Texture is one of the seven basic building blocks of art along with Line, Form, Shape, Value, Space, and Color. Here we look at the how visual artists try to stimulate our sight and our other senses through different textures. They create something that we can see and feel or imagine the feeling of and try to engage us in that way as well. Learn how different textures (and implied textures) convey different feelings here.

Check out the entire collection of KQED Art School videos!

Value is one of the seven basic building blocks of art along with Line, Form, Shape, Color, Space, and Texture. Through the lens of black and white photography, we look at how artists produce value scales and contrast, and how different kinds of lines change the way we perceive depth and space. Learn how different values can invoke different emotions in this video.

In this interactive lesson, discover how literary techniques like figurative language, imagery, and symbolism contribute to the overall meaning of a poem. Explore how a poet establishes and builds on a theme. Learn how to tell the difference between tone and mood. Through a close reading of Maya Angelou’s famous poem “Caged Bird” (1983), practice unpacking the language of poetry while learning about some of the various tools a writer can utilize when writing a poem.

This student-directed lesson can be completed online. Students will require a login if the instructor desires that they save their work to the platform. You will find detailed instructions on how to set up and manage accounts, class rosters, and assignments in the Help section of the interactive lesson plan.

Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor creates poignant, larger-than-life figures that are seemingly cobbled together with reused scrap materials including wood, textiles and newspaper.

Learn the story of Ella Baker, the unsung hero of the civil rights movement who founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960, in this video from The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.

In this activity from Commonwealth Theatre Center in Louisville, Kentucky, students can write and perform a monologue addressed to a selected emotion describing their experiences with the emotion and why they would like to spend more or less time together. Students will better understand their relationship with their emotions and communicate complex ideas.

Designed for middle and high school teachers, we’ll consider how to tackle misinformation, how to analyze digital media, and why it’s important for your students. Robert Costa is the Moderator of Washington Week, the Peabody Award-winning weekly news analysis series on PBS. Costa is also a full-time national political reporter for The Washington Post, where he covers Congress and the White House and regularly travels the country to meet with voters and elected officials.

Led by PBS Digital Innovator All Star Leigh Herman and PBS Station Representative Mary Anne Lane this session highlights exciting resources and models that you can immediately implement in your classroom.

Prioritizing fun, engaging and accessible tools for your students, the series will highlight techniques for analyzing media, and amplifying student voice through authentic storytelling.

Scientists discuss whether or not endocrine disrupting chemicals, which may cause birth defects and other health concerns, should be controlled in the absence of conclusive proof, in this video segment adapted from FRONTLINE: Fooling with Nature.

Watch students as they conduct an energy audit on a home and gain hands-on experience for a career in the green energy industry, in this video adapted from ATETV.

This feature, adapted from Interactive NOVA: "Earth," follows the path of energy as it is transferred via the food chain from one type of organism to another.

This video segment, adapted from NOVA, describes the energy flow in a coral reef, including its food web.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students examine energy forms in moving objects and discover how changes from one form to another move cars through a roller coaster ride.

On NOVA, a team of carpenters, timber framers, engineers, and historians recreate a medieval throwing machine called a trebuchet. This adapted video segment explores how understanding energy transfer informs their design.

In this video segment from NASA, robotics researcher Ayanna Howard uses engineering to improve the intelligence of robots in space exploration.

In this video segment adapted from NOVA scienceNOW, learn how what you eat, drink, or smoke may affect the instructions your epigenomes send to your genes, and as a result, change how your DNA is expressed.

Franklin works with Laverne to create a budget for a job painting a room, in this video segment from TV 411.

Harry estimates how long it will take him to get to the front of a long ticket line in this Cyberchase video segment.

In this media-rich lesson, students explore some of the ethical, legal, and social issues related to personal genetic testing and genome sequencing.

In this video excerpt from NOVA, learn about the advantages, disadvantages, and ethical implications of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, a technique used to screen embryos created through in vitro fertilization for diseases.

Linda Black Elk is passionate about plants. Linda Black Elk is an ethnobotanist and professor of ethnobotany and science education at Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, North Dakota and recently she traveled to the Cansayapi Oyate (the Lower Sioux Indian Community) to share her knowledge of medicinal plants with students there.

Two lesson plans for grades 9-12 are included as gallery assets and in the Support Materials.