Level: 3
Duration: 15 hours
Years: 5-6
Strands: Developing Practical Knowledge (PK), Developing Ideas (DI), Communicating and Interpreting (CI), Understanding in Context (UC) 

Acknowledgement

Asia:NZ in partnership with the Ministry of Education, would like to thank all those who contributed towards this unit. In particular, Lyn McLennan, Thorndon School and Iona Manning, Queen Margaret College for trialing the unit and Stan Chan, calligrapher, for sharing his expertise. This unit has been written by Ann Brodie, National Facilitator, Primary Visual Arts.

About this Unit

In this unit, students research the forms and significance of calligraphy in traditional and contemporary Chinese society. They design a mixed media scroll on paper, developing symbols for use as calligraphic images. One larger personal symbol is created as a feature for their own scroll. They combine this with a smaller scale "text" made up of all the symbols created by the class.

The word calligraphy comes from the Greek word for beautiful writing. Calligraphy, the writing of characters, has developed over many centuries in various countries, including China, where it is regarded as an art form, and displayed in museums, alongside art works. The characters are pictographs. They started as tiny pictures, changing over time, losing trace of their representational origins, to become a language of signs or symbols that represent ideas.

Achievement Objectives

Students will :

• apply knowledge of elements and principles to make objects and images and explore art-making conventions, using a variety of techniques, tools, materials, processes, and procedures
• generate and develop visual ideas in response to a variety of motivations, using imagination, observation, and invention with materials
• describe how selected objects and images communicate different kinds of ideas
  
• investigate the purpose of objects and images in past and present cultures and identify contexts in which they were or are made, viewed, and valued

Learning Intentions

Students will:

• investigate the role of calligraphy in customary and contemporary Mainland Chinese society
  
• develop their own symbols in response to the study of traditional calligraphy characters
  
• use techniques with paint and collage and focus on line shape, colour and compositional principles (balance unity and contrast) to create a scroll
  
• describe how symbols and colour communicate ideas in selected scrolls

Teaching and Learning

• Task 1: Investigating calligraphy
• Task 2: Developing personal symbols
• Task 3: Exploring and using brush painting techniques
• Task 4: Developing ideas for their scroll composition
• Task 5: Considering colour
• Task 6: Preparing paper for the scroll
• Task 7: Adding their symbol, the class text and a signature
• Task 8: Display and Reflection

Focus Questions

Use these with your students, as a basis for formative discussion during the unit, and at the conclusion, for reflection. They relate closely to the learning outcomes prepared for this unit.

• In what way does your scroll relate to Chinese calligraphy scrolls?
• What particular techniques and materials did you use to make your scroll?
• How did you choose to give balance to the composition of your scroll?
• What is the significance of the main symbol and the colours you have used?

Resources Required

• Materials
• Resources have been integrated into this unit, examples of scrolls, chinese writing

Additional Resources

• Chinese calligraphy
• How to hold a brush
• Traditional calligraphy set: The 'four treasures'
• Student assessment form
• Student assessment example 1
• Student assessment example 2

Optional Approaches

When introducing your students to calligraphy you should show them examples of the work of Colin McCahon a New Zealand artist who writes words using paint in his art works and draws parallels with the process of brush paint in calligraphy and the idea of valuing text as art.