Statement of Purpose
Angela McClue
Curriculum Design Overview
Summer 2009

The school that I am in is focused heavily on the Arts, but it also has to follow the same criteria as other schools in terms of the OGT tests.  Historically, my particular school does quite poorly in the category of Social Studies.  As an art teacher, I thought it might be a good idea to have the subjects of Social Studies and Art History come together and be combined in order for students to learn in a more visual fashion.  
I am hoping that having students view key paintings and or sculptures during the particular times such as what was going on at the time of the French Revolution would assist them in retaining certain information and that these key paintings could serve as a road map for the students in order to relate them to specific moments in history that relate to the OGT test.  I do realize that social studies is not simply remembering names and dates from the past as it was several years ago, but it is understanding and applying concepts that relate to the past but also to the present and future.
Teaching the course this way would not be my ideal way to begin.  I would want to start with the very beginning with cave paintings and go from there.  I also would like to teach about the Renaissance, but it is not on the OGT, so it isn’t as relevant.  I suppose I could touch on everything as an introduction, but I wouldn’t have to be as detailed.  
One of the major focuses that I have always done in my art classes is to show the students that art can relate to a wide variety of other subject areas.  I feel that this class is no different and I will also be able to reach the students on a variety of different levels.  Whether it be on the memory/recall level of Blooms or the evaluation level of Blooms, I think it will mostly depend on the way I present the material.  I plan to utilize every facet of Blooms, starting with memory and recall and using the evaluation phase of Blooms as a way to critique certain works of art as well as comparing and contrasting different or similar styles.  
The students will obviously need to know and understand major events in world history in order to keep up with the material in my class.  I will be teaching it as a companion course for the freshman world studies course.  I spoke with the teacher that teaches world studies and since the OGT starts from the Enlightenment on, that is where I will be starting.  I think this will be a good way for these concepts to get reinforced.  My overall goal is to assist in raising the social studies OGT test scores as well as to increase the students interest in past events but looking at those events visually and showing them that art history is the history of man and that the only things we have to prove where we came from are the art, literature, and music.