School visits / Sample lesson plan
Sample lesson plan · Grades 6–12
Painting Outdoors
Seeing the Hudson Valley like a plein air painter. Built on Unframed (2026), eight painters who meet every week to work outdoors in every season.
- Time20 min before · 75–90 min visit · 30 min after
- SubjectsArt, with English, science and social studies
- GroupOne class, in two groups
Objectives
Students will be able to:
- Describe how working from direct observation, outdoors and over time, shapes an artist's choices.
- Make two quick observational studies of the same view, each with a different focus.
- Compare a contemporary plein air approach with the 19th-century Hudson River School.
- Explain an artistic choice in writing, using evidence from a work of art.
Standards
New York State Learning Standards for the Arts (Visual Arts), by artistic process and anchor standard:
| Part of the visit | Artistic process | Anchor standards |
|---|---|---|
| Artist film and discussion | Responding | 7 Perceive and analyze · 8 Interpret intent and meaning |
| Gallery walk | Presenting | 6 Convey meaning through the presentation of work |
| Hands-on studies | Creating | 1 Generate ideas · 2 Organize and develop · 3 Refine and complete |
| Wrap-up and follow-up | Connecting | 10 Relate to personal experience · 11 Relate to cultural and historical context |
Across subjects. English: a written claim backed by evidence from an artwork. Science: observing how light and weather change a scene over time. Social studies: the Hudson River School and the 19th-century idea of mastering nature, in the valley where it began.
Vocabulary
- Plein air
- French for "open air": painting outdoors, from direct observation.
- Study
- A quick, small work made to explore an idea, not to finish it.
- Value
- How light or dark a color or area is.
- Composition
- How the parts of an image are arranged.
- Limited palette
- Working with only a few colors.
- Hudson River School
- A 19th-century group of American landscape painters who worked in and around the Hudson Valley.
Before the visit (20 min, in class)
- Show Thomas Cole's View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow), 1836 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art).
- Students list five things they notice and one question. Ask: Where do you think the painter was standing? Was it painted outside?
- Introduce plein air. Students predict one thing that would be hard about painting outdoors, and one thing that might be better.
At the gallery (75–90 min)
1 · Meet the artist 15–20 min · Responding
Watch the artist film. Discuss: What changes when you paint the same place every week? What does working outdoors give an artist that a photo can't?
2 · Gallery walk 20–25 min · Presenting
In pairs, students find (1) a work that shows a particular time of day or season, and the clues that tell them; (2) two works that seem to show the same kind of place painted differently; (3) the work they would hang in their own room, and why. Ask how the way the works are hung together changes what we notice.
3 · Two studies 25–30 min · Creating
From the same view (the garden in fair weather, or a window), students make two 10-minute studies: first shapes and composition only in pencil, then light and value with a limited palette. Materials: drawing boards, paper, pencils and small watercolor sets.
4 · Wrap-up 5 min · Connecting
Studies on the floor, side by side. Each student names one thing the second study shows that the first doesn't.
After the visit (30 min, in class)
- Write (English). Claim, evidence, reasoning: "One choice a plein air painter makes that a studio painter might not is… I know because in the work I saw…"
- Return to the view (science). Students repeat a study of one view at school at a different time of day and compare how the light changed.
- Then and now (social studies). Compare Cole's idea of the landscape with the Unframed painters' approach. What changed in 190 years?
Adapting by grade
Grades 6–8
Pencil value studies before color. Sentence starters for the written response. Gallery walk with a picture checklist.
Grades 9–12
Color studies from the start. A short essay comparing the Hudson River School's ideas of progress with a contemporary approach, citing specific works.
Checking understanding
- Two studies completed, each with the requested focus.
- Student names a specific visual clue in a work (light, color, weather, season).
- Written response makes a claim and supports it with evidence from an artwork.
Access. Seated stations are available throughout, prompts can be printed large, and the outdoor study can move indoors. Tell us about any access needs when you book.