Curriculum Overview Samples - Visual Arts

Initial Samples Released January 31, 2013

We are proud to present the k-12 visual arts curriculum samples created by Colorado educators, practitioners and teachers. Working with our lead facilitator, Patrick Fahey, PhD from Colorado State University, this past fall, over 50 visual arts educators came together to translate the Visual Arts Colorado Academic Standards (CAS) into curriculum. As resources for districts’ voluntary-use, these curriculum samples offer possible options for sequencing the concepts, skills, and content of the CAS across a course or year.

The template upon which all of the samples are based derived from research and was designed and refined by Colorado educators to highlight what students should understand, know and be able to do at the end of a given unit or plan of study (detailed description of the curriculum template components). There are some unique aspects to the visual arts samples at particular grade levels, which are documented in the bullet points below.

Together, these samples are intended to support districts’ transition to the CAS and the development of standards-based instructional practices.

NEW RESOURCES! Instructional Unit Samples are now available for select overviews.

Update February 15, 2013. In the original posting of the Visual Arts samples, the completion of the sentence stem for the knowledge statements was somewhat confusing. To clarify this section, we have streamlined the knowledge statement to make the samples more accessible and user-friendly.

To learn more about the Visual Arts curriculum samples watch this presentation:

VisualArts Sample Curriculum Unique Attributes from eNetColorado on Vimeo.

High School Visual Arts Samples

Unique components in high school visual arts:

The process graphic, on the course at a glance page, provides a visual depiction of the cyclical process-based nature of the visual arts standards.

Due to the variance of visual arts program offerings state wide, unit length and sequence have often been left up to individual practitioners to adjust for varied scheduling needs.

The overviews are highly versatile and can be customized to meet a wide variety of visual arts program needs

These samples were designed to meet a variety of programming options within the state

The samples orient around media use. Instructors can reorganize the samples from any of the sets to “mix and match” units at their discretion

High School Drawing (Word or PDF)
High School Painting (Word or PDF)
High School Media Arts (Word or PDF)
High School Sculpture (Word or PDF)

Kindergarten - 8th Grade Visual Arts Samples

Unique components in kindergarten - 8th grade visual arts:

The process graphic, on the course at a glance page, provides a visual depiction of the cyclical process-based nature of the visual arts standards.

Due to the variance of visual arts program offerings state wide, unit length and sequence have often been left up to individual practitioners to adjust for varied scheduling needs.

The overviews are highly versatile and can be customized to meet a wide variety of visual arts program needs.

8th Grade (Word or PDF)
7th Grade (Word or PDF)
6th Grade (Word or PDF)
5th Grade (Word or PDF)
4th Grade (Word or PDF)
3rd Grade (Word or PDF)
2nd Grade (Word or PDF)
1st Grade (Word or PDF)
Kindergarten (Word or PDF)

The Colorado Sample Curriculum was written by and for Colorado educators as a way to understand and translate the state standards into curriculum. Users of the samples should feel free to copy, distribute and transmit the samples and to adapt them to fit their needs. Please honor the work of the Colorado educators that created these samples by providing them attribution. These samples were not intended for commercial purposes.