OuiSi · Visual arts

Where to put it

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Grades 2–5 Teaching 35 min Plus 2 to set out, 3 to clear Class any size Set any Prep paper and a pencil each

set out 2′ One thing, in the middle 6′ Move it three times 12′ Which one, and why 12′ Close 5′ clear 3′

Goal: Children draw the same thing four times and move it around the frame, and find that where you put something changes what it says.
Materials: One OuiSi Photo-Card set, one card per child. Paper and a pencil each, four boxes per sheet.

Grades 2–3: Three boxes. Middle, corner, filling the frame — about 28 min.
Grade 4: All four, including cut off at the edge — the full 35 min.
Grade 5: Then a fifth of their own, with the reason given before they draw it.

1 · One thing, in the middle

6 min

One card each. Four boxes on the paper, about the size of a playing card.

Find one thing on your card. One — not the whole picture.

Draw it in the first box, small, right in the middle. Thirty seconds, roughly is fine.

Rough is genuinely fine and worth saying twice. A class that believes it will make four drawings instead of one careful one.

2 · Move it three times

12 min

Same thing, box two. In a corner, and leave the rest empty.

Box three. So big it fills the box and runs off the edges.

Box four. Half outside the box, so part of it is cut off.

One at a time, each finished before the next.

Four versions of one thing, with only place and size changing. The moment a child draws something new, the comparison is gone.

3 · Which one, and why

12 min

Look at your four. Same drawing. Do they feel the same?

Which one feels lonely? Which one feels loud? Which keeps going after the edge?

The corner tends to read as alone, the filled frame as close or loud, the cut-off one as carrying on outside. Children find these reliably — do not say them first.

Pairs, four drawings between them.

Pick the one you would keep, and tell your partner why using what you can see.

Then turn the card back over.

Somebody chose where to put things in that photograph too. What did they choose?

This is where the deck earns its place. Every card is a crop a photographer decided on, and after twelve minutes of moving their own subject around, children see that decision for the first time.

4 · Close

5 min

Show me a box where you put it somewhere surprising, and say what that did.

Three or four, then stop. Take the ones where the child can say what the placement did, not the best drawings.

Watch for

A different subject each time. The one thing that breaks the lesson. Same subject, four places.
Careful drawing. Six minutes on box one means never reaching box four, which is where the idea is. Set the pace and move the room on together.
It feels nice. Not yet an answer. Ask what they can see that makes them say so.
Only the obvious subject. If everyone draws the animal, run one round where nobody may draw the main thing — the shadow, the edge, the gap.

Adapt

Children sure they cannot draw — a blob is a perfectly good subject. The lesson is where it goes, and a blob moved four times teaches it exactly as well.
Motor needs — larger boxes, or two per sheet across two sheets.
Multilingual learners — step three works by pointing. Supply lonely, loud, and cut off afterward.
Children who think faster than they write — let them place and talk first, draw after.
Want it harder — two things in the frame, and the question becomes what their distance apart does.

Curriculum links. Composition and placement within a frame · Scale and cropping as deliberate choices · Explaining an artistic decision with visual evidence · Reading a photographer's framing.
Standard codes vary by state and district — these are the skills exercised, for you to map to your own.

Screen-free. No codes and no devices. Works with any OuiSi Photo-Card set.
Pairs well with Make the same mark, which builds the marks this lesson arranges.