8 Hands-On Classroom Activities for Teaching Claude Monet (ACT, BSSS-Aligned)

Monet rewards teachers who get students up and doing. In ACT classrooms working within the Australian Curriculum, Years 9–12 Art students respond far better to Impressionism when they physically experiment with light, broken colour and quick observation than when they only read about it. The eight activities below are low-prep, easy to run in a single or double period, and each one names the learning purpose so you can map it straight to your unit outcomes and, for senior students, to the folio expectations of the ACT Board of Senior Secondary Studies (BSSS). They pair naturally with our Claude Monet – Impressionism and the Painting of Light resource.

Warm-up and observation activities

Start with fast, confidence-building tasks that train the Impressionist habit of looking at light before naming objects.

1. Two-minute light hunt. Students photograph or sketch the same corner of the schoolyard at two different times of day, then annotate what changed. Purpose: builds the core Impressionist idea that colour is a record of light, not a fixed property – the exact concept behind Monet's haystack and cathedral series.
2. Broken-colour swatch race. Working in pairs, students lay small dabs of unmixed colour side by side to make a patch of "green grass" read as green from across the room. Purpose: develops optical mixing and links to colour knowledge you can extend with our Colour Theory – From Itten to Practical Application resource.
3. Squint-and-block. Students squint at a landscape image and paint only the four or five largest shapes of tone. Purpose: teaches massing and composition, a transferable skill for Stage 6-equivalent folio work heading toward the ACT Senior Secondary Certificate.

Making activities

These are the heart of a Monet unit and give students the practise they need to make informed decisions in their own work.

4. En plein air, ACT edition. Take the class outside – Lake Burley Griffin, an oval or a courtyard – and set a strict 20-minute limit to paint the light before it shifts. Purpose: replicates Monet's working conditions and forces decisive mark-making.
5. Water and reflection study. Students paint a puddle or water tray, focusing on broken reflections. Purpose: targets surface, movement and the dissolving of edges central to Monet's later work.
6. Series challenge. Each student paints one subject three times under different conditions. Purpose: mirrors Monet's series method and generates strong folio evidence of sustained investigation.

Analysis and reflection activities

Close the loop by having students think and write like art critics, which supports the analytical strand BSSS assessors look for.

7. Gallery walk with sticky notes. Pin up the class's series studies and have students annotate each other's work using agreed vocabulary – optical mixing, high-key colour, atmospheric perspective. Purpose: builds a shared critical language and peer-assessment skills.
8. Compare and contrast pairs. Place a Monet beside a Post-Impressionist work and have students list what each artist prioritises. Purpose: sharpens comparative analysis; our Vincent van Gogh – Colour and Expression resource makes an ideal counterpoint here.

Connecting to capabilities and Country

Several of these tasks carry the Australian Curriculum general capabilities – Critical and Creative Thinking through the series challenge, and Personal and Social capability through peer critique. When you take students outside to observe changing light on Ngunnawal Country, there is a respectful opening to discuss how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists read and represent Country, seasons and light differently from a European Impressionist tradition. Keep this as a genuine point of comparison rather than a throwaway line, and invite students to notice whose way of seeing a landscape they are being taught.

Run these eight activities across a two-to-three week unit and your ACT students will leave with real Impressionist technique, a working critical vocabulary and folio evidence that stands up to BSSS moderation.

Related reading from the Teacher Hub

• 6 Hands-On Classroom Activities for Teaching The Argumentative Essay (ACT, BSSS-Aligned)
• Building Critical and Creative Thinking Through Percentages and Interest (ACT, BSSS-Aligned)
• Building Critical and Creative Thinking Through The American Dream (ACT, BSSS-Aligned)