Introduction Kindergarten Grades One and Two Grades Three and Four   Lesson One   Lesson Two   Lesson Three     Experience One     Experience Two Online Games and Activities Culminating Experience Train Glossary National Standards		Grades Three and Four: Lesson Three - Experience Two Train Art >> Resources How do the visual arts convey ideas about trains and their changing connections to our communities? In this experience, students examine train poster art and advertisements from the South Shore Line. This railroad has stood the test of time and is making plans to continue serving northwest Indiana in the future. Objectives: Experience Two will enable students to: Give examples of the roles that trains play in their communities. Identify ways that ideas are expressed through art. Express ideas about trains and their communities in their art. Explain the purpose of an advertisement. You Will Need... Materials: Magazines; markers; 11" x 17" colored construction paper; scissors; glue; Visual 20: Nation's Lifeline, Visual 21: Chicago's Neighboring South Shore: Just Around the Corner Along the South Shore Line, and Visual 22: Just Around the Corner posters by Mitchell Markovitz. Time: Two 30-minute periods. Words: More powerful than a locomotive... Poster, advertisement, region, community, collage Focus Questions: Use these questions to help students focus on key ideas in Experience Two. How are the advertisements similar or different? What do these posters tell us about the jobs trains do in other communities? How would you portray the trains in your community? What are the activities taking place around trains in your community? Just Around the Corner Indiana Academic Standards: Grade Three: Visual Arts - Standard 1: Responding to Art-History (3.1.1); Standard 3: Responding to Art-Criticism (3.3.2); Standard 7: Creating Art-Production (3.7.3); Standard 9: Creating Art-Production (3.9.2). Social Studies - Standard 3: Geography (3.3.3). Grade Four: Visual Arts - Standard 1: Responding to Art-History (4.1.3); Standard 3: Responding to Art-Criticism (4.3.2); Standard 7: Creating Art-Production (4.7.3); Standard 9: Creating Art-Production (4.9.2). Procedures: W Present students with the three advertisement posters,      1. Nation's Lifeline,      2. Chicago's Neighboring South Shore: Just Around the Corner Along the South Shore Line      3. Just Around the Corner. Help students become aware of the posters they see every day. Can they identify posters in the classroom and school? Where else have they seen posters? Ask students how posters are used. Students will probably be able to determine that a poster is a picture that is used to convey information. It is usually "posted" or put up in a public place and is large enough for everyone to see it. Discuss the purposes of advertisements and ask students to identify visual clues that answer the questions: what? when? and where? Provide a brief history of each poster for students, including the artist biography and the Indiana or Illinois community featured in these scenes along the railroad. Explain the connection of the name South Shore Line to the location of the railroad along the shore of Lake Michigan. Help students refer back to the content used in the South Shore Line advertisements and connect images to the meaning conveyed. Have students pick a specific region of Indiana that they feel they would like to know more about, or have them focus on the region that they live in. Ask students what landmarks, events or scenery symbolize that community. Assessment: Ask students to design a poster that focuses on the Indiana region they have chosen using the technique of collage. Their advertisement must clearly advertise a train in that region of Indiana. It should be similar to the posters from the South Shore Line. What scenery, landmarks or symbols would they select for their posters as visual clues to clearly represent that region of Indiana? They may cut out the different objects for their poster from magazines or colored construction paper, and glue all the objects onto an 11" x 17" sheet of colored construction paper. Discuss student advertisements, pointing out the connection between visual elements and the message the student is trying to communicate. Ask each student to write a short caption that reflects the message and add it to the poster. Performance Criteria: Students should be able to create a poster that expresses their knowledge of the connection between trains, a specific region of Indiana and their lives, while controlling the media of collage. Train of Thought Journal: Ask students to think about and record in their journals the words that they feel would encourage people to visit their community or region. Tips for the Teacher: In Experience Two students learn some of the ways ideas are conveyed through art and consider the connections between artists, art works and their communities. This experience is designed for classroom teachers. It also provides an opportunity for multidisciplinary work with the art teacher. The experience can be expanded to explore trains and transportation as thematic subjects in the visual arts. In addition to the South Shore Line posters presented here, European poster art of the 1920s and 1930s provide striking images. The book All Aboard: Images From the Golden Age of Rail Travel presents commercial art in the form of posters, advertisements and memorabilia along with social history and commentary on design eras. The South Shore Line: The South Shore Line has been the premiere passenger service for Northwest Indiana and Chicago for many decades, and has been a wonderful resource for that area of Indiana, encouraging industrial growth and residential development. The South Shore Line began in 1903 as a streetcar service that ran three and a half miles between East Chicago, Ind., and the Indiana harbor of Lake Michigan. Over the next few years the Line grew, stretching 70 miles from Hammond to South Bend. By the beginning of the 1920s, the Line had grown too big too fast, and fell on hard times. In 1925, Samuel Insull bought the railroad and officially renamed it the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Line. Insull set to work building the South Shore Line into a successful business. He launched a marketing effort that featured the places passengers could visit using the South Shore Line network. The campaign was based on posters showing unique Northwest Indiana scenery of beaches, shoreline, forest, dunes and industry. Insull's efforts paid off in the 1920s, but the railroad suffered during the Depression. Since then, the South Shore Line has gone through ownership changes and many ups and downs, from an insurgence of passengers from industries along the lake shore during World War II to lack of passenger interest in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, the South Shore Line travels between South Bend, Ind., and downtown Chicago at Randolph Street, making many stops throughout the two-and-a-half-hour-long journey. It carries more than 13,000 passengers daily, and is developing plans to increase service to accommodate more passengers who wish to settle in northwest Indiana. To emphasize its connection to the communities it serves, the flourishing railroad has reintroduced poster advertisements. The poster series features landmarks and scenery of modern day northwest Indiana and Chicago, while keeping with the style of the previous posters created in the 1920s. Mitchell Markovitz: Mitchell Markovitz is one of the professional artists participating in the new series of South Shore Line posters. Markovitz, a native of Chicago, is now a resident of Knox in northwest Indiana. He studied art at the American Academy of Art, the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is an accomplished artist and illustrator whose works are widely exhibited. He also has a dual career as a railroad man. Since he was a child, Markovitz has had a passion for trains. He often accompanied his father on assignments as a commercial illustrator from the Illinois Central Railroad. After art school, Markovitz took a summer job as a brakeman on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. He went on to become a fireman and an engineer, the youngest in the country at the time. Later, he worked for the South Shore Line as advertising director and chief illustrator, but sometimes found that his services were also needed as an engineer! Today Markovitz is a full-time artist who continues to express his love of trains. He has created several posters for the South Shore Line's new series, including those used in this lesson. He is featured in the anthology Moonlight in Duneland along with poster artists of the 1920s. In connection with this project, Markovitz has worked with the Northwest Indiana Forum as founding artist and art director for the "Just Around the Corner" series of posters focusing on life in northwest Indiana. Markovitz often works with schools in his area of the state and encourages young artists to pursue the careers that are closest to their hearts.