Unit Overview

Created in Partnership with:

The Aga Khan Museum and the Ministry of Education

This Ontario Ministry of Education resource was prepared by teachers, for teachers in partnership with the Aga Khan Museum. Curriculum resources were inspired by the Museum’s Permanent Collection. Object information and images courtesy of the Aga Khan Museum.

This unit has been created for a Grade 9 or 10 Drama class. The unit could be situated in the middle to latter part of the course so that students can apply the knowledge, skills and techniques they have learned throughout the course and connect them with their own stories and experiences in a meaningful way. The purpose of this unit is threefold: for students to: 1) engage in self-inquiry and object-based work to tell stories about objects of personal cultural significance from multiple perspectives and lens, 2) to do guided inquiry which explores intersections and interrelationships found in the shapes, patterns and designs of Islamic art and architecture and to create individual and collaborative movement and dance pieces to represent these connections, and 3) to do independent and collaborative inquiry work using objects and materials found in the main galleries and online digital collections of the Aga Khan museum in order to use both drama and movement strategies to tell the stories behind the creators and the creation of the objects themselves and about their social and cultural significance.

For more information on how to support students in inquiry learning, see PDF #1 Engaging students in Inquiry-based Learning.

For a brief introduction to Islam and Muslim Peoples, see PDF #2 A Brief Introduction to Islam and Muslim Peoples

For an introduction to the Aga Khan Museum and Collection, see PDF #3 Introduction to his Highness the Aga Khan and the Aga Khan Museum

Unit Guiding Questions
Questions Relating to Multiple Perspectives in creating object-based work in Drama
  • What do artifacts tell us about people or peoples?
  • What other stories do artifacts tell?
  • What might individual artifacts combine to create in a museum?
  • How can the stories behind the artifacts change depending on who has had possession of the object at a particular time?
  • What elements of the artifact are most useful in helping us to tell stories about them?
  • Considering that objects can tell or reveal different stories at different time periods, considering the contexts in which they are created for the purposes for which they are used, how many stories can be told from different perspectives about particular objects?
Questions Relating to Islamic art, architecture and design
  • What is Islamic art? In what forms is it produced? For what purposes is it used?
  • What are the historical origins of the use of geometric shapes and patterns used in Islamic art and architecture?
  • Why are these shapes and patterns used in Islamic art (for example in mosaics, arabesques, tiles, on the folios of the Qur’an)? Students will develop a deeper understanding of the symbolic use of shapes, patterns and designs in Islamic art and architecture throughout the lesson.
  • What can be learned from an exploration of intersections and interrelationships in these patterns which is representative of the ways in which over time artistic knowledge was transmitted between different cultures and different parts of the Islamic world?
  • How does Islamic art reflect the cultural, social, political and economic contexts in which it was produced and/or used?
Questions about the Aga Khan Museum and collections
  • Who is His Highness the Aga Khan?
  • What is the purpose of the Aga Khan Museum?
  • What kinds of works of art and other objects are part of its permanent, digital and temporary galleries?
Questions about inquiry, storytelling and the use of drama and dance strategies to tell the stories of artifacts from their creation to their acquisition as part of the Aga Khan Museum collection
  • How can we select and develop useful inquiry-based questions that will help us uncover the backstories behind the creators, users of the object (in its varied ways) and how the object came to be part of the Aga Khan collection?
  • What questions do I need to generate and figure out the answers to missing questions that I have relating to my chosen object?
  • What resource materials (digital, museum-based etc) can help to answer questions connected to the independent/collaborative inquiry work?
  • How can a combination of drama and/or dance and movements strategies be useful to describe/tell the journey of how artifacts in the Aga Khan collection were created, used, travelled and arrived in Toronto as part of the collection?
  • Which drama and/or dance strategies are most useful in creating a performance-based piece using a combination of storytelling and movement-based pieces in different formats?

Assessment and Evaluation: How will students demonstrate their learning?

Assessment for Learning (AfL)
  • Circulate during writing and discussion
  • Help to organize learning using graphic organizers
  • Check in with students, giving them descriptive feedback and offering prompting questions
  • Encourage them to consider previous learning
  • Co-construct success criteria and post using anchor charts
  • Teacher checklist
  • Teacher/Peer Feedback
  • Class Discussion
  • Teacher Observation
  • Side Coaching
Assessment as Learning (AaL)
  • Continually prompt students to reflect on their work, orally and in writing
  • Encourage them to observe, reflect on and offer feedback to their peers
  • Ask students to describe their intentions as artists and to reflect on and justify their choices
  • Class Discussion
  • Co-creating success criteria
  • Journal writing
  • Peer and Self Evaluation
  • Teacher/Peer Feedback
Assessment of Learning (AoL)
  • Co-constructed criteria communicated through rubrics used as tools to evaluate performances and other creative tasks.
  • PDF #12 Flocking the Shapes Performance Rubric
  • PDF #15 Performance Rubric