A Unit Plan for Teaching Pablo Picasso (TAS, TASC-Aligned)

Picasso is a gift for a Tasmanian Art unit because he lets you teach two big ideas at once: how form can be broken and rebuilt, and how art can carry a political charge. The challenge is sequencing, because it is easy to drown students in periods and movements. This unit plan lays out a clear learning arc of around eight to ten lessons for a Years 9 to 10 class, working within the Australian Curriculum as delivered in Tasmania and building the responding and making skills students will need towards the TCE. Adjust the pacing to your timetable, but keep the arc intact.

The shape of the unit

Think of the unit in three movements: look, break, mean. Students first learn to look closely, then explore how Cubism breaks and reassembles form, and finally confront how Guernica makes meaning from that fractured language. A structured resource such as Pablo Picasso – Cubism and Guernica maps closely to this arc and gives you images, tasks and analysis prompts so you can spend your planning time on differentiation rather than sourcing content.

Lessons 1 to 3: Look

Begin with observation and vocabulary. Under the Office of Tasmanian Assessment, Standards and Certification (TASC) framework, responding rewards precise language, so front-load it here.

1. Lesson 1: Hook with an early realist Picasso beside a Cubist work. Students list what changed. Introduce the unit question: why would an artist deliberately break how things look?
2. Lesson 2: Build the responding toolkit, form, plane, viewpoint, fragmentation, using a shared analysis method.
3. Lesson 3: Guided practice writing one analytical paragraph on a single Cubist portrait.

A general analysis framework such as Analysing a Painting – Method, Vocabulary and Exam Training is worth threading through these early lessons, because the same method carries students into senior study.

Lessons 4 to 6: Break

Now students make. Understanding Cubism through the hands is far more effective than through slides alone.

• Draw a still-life object from three viewpoints, then combine the drawings into one image.
• Reduce a colour photo of a classmate to flat planes.
• Reassemble the planes into a Cubist portrait, holding a limited palette.
• Write a short artist statement linking their choices to the movement's ideas.

This making phase gives you a natural formative checkpoint: the portrait plus statement shows whether students grasp both the technique and the intent.

Lessons 7 to 9: Mean

Turn to Guernica. This is where the unit gains depth and where students learn that abstraction can be a moral act. Discuss the bombing of Guernica, then read the painting slowly, symbol by symbol. Connect it to the Ethical Understanding and Critical and Creative Thinking general capabilities as students weigh how an artist responds to violence. A comparison with an artist who uses symbolism for personal rather than political ends, for example through Frida Kahlo – Self-Portrait and Symbolism, sharpens students' sense of purpose in art.

Where assessment fits

Assessment should feel like the natural end of the arc, not a bolt-on. Plan two pieces:

1. Formative (Lesson 6): the Cubist portrait and artist statement, marked against making criteria with feedback for improvement.
2. Summative (Lesson 10): an extended responding task on Guernica, using the analysis method rehearsed all unit.

Keeping the summative task aligned to the responding skills students have practised every lesson is what makes the unit TASC-ready and honest. Students are assessed on what they have actually been taught, and they arrive at senior study, and eventually the TCE, with a method they trust and a genuine understanding that art can both break the rules and mean something urgent.

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