Read, Listen, View
Enter this Unit.	Middle Level: Grades 6-8 Middle-Level Standard: Nonfiction Listen to a presentation or read on-line information about the cultural context of Billboard, the style of the painting, Hartigan's life, and her viewpoints on Billboard, and demonstrate comprehension of the material by responding to descriptive, interpretive, and associative questions. To complement study of the painting's commercial content, identify and evaluate the persuasive techniques used in various advertisements. Middle-Level Standard: Fiction Discuss why Billboard can be considered a visual catalogue of New York City, read poems that use catalogues as a literary device, and write a poem based on a catalogue of words that express personal feelings about the local community. (See Activities, Language Arts.) Explore the concept of cities and towns having personalities by reading and discussing works such as Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, and John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. Do a sketch or create a collage that captures the personality of the place described in the story. (See Activities, Language Arts.) Read recommended poems by Frank O'Hara and Langston Hughes and then discuss how these poems capture the essence of New York City as compared to Hartigan's Billboard. (See Activities, Language Arts.) Correlate words selected from a poem by Frank O'Hara or another literary work to the part of Hartigan's painting that best describes or captures the essence of each word. (See Activities, Language Arts.)
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