LESSON PLAN COLOR ASSOCIATIONS AND GENDER

Teacher:
Unit:

Jacqueline Abend
Relationships

Course:
Topic:

Color Associations & Gender

Art I_________________
Grade:

9-12_ _

Essential Questions:
1.

How does art imitate life?

2. What kinds of relationships inspire art?

3. How have artists used their knowledge of relationships throughout history and today?
New Jersey State Standards:

1.1 The Creative Process: All students will demonstrate an understanding of the elements and principles
that govern the creation of works of art in dance, music, theatre, and visual art. (1.1.12.D.1)

1.2 History of the Arts and Culture: All students will understand the role, development, and influence of
the arts throughout history and across cultures. (1.2.12.A.1)

1.3 Performance: All students will synthesize those skills, media, methods, and technologies appropriate
to creating, performing, and/or presenting works of art in dance, music, theatre, and visual art.
(1.3.12.D.3)

Daily Performance Objectives:

Knowledge: Identify how we associate gender with certain colors.

Skills: Practice color mixing to achieve variations of tint, tone, and shade.

Understandings: Color associations influence our actions and perceptions about gender

Prior Knowledge:

Knowledge: Able to identify tint, tone, shade, warm and cool colors.

Skills: Ability to mix colors and choose the right brush size. Ability to follow directions and note
observations

Understandings: Color combinations create aesthetic and psychological relationships. Colors of

various tints, tones, and shades communicate different feelings.

Materials and Aids: Paintbrushes of various sizes, paper towels, water, pencils, rulers, 12 x 9
paper, tempera paint, paint palettes, slides, magazines, fact sheets and images to pass out,
scissors, word slips for advertisement activity

Time Frame for the Lesson:

Time Frame of
Activity
2 minutes

Student Will

Teacher Will

Engage in a word association game.

Students will see a word on the screen
and respond out loud with the color they
associated with that word.

Explain the rules of the word association

game. Read each word out loud and
transition to slides.

5 minutes

Discuss at their tables what they think

gender role means. Share answers with
the class.

Facilitate class discussion on what gender

roles are by calling on students to explain
their definitions and ask them to support
their statements with evidence.

30 minutes

Work together with their groups to

review the images and answer the
questions at their table. Students will
discuss for 15 minutes their selected
images and discuss within their groups.
Students will then take turns to educate
the class about their topic. Students will
present their images, read the
statements/facts at the top of their sheet,
and described what their images mean.

10 minutes

Analyze the two perfume and cologne

advertisements projected on the screen.
Work together at their tables to
categorize the words they have been
given into two separate piles: one for the
perfume advertisement and one for the
cologne advertisement. Students will
share their decisions with the class and
use evidence from the images to support

Divide up the sixth table of the classroom

by sending one student to each of the
other tables in order to create five groups.
Pass out the materials to each table.
Explain the task to students: Students will
have a set of images and a corresponding
sheet with facts and questions on it.
Students will discuss what their images
mean, keeping in mind the idea of gender
roles and thinking about how the history
of blue for boys and pink for girls
developed. Teacher will prompt students
with questions during discussion time.
Teacher will structure classroom
discussion by calling on tables to present
and ask the class critical questions.
Encourage them to make connections
with information.
Pass out sets of ten words to each table.
Explain activity to students. Have
students work together and analyze the
two images projected on the screen.
Instruct them to decide which words fit
better with each advertisement. Explain
they must use evidence and color
vocabulary to support their decisions.
Structure classroom discussion by calling

5 minutes

their decisions. Students will use color

terminology in their explanations.
Take notes/respond to and ask questions
while teacher explains assignment.

20 minutes

Look through magazines and select their

advertisement. Begin color inventory
project if ready.

10 minutes

Clean up and respond to review

questions.

on tables to respond.
Explain the art assignment. Ask students
to identify what an inventory is. Explain
that they will be making color inventories
using magazine advertisements. Show an
example of a color inventory with one of
the ads used in the previous activity.
Demonstrate to students the materials
they will need and steps they need to take
to complete the assignment. Explain that
after the completion of their inventories,
their finished products will be placed on
the tables and students will need to guess,
based on color choice, whether the
original advertisement was masculine or
feminine.
Pass out magazines.

Ask students review questions: What

colors do we associate with men and
women? What kinds of behaviors do we
associate with these colors? What are
gender roles? How are tints, tones,
shades, and warm and cool colors used in
images that depict gender?

Assessment/Evaluation:

Formative- Analogy prompts. Example: Pink is to sweet as navy is to _________ because

_____________________________________________________________.

Summative- Color Inventory Project

Adaptations

ELL Learners: Use black and white images next to words during the word association game to
support understanding. Provide ELL students with magazines/advertisements in their native
language to select from. Provide ELL students with translations during word/advertisement activity.
Allow ELL students to sit next to one another.

