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Bonnie Rischmann
Psychology 205
Dr. Mueller
01 March 2015

Lesson Plan Analysis: Color Wheel Kaleidoscope

(http://http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/4250.html)
One thinks that there is only one variable to teaching, but there are many different
variables that affect learning, as well as teaching. The concept of development that was proposed
by Jean Pisget and Lev Vygotsky is important to know and have a concept of in order to help
students as learners succeed. They both promote modeling as a tool to gauge and aid
comprehension for the student. This concept or idea of scaffolding and constructivism that has
been imposed by Lev Vygotsky and organizational thinking by Jean Piaget immensely aid
teachers in the classroom and out of the classroom. Another key is the information-processing
model, which allows us to have a better understanding of what is needed to facilitate the
students learning.
Attaching associations and meaning to the material helps aid our brain in allowing us to
have the capability to store and retrieve information when needed. There are many parallels
between this lesson plan and the concepts of the development and learning process along with
what is contained in this lesson plan. I believe that it is a good reflection of and promotes student
learning. Understanding how students learn is paramount to how we can learn to teach more
effectively and how to aid students. I believe that this lesson plan greatly connects with the
concepts of student learning that we have covered in class.

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First, this lesson plan connects with the studies that Jean Piaget ran on the process of how
a childs cognitive development changes over the life span. Piaget believed that each child
transitions through the stages at a different pace and that each is qualitatively different then the
next. This lesson plan is geared towards Seniors in high school (due to the type of work and what
is specified on the plan), because of that, the students would be in what Piaget called the formal
operational stage. This stage, when you compare it to the concrete operational stage, is different
in the fact that students are able to encounter hypothetical situations and take concepts and apply
them to a variety of different situations. The thinking in this stage becomes more rational,
refined, and intellectual.
This lesson plan exemplifies this stage in the fact that it requires the student(s) to apply
rational and organizational thinking processes to construct a Color Wheel Kaleidoscope from
the newly learned knowledge. This activity is forcing the students to take the knowledge they
recently acquired about tints, tones, and shades as well as apply the concepts to create their own
color wheel from that. As a whole, this lesson plan greatly reflects this concept that Piaget
developed about the formal operational stage. The formal operational stage is when one can
deal abstractly with hypothetical situations and reason logically. This is emphasized on the
students already having the ability to form these ideas, such as the tints, tones and shades that
they had to create.
Another big and important influence in understanding the cognitive development aspect
is Lev Vygotsky; his concepts and ideas greatly differed from Piagets in the fact that he believed
learning preceded development. Constructivism is an important item as well; it is basically
allowing the teachers to stand outside the box in the classroom and allows the student to make

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his or her own decisions and meanings while allowing them to figure out the course concepts on
their own terms. He believed that learning was both collaborative and cooperative as well as that
students learn best when they have that opportunity.
This lesson plan of the Color Wheel Kaleidoscope emphasizes the constructivist point
of view through the fact that the students have to create their own color wheel from tints, tones
and shades that they just learned about. Later, when the process is completed, the instructor
encourages the class to apply constructivist methods by allowing peers to critique one another.
The teacher provides an example of a completed project and lets the students create their own
color wheel through working on their own, while always making himself or herself available for
support and guidance if needed.
Schemas play an important role in this lesson plan because when the students took art
class in elementary and middle school, they learned the basics of what a tint, a tone and a shade
are and how they applied in art. Now, they are reviewing what it is and going into more specifics
about what they are, how they are used, and how they apply in this particular assignment. The
schemas in this lesson are using old skills and knowledge of tints, tones and shades while
modifying those schemas in order to incorporate new information that is higher order in the
thinking process. What the students do in this lesson is they have to mix the required tints, tones
and shades and apply them to creating their own color wheel.
There are a few scaffolds throughout this lesson, especially by having them draw the
basic outline of the color wheel with guidance and by having them complete the reading that was
assigned. These were gradually removed as the lesson went on and the students were left on their
own to complete the final assignment, which was to create a color wheel using tints, tones and

