A Visual Thinking Guide: For Viewing Works of Art with Elementary Students

How can teachers inspire students to engage in questioning strategies about what students see in the world?

Arts-based questioning strategies offer a two-fold purpose: students can be guided through different elements within various works of art; and, students can develop and enhance essential skills to facilitate lifelong learning.

Benefits of regularly engaging in questioning strategies include

• refining observational prowess,
• deeper contemplation,
• developing collaboration,
• critical thinking abilities, and
• interpretation skills.

The richest learning occurs by using open-ended questions that allow children to keenly observe and discuss their findings. In some, but not all, cases, this pattern of observation and discussion may result in a judgement of an artwork, or the discovery of the artist's true socio-political, economic, or emotional meaning of the work. At times, the teacher may want the students to precisely consider the historical or social context of an artwork to provide enhanced meaning for discussion. At other times, a teacher may simply invite students to speculate meaning based on observation, or ask students to notice the formal details of a specific composition.

The visual thinking guide in the following section utilizes this foundation of open-ended questions, which provides teachers with flexibility: this scaffold enables teachers to limit or enhance various lines of questioning, including the possibility of adding additional information in order to contribute to more deeply meaningful classroom discourse.

Many models of art criticism and questioning strategies exist: visit "How to Teach the Arts" to find a list of arts-based pedagogies that support developing questions and inspiring student-generated inquiry.