Special Needs: Include demonstration of assignment. Provide task analyses to students to break down
assignment.

Homework N/A

Fact: The picture of the child is a photo of a young President Franklin D. Roosevelt from
1884.
Fact: In the 19th and 20th century, both girls and boys as infants and toddlers wore the
types of clothing you see in these pictures.
Discuss the following with your groups and write down your answers on a separate piece
of paper:
Describe the clothing you see here. What color is it? What kind of garment is it?
Describe how Franklin D. Roosevelt looks in terms of his clothing, his accessories, and his
hair.
Compared to todays culture, do these images look masculine or feminine?
Describe why you think boys and girls were dressed like this during that time period.
(Consider: What are the practical reasons for dressing young children like this?)

These are images of women working in factories during World War II. Often their jobs included
making ammunition and war supplies as well as working on parts for ships and airplanes.
Discuss the following with your groups and write down your answers on a separate piece of paper:
How do these women look?
What is similar about what all of these women are wearing?
Why do you think they are dressed the way they are?
Why were women performing these jobs at the time?
When you think of the kinds of work that is being shown in these photographs, operating heavy
machinery and performing manual labor, what kind of person do you think most people would
imagine having these jobs? Why is that so?

These images are fashion advertisements from womens magazine from the 1940s. The other
image is a photograph of Mamie Eisenhower, wife of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and
first lady of the United States, in her outfit for the presidential inaugural ball in 1953.
Fact: Mamie Eisenhowers gown was covered in more than 2,000 rhinestones.
Discuss the following with your groups and write down your answers on a separate piece of
paper:
What major world event was happening in the 1940s that was no longer happening in the
1950s?
What are the differences between the dresses in the advertisements and Mamie Eisenhowers
gown? (Name at least three)
In what ways would the major world event affect how women dressed in the 1940s?
How did people feel during the major world event? What would life be like in the years after it
ended?
How does the nation view the First Lady of the United States?

Fact: Pink did not become a popular color for kitchen dcor and appliances until the 1950s.
These images are magazine advertisements from the 1950s.
Discuss the following with your groups and write down your answers on a separate piece of
paper:
What is this an advertisement for?
What color are the appliances?
When we think of gender stereotypes, whose role is typically within the home and kitchen?
What major world event was happening in the 1940s that was no longer happening in the
1950s?
During this major world event, who was off fighting? With this population gone, what group had
to take over factory jobs in order to build much needed supplies?
What happened when that population returned home from fighting? What do you think the
other group felt like when they had to leave the jobs they had been working at for years?

Fact: Prenatal testing was more developed and became far more popular in the
1980s.
Discuss the following with your groups and write down your answers on a separate
piece of paper:
What is the first image a picture of?
At what point during pregnancy do parents start buying clothes and toys for their
baby?
Identify which toys/clothing in the second image are for girls and which ones are for
boys.
Read over the fact at the top of the page. If this is the case, then what kinds of
clothing do you think parents would have bought for their children before the
1980s? What would have been different?

Fact: By age 2 or 3, a child starts to develop an understanding of what it means to be male or

female.
Discuss the following with your groups and write down your answers on a separate piece of paper:
Identify which of these outfits are for boys and which are for girls?
What characteristics make you think this?
Look at the words written on the clothing. What is different about the words used for girls and the
ones used for boys?
What message do these outfits communicate about different genders? Looking at these clothes,
how would you say girls should act? How would you say boys should act?

Aggressive Dominating
Strong

Tough

Flirtatious
Gentle
Frivolous
Affectionate
Sensitive
Serious

Flirtatious Gentle
Coqueto

Suave

Frivolous

Affectionate

Frvolo

Carioso

Sensitive

Serious

Sensible

Serio

Aggressive
Agresivo

Dominating
Dominante

Strong
Fuerte

Tough
Duro

Flirtatious Gentle

Frivolous

Affectionate

Sensitive

Serious

Aggressive Dominating

Strong

Tough

Gender Roles Color Inventory

Name: __________________________________________________

Date: _________________________

You Need:

1. Select an advertisement from a magazine and cut it out.

2. Use the ruler and pencil to draw to make a 1 inch border around the paper.

3. Choose 5 to 8 colors that are present in the ad.

4. Use you ruler to measure and draw out the different sections of color on your paper.

5. Mix your paints to get the right tint, tone, and shade and paint in these sections.

6. When your painting is dry, write your paragraph on the back.

My advertisement is depicting a
car. It is supporting traditional
masculine gender roles because
of the colors being used and

My advertisement is depicting a car.

It is supporting traditional masculine
gender roles because of the colors
being used. For example