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shades. Primarily, the scaffolds included in this art lesson give the students the opportunity to
obtain some more motivation and confidence to handle the assignment given and obtain success
in this particular assignment since it has so many moving parts and components. Scaffoldings
goal is to provide support so the students can eventually achieve self-regulation by the gradual
withdrawal of these supports. When the students do an assignment like this again, some of the
supports such as the handout of detailed directions can be modified to remove some of the
instructions due to the students grasping the ability to solve problems through different strategies
on their own.
Piaget and Vygotsky differ on many aspects of the topics of development; they both agree
on the concept of cooperative learning and collaboration. Both emphasize that peers have a very
good and positive impact through collaborating in the classroom. They believed that learning
through social interaction among peers is one of the most effective ways to approach learning in
a classroom environment.
This lesson plan on a kaleidoscopic color wheel illustrates collaboration and cooperative
learning very well through having a critique session at the end of class. This is very effective
because each member of the class will bring their own unique perspectives and have differences
from one another in the way they view each others artwork (in this case, color wheels created
from tints, tones and shades). They will also help each other to derive their own meaning from
the critique, which is encouraged to use the vocabulary terms used in the lesson. When this
method of collaboration is used in an environment like this, the students are actively learning.
Instead of being lectured on each others artwork by the teacher and using a question-response
method, the students are coming together and sharing ideas about the color wheel and

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conceptualizing it. In and of itself, this lesson plan allows the students to construct their own
meaning of what a tint, a tone and a shade is when used in the color wheel and collaborate on the
critique. Critiquing accomplishes this by allowing the students to model their own responses
after others in the class. They also through the critiquing employ vocabulary that was learned
from the reading.
Another way of socializing among peers for academic reasons is by modeling. In
modeling, it is most effective as a method when instructors use peers because of the social
desirability and what is the most similar for the student to relate to. It has been shown that most
learners succeed by identifying with the model. This lesson uses teacher-student modeling as
well as peer modeling. It depicts teacher-student modeling because the teacher shows an example
of what a completed kaleidoscopic color wheel is supposed to look like. It also depicts peer-topeer modeling by the use of a critique in order to collaborate and discuss different ideas. The
students are modeling their own work for peers, while also opening up the floor to be tutored by
other students in things they may not have picked up on in the learning of the color wheel. This
allows them to both gain a mastery of the concept, as well as, paying more attention because a
peer is giving suggestions on how the artwork can be improved. In this lesson plan, I believe that
the modeling is done well, but not as good as it should have been. The teacher could have
modeled some student examples perhaps throughout the critique in order to demonstrate what
was done well and what was not.
While, the process of understanding cognitive development is a key puzzle piece in
understanding students as learners, another key component is understanding the way students
store and receive information; explicitly through the information-processing model. The first part

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of this specific process of storing information is attaching associations to the information given.
Attachment of associations is most effective and powerful through either using visual or verbal
components and any combination of the two. This art lesson plan demonstrates both of these
aspects. Visually, the association is formed through the way students choose to do their color
wheel and where they start. It does not matter what visual representation the students choose, it
will better enable them to remember the concepts that are being taught due to that particular
association. I relate associations to sticky notes; the students can attach them to different
information that gets stored and find them when necessary, if at all. The brain especially likes
information that is unique and different. In this particular lesson plan, the teacher is encouraging
creativity in having them develop visual models of the color wheel incorporating the tints, tones
and shades of each of the colors. The more different and unique it is, the better it is remembered
by students.
In addition to having visual components, the lesson provides for verbal components as
well. Through the questions asked by the teacher at the beginning of the assignment as well as
the critiquing at the end of the assignment, the students have to form the verbal components and
associations to the information as they critique others and answer the questions. The assignment
requires having done the reading and having a clear grasp of the vocabulary of art as it is used at
the end of the lesson as well. The students perhaps will create some way of remembering that
visual information as they use it in the models. As a whole, this lesson plan incorporates the idea
of both visual and verbal components through the creation of a color wheel and the answering
questions as well as the critiquing of them. These aids can be seen at the end of the lesson when

