Symbols and Symbolism
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec596/symbols.html
The Brain Behind the Lesson
This unit was developed by Linda Logan and delivered to 7th and 8th graders at O'Farrell Community School with the help of Dan McDowell this last year.
Subjects Involved
This project found its anchor in several different subjects. While it was executed within the computers class, it drew heavily from social studies and language-arts while focusing upon cooperative learning, research, creativity, critical thinking, and presentation skills.
The Theme That Draws It Together
The society that has become the United States and the modern world has been saturated with information and images. Symbolism has become an increasingly significant factor in our media driven world. Companies that sell products that we all buy on a regular basis have symbols that we use to identify the company and their reputation. Throughout history and literature symbolism, whether visual or written, has always been a part of social studies and language-arts utilized by greater leaders, writers, and artists.
Implementation
The unit was organized in a manner that allowed the students to first understand the concept of symbolism and symbols before beginning to create their own. Within each class groups of three to four worked cooperatively over a period of three weeks on this interdiscplinary project.
How It Went Down
- Introduction to symbolism, examples that were provided in class were the American Flag, the Presidential Seal, and the Macintosh apple. Each of these are stock full of meaning.
- Identify symbols in everyday life (i.e. Nike, MacDonalds, flags, etc.).
- Analyze symbols individually, as done in class with the three examples.
- Cooperative learning groups introduction, divide into groups.
- Review the Research Process
- Let the Creative Process begin. Groups brainstorm for possible ideas for a company symbol.
- Sketch out symbol (something they will be able to replicate on the computer).
- Rough draft of symbol and description due.
- Computer construction of symbol utilizing draw programs, scanned images, and clip art.
- Word process description of company.
- Prepare for class presentation, the more creative the better.
- Presentation to class, this will be videotaped.
- Peer Evaluation of taped presentations.
Student Products
The following are three examples of what students created during this project:
O.M.H.-Opposite Minded Homie
By:
Nicole,
Eleanor, and
Lorraine
O.M.H. represents clothing called "Opposite Minded Homies." The Ying Yang is our sign because we are all not the perfect! It takes both opposite sides to create one mind. Love, happiness, and peace are part of our life. Hatred, anger, and war are combined with their opposties to create one's mind, heart, body, life, and soul.
We chose this sign to let people know that no one, no thing is perfect. Everyone has both good and bad to them as well as everyone's lives!
The clothing we represent or feature is for everyone to use! Both girls and boys, women and men, child and adult. It's not what you wear, it's who you are!!!
Just remember, it's not who you wear, it's what you wear and how you wear it.
G.T.S.- Global Telephone Service
By: Newclear, William, Chris, and Luis
Our company represents telephone services around the world. Our symbol is a globe with a telephone around it which means we bring your telephone calls to you. We chose this because it was the best logo for our company. If you would like to jion GTS call us at 1-800-CALL-GTS. If you join us now we will give you 50% off your phone calls.
By: Mayra, Erika, and Cindy
Our logo represents that we care for the world. We drew a world for out logo because that is the world we live in and we did a heart because it demostrates that we are caring for our world. We care for our world in these ways: recycling, care for our trees, care for the animals, care for the homeless, care for the children of tomorrow because they are our future, painting over the graffitit, care for the species that are endangered, and no littering. The reason that we chose this logo is because we care for our earth and we want to make it a better place to live on. We choose the name because it goes with our logo. The company is so more people get more interested in caring for our earth. The color for our heart is red, because it shows love. The colors for our earth are blue becuase of the water and green for the trees, gress, and everything that is around.
Thinking Skills Engaged
- Critical thinking
- Interpretation
- Creative production
- Presentation
- Observation
- Research
This description was written by Dan McDowell. Last updated on March 6, 1996.
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