For years, I struggled to come up with an engaging and fun unit to teach perspective drawing. Although some students really enjoy the more methodical way of drawing, many struggle and part of this is because drawing perspective for perspective sake is boring and meaningless. Well no more! Making perspective drawing a tool in a larger unit gives it purpose. At the beginning of the year (in my case quarter) I normally layout our units and learning, but for this unit I only tell them that this unit is “top secret!” I’ll drop it in every now and then while still working on other units, but I’ll refuse to explain what we’ll be doing.

Then when it is time, I set the mood: the students come in to a darkened class room with eery music playing. When they’re all settled, I’ll read the prompt (image 2). The students get really excited, exclaiming lots of different ideas, which I tell them to jot down on a page in their process journal. I’ll time them and then make them go around the room to share their ideas and ask for feedback, stars and wishes work great here.

From there I explain the shape of the unit, outline the learning activities and the assessments and criteria. Below some key pages from my slides.

Throughout the unit I have planned for differentiation, for example by giving the option for one point perspective grids, lists of dungeon ideas, printable comic layouts. Students are also free to choose which media they prefer (pencil, pen, colour pencil, water colour, even collage!) considering the mood of their work. They may also choose to create more abstract or stylised characters, the practice here is to imbue the character with expression and movement to aid story telling.