Mandala & 

This I Believe Unit

Embracing personal philosophies through art and writing. 

In this unit, students will create a Mandala collage and write a personal essay based on a sacred, personal belief. They will learn about Mandalas, or sacred works of art with circles as their focal points, by looking at Mandalas across different cultures and time periods, and then by creating their own Mandala with images collaged primarily from magazines. The theme of their collage will be a “This I Believe” statement which they will formulate on the first day of the unit right before they begin making their collage. Upon completing their collage, students will then write a “This I Believe” essay which will serve as an artist’s statement for their work of art. Each student will present his or her essay and collage at a coffeehouse style gathering to be held at the close of the unit.

Because we believe in cooperative learning and the free exchange of ideas, we welcome teachers to use and pass along these resources!  Please contact us if you are able to fine tune our work or if you have student samples or activities that could make this a stronger unit. 

Unit Design by Sharon Loy (Art) & Kendra Waddell (English)

Liberty High School, JCPS

www.kcwaddell.com


Unit Objectives and Standards

View and download the overall objectives of this art/writing unit.  Curriculum is aligned with Kentucky Core Content and Learning Goals.

12 Daily Plans and Resources

While the unit may take more than 12 days to complete, this site gives you a basic outline of the daily agendas we suggest while teaching the unit.  Hyperlinks to instructional resources are active and will allow you to download individual PDF files of the materials needed for each day.  Please note that most agendas were designed for a 90-minute block.

Instructional Downloads and Links

Access all of our files in zipped folders for easy access.  PDF files and Word documents are available in case you want to edit something to better match your instructional needs.  Link to Internet resources and find out what print resources we utilized most while creating this unit.