The Use of Shapes
One lesson in my unit, Human Rights for All Humans, deals with the inequities in educational opportunities in the world for girls. As part of my lesson for 5th graders, students will be participating in Pennies for Peace, a nonprofit organization that has been highly successful bringing educational opportunities to disenfranchised girls throughout the world. I want to convey the message that every step that a student takes to help others matters. This graphic will be used to introduce the service learning project, and a similar graphic will be used to color in pennies as we reach goals that are set.
For this assignment, I created a graphic with pennies to represent the shape of an upward staircase. The pennies are in the shape of a staircase and the corresponding text is read bottom to top, which leads the reader up the staircase of pennies to the top image of girls in school.
Circles are used to focus attention and create balance (Lohr, p.250). Also, circles can demonstrate hierarchy (Lohr, p. 250) which is implied in my graphic because the end result of collecting enough pennies is that students get to go to school.
Linda Boveda 