the-venus-of-willendorf.pdf

The Venus of Willendorf (below) is an icon of prehistoric art. It is housed in the Museum of Natural History in Vienna. One day, a visitor to the museum asks a guide how old it is. The guide replies that it is 25 thousand years and 8 months old. The visitor is surprised and asks the guide how he can be so exact. The guide replies, “Well, it was 25 thousand years old when I started working here and that was 8 months ago.”

This is a variation of the Tyrannosaurus Rex Joke: An activity that was posted a while back.

1. Start by writing The Venus of Willendorf on the board and ask your students if they can tell you what it is and what they know about it.

2. Show a picture. The one on the left was obtained from Wikipedia. There are a couple of others included in the pdf file lesson plan (above).

3. Tell your students that you are going to ask them to draw a picture. Ask everyone to have a pen or pencil and a piece of blank paper ready.

4. Tell everyone to put down their pens (no drawing yet!) and then give the following instructions:

“I want you to draw a picture of a visitor in a museum. He or she is pointing to the Venus of Willendorf and speaking to a guide. The Venus of Willendorf is in a glass case in the foreground of the picture. The visitor and the guide are in the background. The visitor is on the left hand side and the guide is on the right hand side. There are two large speech bubbles: One coming out of the visitor’s mouth and another coming out of the guide’s mouth.”

To strengthen students’ comprehension of the instructions:

• Use gesture. For example point in the air to demonstrate “pointing at the Venus of Willendorf”
• Change your standing position to demonstrate “on the left/right hand side” or “in the foreground/background”
• Demonstrate what a speech bubble is by drawing an imaginary one in the air (coming out your own mouth) with your finger.
• Speak clearly and write any new language on the board
• Repeat the instructions 2 or 3 times.
• Learn the instructions off by heart. Instructions are clearer when they are not being read from a piece of paper.

5. Before your students draw their pictures, ask them to relay the instructions back to you (there is a lot of useful language here). You could even ask them to write them down from memory.

6. Let everyone draw their pictures (one drawing per person). Tell them not to write anything in the speech bubbles at this stage. The drawings don’t have to be masterpieces like the one below.

(Drawing by Mariola)

7. After letting everyone compare their artwork, ask them to suggest what the visitor and the guide are saying to each other. A typical exchange will go like this:

Visitor: My God! Look at the size of those!
Guide: Yes, they all say that.

NB The speech bubbles should still be left blank at this stage.

8. Tell your students that the visitor is asking a question. Elicit a few examples and write them on the board and help with grammar and language as you go. Possibilities:

• Why is it called the ‘Venus of Willendorf’?
• Where does it get its name?
• How long has it been in this museum?
• How did the museum acquire it?
• Did they discover anything else next to it?
• What was it used for?
• What do we know about the people who made it?
• Who made it?
• What does it represent? / What does it mean? / What do you think it meant to the people who made it?
• How much is it worth? / Is it valuable?
• Why does she have such big bosoms? (Inevitable)

9. Draw/write the following on the board:

Use the answers in the cloud to elicit more possible questions that the visitor asks. Add these to the board.

• Q: What is it? (A: A statuette)
• Q: What is it made of? (A: Limestone)
• Q: How was it made? (A: It was carved)
• Q: Where is it kept / displayed / housed? (A: The Museum of Natural History in Vienna)
• Q: Who discovered it? / Who was it discovered by? (A: Josef Szombathy)
• Q: Why is it important? (A: It is an icon of prehistoric art)
• Q: When was it discovered? (A: 1908)
• Q: Where was it discovered? / Where is it from? (A: Near Willendorf, a village in Austria)
• Q: When does it date to? / When does it date from? / How old is it? (A: Sometime between 24,000 and 22,000 BC)

10. Divide your class into two groups: Group A and Group B. Bring everyone’s attention back to the drawings.

11. Tell students that you are going to dictate the captions for the speech bubbles. Dictate the following

• (For A students only - to be written into the visitor’s speech bubble): Can you tell me how old this statuette is?
• (For A students only - to be written into the guide’s speech bubble): Yes, it’s 25 thousand years and 8 months old.
• (For B students only - to be written into the visitor’s speech bubble): How can you be so exact?
• (For B students only - to be written into the guide’s speech bubble): Well, it was 25 thousand years old when I started working here and that was 8 months ago.

12. Put your students’ drawings up on the classroom wall. Make sure that you pair up student A drawings with student B drawings so that the comic strip makes sense.

Follow up

Ask your students to go online and find out the answers to any of the unanswered questions that arose in step 9.