Brittney Recht

TLS 312
SLP Lesson Plan Reflection

For my service learning project lesson plan, I worked with Caroline and

Andie. We chose the painting, Self-Portrait with Monkey by Frida Kahlo. We

thought this would be a great way for the children to explore the concept of

self-portraits and be able to reflect on their own attributes. The different

parts of our lesson plan included, discussing Kahlos piece of artwork,

reading the book I Like Myself!, creating self-portraits, and participating in a

mirroring movement activity. I was unable to find time to implement this

lesson plan in my classroom, therefore I went into Andies classroom and

taught parts of the lesson to her students. We decided to do each part of the

lesson plan except for the self-portraits. Their classroom had created their

self-portraits a few weeks prior therefore we didnt feel the need to do it

again. When they did do the self-portraits it was done in a way that would be

very similar to how we wouldve taught it. They had mirrors to look at their

own attributes and they had a discussion about their own appearance. The

students did very well with this activity and added many details to their self-

portraits.

To begin the lesson, we introduced Frida Kahlos Self-Portrait with

Monkey painting to the students. We first had a discussion about what a self-

portrait was. The students were very familiar with this concept because they

had made their own a few weeks ago. Then we began discussing the painting
and asked the students what they noticed about Frida Kahlos attributes and

the different parts of the background. The students pointed out Kahlos dark

unibrow, brown eyes, dark hair, and rosy cheeks. After examining the

attributes of Kahlo, they talked about the things they noticed in the

background. One boy pointed out that there was a bird of paradise flower

blooming. Then there was a debate on whether they were monkeys or

gorillas in the background. Next we asked the students what attributes they

liked most about themselves. This allowed them to think about their own

attributes and self-reflect on what they like about themselves. Some of the

characteristics the children liked about themselves were their lips, eyelashes,

cheeks, etc. Once the children were able to self-reflect on their own

attributes we read I Like Myself! The students seemed to enjoy this book.

They were laughing, asking questions, making connections and making

comments throughout. In one of the pictures, the girl had really curly hair.

The students that had curly hair noticed this attribute and said her hair

looks like mine! It was great to see the students notice similarities between

themselves and the characters in the book.

After reading the book, we decided to do the mirroring movement

activity. We paired each student in the classroom and had them act as

mirrors. One partner was the lead and the other partner was the mirror

copying each movement. We first played the song El Negro Jose in the

background while the students did different movements. The children had an

absolute blast with this activity. They were doing all types of crazy
movements- they used different angles, different facial expressions and

different tempos. After one round of each partner being the mirror, we

decided to play a song in the background that the students were more

familiar with to make it a little more fun. We decided to play a song from the

movie Moana, titled How Far Ill Go. The students faces completely lite up

when they heard this song. Most of the students began singing the song and

continuing to do different movements. I was completely shocked how well

the children did this activity. They were able to accurately copy each others

actions and they were engaged for a long period of time. This lesson plan

was very successful with Andies students and I hope I am able to implement

it in a future classroom of mine.

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