Kids CAN Critique Artwork

Disclaimer: This post was an assignment for a course. I have not, yet, taught this lessonto any students. This was a fictional exercise and the post is aimed at hypothetical parents of my students. 

When people think of art critiques, images of snooty critics passing unfair judgments on works are often what comes to mind. And when parents think of students learning the skill of critiquing, they imagine kids criticizing each other's art, passing judgment and hurting feelings. In this post, I hope to illustrate the problems with that kind of thinking, and the positive benefits that students gain when they learn to evaluate and study (or critique) artwork. Your students are learning this skill right now. And to set some of your fears to rest, no, they aren't critiquing each other. They are starting by critiquing masterpieces and will grow to critique their own work. 

For students, the purpose of this exercise is to teach them to be mindful, to look at art in a careful considered way, to think about the details, story, and emotion of the piece and to incorporate this knowledge into their own work. The skill of seeing with purpose, of interpreting meaning, is one that will help them in many aspects of their life beyond just this arts classroom. 

But isn't this skill too hard for young students? No. Even the youngest students can learn to analyze details and describe what they see. I'm going to share with you an example lesson where I am teaching students how to apply these thinking and seeing skills to critique an art masterpiece.

This is Salvador Dali's work "The Persistence of Memory" created in 1931. 

When I introduced this painting to students, I asked them to first give their initial immediate reaction, to give the first word that popped into their head when they looked at the piece. Words that came up were, "weird", "melting", "clocks", "hot", "desert", and "sad", amongst others. 

I then taken the students into the painting in more depth, posing questions to them to help them move through the painting and become familiar with the level of seeing that forms the basis of a critique. 

We start by looking at the movement. I ask students where their eye is drawn first, helping them to identify what they think is the focal point of the piece. We then consider how their eye travels and discuss together how the composition, or way that the piece is arranged, invites this movement. For example, when I look at this piece, my eye is drawn to the pair of clocks in the bottom left corner, drawn up to the tree, down to the figure, then up to the cliffs and sky. We then look at the balance of the composition and whether this movement encompasses the whole picture. 

I ask them to consider and note down the different elements of art that they can see. We then discuss these elements as a class, and I bring their attention to the specific areas of value, texture, line, and space. This piece uses negative space well, to give the impression of a desolate desert landscape, mostly devoid of life. The use of value, contrast, texture, and shadow enhances this impression.

This segues well into a discussion of the mood of the piece, and students are asked to consider how the piece makes them feel. For me, this piece seems very sad and lonely. The piece uses shadow and contrast to highlight the few lone elements we see in the desert. Much of the piece is empty and the landscape seems hostile and uninviting. The reds and melting clocks give an impression of intense heat. There is one lone figure, and that is stated loosely, as the shape is nebulous and could be interpreted in many different ways. 

From mood we move to meaning. Students consider what they think is happening in the piece. At this point, they are given the title and are asked to consider how the title might relate to the image and what the title might tell them of the artist's intent. With younger students, this discussion is usually rather literal and we look at the surface of what is happening in the painting. Older students, however, are able to consider abstraction and symbolism very well. In this piece, I interpret the clocks to symbolize time, and taking the title into consideration, I consider the piece to be commenting on how memories shift and change, or are lost, over time. I would emphasize here, however, that everyone could have a different interpretation and that there is no right or wrong answer. 

I would then use this piece as a jumping off point to several different activities. I would have students create a collaborative memory storyboard to consider the way that others can change our stories or memories. I would have students create their own surreal piece, putting together items that shouldn't coexist, challenging them to be thoughtful and meaningful in their choices. I would have students experiment with values and contrast toward developing their own landscapes. 

How about you? What ideas do you have to engage with your children after viewing this painting? I want to challenge you to look with them at the landscapes around you, to notice the shadow, space, and movement all around us. 

Challenge and the Growth Mindset

"If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don't have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence." - Carol Dweck

Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has spent her career researching the difference between the fixed and growth mindsets and how cultivating one or the other can impact the growth and achievement of our students. In a fixed mindset, students believe that their intelligence and abilities are set and that they are either smart or not. These students don't feel a need to put in effort because they can't change who they are. A growth mindset, on the other hand, teaches students that they can continue to develop their brain and talents their whole lives and that by working their brain connections, they can become smarter [1].

One area of study that particularly interested me dealt with advanced students and stated that students become used to everything coming easily and when they become adults and actually encounter a situation that causes them to struggle, they don't know how to handle it. This is the experience that I had when I reached college and find that it is something that students aren't being prepared for in classrooms that are often focused mostly on the students that are struggling. Dweck's idea of having a personalized learning plan helps address this by ensuring that all students are working at a level that's challenging to them.

I was able to see the growth mindset in action this week using the math game "brain points", which Dweck helped develop to differentiate between the effects of different mindsets. In this game some students were given a model that discussed how their brain was growing and gave students points for trying new ideas and putting in effort, while the other students were given a model that was only the game [2]. Tonight, I had my son try the brain point version, which happened to align perfectly to the math he was currently doing in his 3rd grade classroom. He was very intrigued by the idea of getting points when your brain was being challenged. As the game started, he found it very easy. He would become annoyed with the brain points because they would be given to him when he felt he hadn't challenged himself or had to put in effort. At a later point, he did try what he felt was a novel idea and said "That time I really did try something new and hard. I deserved those brain points!" This really brought home to me the idea that our students know more about their process and abilities than we may be giving them credit for, and also, that in this "participation trophy" driven society that many feel today's students exist in, the students don't actually want to get things that they haven't earned. At another point he earned a challenge level, which was actually really hard. I had trouble figuring out how to solve it. It was very difficult for me to watch him struggle and work through the process of trial and error and figuring it out. I was pleased to see that while he would get frustrated at times, he never gave up. My son is often one that will quit if something is too hard, probably like many other gifted students, because he's used to everything being easy. He was very proud of himself when he was finally able to get it (after about 15 minutes) and expressed how much his mind must have grown.

I really love the idea of trying to cultivate this in my classroom and have a goal to really focus in on the process and the effort that students are using as the target for praise. I also hope to be able to embrace the personalized learning plans, because I want all of my students to feel challenged and this sense of accomplishment.

[1] Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.

[2] O'Rourke, E., Haimovitz, K., Ballwebber, C., Dweck, C., & Popovic, Z. (2014). Brain Points: A Growth Mindset Incentive Structure Boosts Persistence in an Educational Game. Center for Game Science, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington. Deptartment of Psychology, Stanford University. Retrieved from http://grail.cs.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/orourke2014bpa.pdf