Year 5 - Art and design
Shadow stories: silhouette, clay and light
Art for change: visual voices
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Study Guides
This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
Made in collaboration with October Gallery. the unit explores how artists use visual storytelling to express ideas about people and change. Pupils create symbolic work, experiment with shadow and silhouettes, and design placards that use colour, shape, words, and symbols to share messages.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to build a simple clay figure and use light and shadow to help tell a story using shapes and silhouettes.
Key Notes
- Silhouettes and shadows can tell powerful stories without words
- Figures and shapes made from clay use storytelling through pose, exaggeration, or absence to express meaning
- Light and scale help storytelling by changing the mood of a clay narrative
- Different materials, like clay and card, can be combined to create new storytelling artworks
Vocabulary To Learn
- Silhouette: a dark shape or outline of someone or something, shown against a lighter background.
- Shadow: the dark shape made when an object blocks the light.
- Clay: a soft material from the ground that can be shaped and then left to harden.
- Storytelling: using images, shapes, or figures to share an idea, memory, or message
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- History ended long ago; it has nothing to do with today.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the lesson in two key points.
Silhouettes and shadows can tell powerful stories without words. Figures and shapes made from clay use storytelling through pose, exaggeration, or absence to express meaning.
2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'Silhouette'
a dark shape or outline of someone or something, shown against a lighter background.
3. Correct this common mistake.
Mistake: History ended long ago; it has nothing to do with today. Correction: History still affects life now. By talking about past injustice, maybe through art, we learn how to build a fairer present.
More Lessons In This Unit
Browse all guides in the Year 5 Art and design guide library.