This is part three of a series showing how costume design and literature can be easily integrated. 3. Look at class distinctions My costume design professor taught me this: Credit cards helped make the distinction between rich and middle class/poor less obvious because people could purchase clothing outside their budget. In the past, though, clothing was an obvious sign of wealth, rank, and class. During the Victorian Era (1837-1901), a person’s class and income often indic

Last week I wrote an article discussing my British Literature class' foray into costume design. Over the next few days I'll briefly how your class (or homeschool) can engage in close reading and preparation for the final drawings. Step 1: Look for obvious, obligatory costume details. “Obligatory” details are costume descriptions clearly given in the text. For example, in A Christmas Carol, the second spirit is described like this: “It was clothed in one simple green robe, or

I gave my senior Brit Lit class freedom and choice within structure this past block semester. For their final project, I gave them several options for a study of A Christmas Carol. Choices: Create a costume design sketch book and write character analysis and process papers Write a research paper and annotated bibliography over some aspect of Victorian society (By request) Write Sherlock Holmes fanfic (Spoiler: Prince Albert dunnit) I gave a series of assignments designed to b

Integrating art into a literature class has several pitfalls that I'm working to overcome. One of the main issues is scaffolding the art and literature together in a way that makes sense, doesn't take up too much time, and doesn't involve a ton supplies. In this very brief visual tutorial, I teach students to look for colors and images in the poem "The Flower School" by Rabindranath Tagore and then create a simple, fast background. The colors I chose for the background are bl