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the students are looking at each others artwork and discussing it. The more connections (sticky
notes) the brain can have, the chance of remembering the information exponentially increases.
This lesson plan also has another aspect of the information-processing model,
organization. From what we have learned, the brain itself really likes when we group things
either through chunking, categorizing, venn diagramming etc. Aside from just informationprocessing, organization is also a key piece of Piagets schema theory, which is the concept that
the brain is constantly adding, creating and modifying through the use of former schemas and
outlines of information. This theory specifically puts a focus on that whatever we learn, we
organize that information into previous outlines of past information that we have learned along
the way. Diagramming is another form of an outline. Both of the theories presented of learning
and thinking promote the concept of diagramming as an outline for organization. When students
organize information, the brain creates a network throughout. This is further enhanced by the use
of a color wheel diagram. Diagrams aid a students ability to organize information in a way that
is meaningful and consistent with what they view. As they create the diagram of the color wheel,
the brain will remember the diagram because it is unique and having unique things quickens the
storage process. In this lesson, students are required to organize through the creation of a color
wheel incorporating tints, tones and shades and a critique in the class. As the students organize
the colors and mix them to create different tones and shades, they prepare themselves to learn
what and how each of the new colors was created. Following storage, the easier the organized
information is to retrieve if it is unique.
The very last part of the information-processing model that is applied in this lesson plan
is the concept of attaching meaning to the information that is given. The brain always tries to

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understand and comprehend the information before it goes into storage. The brain prefers to store
things in the file cabinet that have some sort of meaning in shape or form; for the brain to store,
it has to have a personal connection. In this lesson, modeling and tutoring in the form of
critiquing help provide that personal connection needed. It enhances collaborative and
cooperative learning; however, in order to do that effectively, the students need to have their own
personal understanding and connection to the material. They develop this throughout the lesson
and they attached the meaning to what a color was, how it is used, and what different shades,
tints and tones of the colors can be used.
One of the final concepts (or the final one) that is present in this art lesson plan is
learning through discovery. Learning through deductive processes is a constructivist approach
that encourages students to discover principles and concepts for themselves with the help of
classmates. This type of learning is based on inductive learning, which is where the students are
given rules, and it is on them to discover the overall concept and examples that are being taught
at that time. In this plan, I see guided discovery as the students are guided with clues and a
structured portion. However, having this format still allows them to discover the meaning for
themselves.
An example of this in this lesson is that the students have a list of vocabulary that they
obtained from the reading, and they must induce what the meaning of the word is and put it in
their own terms to help better understand it. The instructor helps this along by discussing
questions and the assignment with the students. The instructor asks questions about tone, value
intensity and what colors make up the color wheel. Because the instructor asks the questions, and
the students have to paraphrase from the information that they gathered from the reading, the

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instructor helps the students make sense of the specific information. The instructor allows them
to have certain cues like breaking down the assignment via the instruction sheet and giving them
the proper materials needed to complete the assignment. Nevertheless, the students are on their
own to discover how and what is needed to complete the assignment within the specified
guidelines and in a creative, unique way without the direct interference and guidance from the
instructor. Unlike deductive learning where it is lecture based and the teacher would just explain
to the students what the color wheel is, discovery learning allows the student to deduce the
components of colors and how each of those colors (components) when put together comes full
circle in the creation of a color wheel.
To conclude, I believe that this lesson plan on a Kaleidoscopic Color Wheel is
consistent with psychological research based on the many similarities of cognitive development
and learning. What is contained in this plan aligns with what both Piaget and Vygotsky had for
ideas on development extremely well. This specific lesson offers a unique take on collaboration
and cooperative learning, in turn, that relates to the theory of constructivism that both
psychologists agreed on. Added to those theories of development, it aligns to concepts and ideas
that are provided in the information-processing model that we have learned about in class.
Through these concepts, this specific lesson plan will allow the students to fully understand what
a color wheel is and what is contained within it and therefore they can store the information.
Emerging from this, they will not only be able to store the information that was presented,
retrieval of the information is improved just by the mere act of associating with a connection.
This processing model will be used by the students through the associations and meanings as
they explain to their peers and critique one anothers work. I truly believe that this lesson plan

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consistently and methodically supports past and present views of psychological research, in turn,
that will enhance and enable the students success in many ways. Each of the ideas and concepts
that I mentioned in this analysis that are included in the lesson plan will enhance student learning
in the art classroom.