I’m not going to give y’all a fancy lesson plan here, but I will share some stuff I created for collage lessons. I created these myself, and so far the unit has gone over well with my students.

Lesson One: Torn Paper Color Wheel
Students use a color wheel template to create a collage of torn paper from color magazines. This project took two 50-minute class periods for grades 6-12.

Materials:
Color wheel template (13kb PDF file)
Lots of full-color glossy magazines, catalogs, mailers, etc.
Bottle glue or glue sticks
(no scissors!)

Art elements explored:
Color
Texture

Torn paper collage gives the color wheel a very textured, layered and artsy effect. One student said, “I didn’t realize how much fun it is to tear paper!” I asked them to fill in the triangles, overlapping the edges, to show smooth transitions between color blocks. I told them that several shades of the same hue are great too. They often cooperated with each other in hunting down and identifying specific colors: “Is this red-purple?” Most students dove into this project with much enthusiasm.

My demonstration collage is below.

Lesson Two: Painting with Colored Paper
In the previous lesson, students used colored paper as a sort of paint. Students create an image of an insect, fish, lizard, or flowers using the same technique. They may create their own image of one of those four categories, or use one of the templates I drew in Illustrator. They may either tear paper as before, or use scissors. I expect this project to take two 50-minute class periods for grades 6-12.

Materials:

Image templates: butterfly, lizard, fish and flowers (47kb PDF file)
Lots of full-color glossy magazines, catalogs, mailers, etc.
Bottle glue or glue sticks
Scissors

Art elements explored:
Color
Texture

My demonstration collage is below.

UPDATE 01-05-07: Student Work

Here’s a sample of my high-schoolers’ work:

One of my middle schoolers, struck with brilliance:

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