and then researching it, finding the objects and figures we could later apply to our art. We then went on to sketching, fragmenting (drawing lines in all directions across our sketch), and finally, watercoloring. We spent a couple weeks on our artwork and then another several days creating a slideshow that would showcase our art as well as the data behind it and our message. We presented this in front of our class as our unit-ending assessment, of course speaking in Spanish only. Thank you for viewing our work and please enjoy our art! Thanks to Claire for this great summary! Final TakeawaysGuernica is such a powerful piece of art. Almost 90 years later, this painting is still relevant and inspiring. Also it's wonderful when students can bring their creative talents -- or "lack of talent" as some of them would argue to me -- into the academic classroom. I am a huge advocate for arts integration wherever possible. For some students, making art was defintiely frustrating, but I kept reinforcing to them, "There is no way to mess up this particular assignment!" Students learned that cubist art is about simple lines and distorted perspective, so it's not supposed to look pretty or realistic. Even the "non-artists" therefore succeeded. I enjoyed pumping these doubtful students up and helping them see themselves as individuals with a unique creative stance. Come to think of it, there is a quote that is attributed to Pablo Picasso that has always inspired me and certainly applies here. I'll have to share it with my students next year: 
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