Why use Beauty? Because asking pupils and students for their reactions – what they like, what they don’t – is one of the easiest ways to get their attention. Beauty can be the missing dimension that immediately brings a new interest to old topics. It’s about giving pupils and students the lead, rather than trying to get them to pay attention to an established set of ideas. So it’s a great way to improve engagement in learning. It can make a real difference to the entire perception of a topic or subject area. And it’s easy to get started, because we’re surrounded by a world of beautiful and ugly things and everyone knows what they like!
The Engaging Places team has put together a series of teaching resources for all Key Stages, and with activities and lesson plans going right across the curriculum.
The teaching activities and lesson plans are described in more detail below. They are supported by a video of personal responses to beauty in Sheffield, a best practice example from a primary school in Greenwich, and other resources that you can find in this section of Engaging Places.
The activities and lesson plans cover a wide range of curriculum areas. All the activities encourage discussion about what people like and dislike so that pupils and students can build their visual literacy skills and shape the areas they live in for the better.
Key Stage 1
Key Stage 2
Key Stage 3
Key Stage 4
Key Stage 5
The Engaging Places team has put together a series of teaching resources for all Key Stages, and with activities and lesson plans going right across the curriculum.
The teaching activities and lesson plans are described in more detail below. They are supported by a video of personal responses to beauty in Sheffield, a best practice example from a primary school in Greenwich, and other resources that you can find in this section of Engaging Places.
Deep Pits park, Sheffield. Copyright Stephen McLaren
Key Stage 1
- Finding beautiful things Teaching activities that use photographs taken by two characters as the trigger for thinking about beautiful things.
- Beauty: making a difference A citizenship lesson plan exploring how pupils can become active citizens promoting beauty in their own places
Key Stage 2
- Finding beautiful things A set of teaching activities that uses an image bank as the trigger for a whole series of activities in different curriculum areas.
- Beauty: making a difference A citizenship lesson plan designed to provoke thinking about the responsibility for creating and maintaining beauty in our local areas.
- What do YOU like? A series of four connected lessons that engage pupils in thinking about beauty and how they can create beauty where they live and learn. The first is an English lesson that gets pupils to look at a familiar view with fresh eyes; the second is an art and design lesson that investigates beauty in the school building; the third is an English lesson about writing persuasive letters to encourage people to make changes to ugly areas; and the final lesson – in art and design – gets the pupils to take action.
Key Stage 3
- Beauty: does it matter to you? Two citizenship lesson plans that encourage the students to take responsibility for an area and create an action plan for making it beautiful.
- Fire their enthusiasm A series of three lessons that investigate what makes an area beautiful and how the students can contribute to the beauty of their local area. The first is a maths lesson that introduces students to the golden ratio; the second is an English lesson that investigates beauty in the school building; and the final lesson is in art and design and gets the students to take action.
Key Stage 4
- What is beauty? Why do we find some things beautiful and not others? What do we mean when we call something beautiful? This supporting resource investigates this simple little word and provides an armoury of ideas and perspectives, as well as two lesson plans for Art and English.
- Beauty: does it matter to you? A citizenship lesson plan that stimulates a debate about the responsibility for beauty in our surroundings.
Key Stage 5
- What is beauty? A supporting resource examining the concept of beauty and providing teachers with a set of ideas to inform a range of teaching opportunities.
