Artful Thinking

This summer at our Art Department meeting we learned about Artful Thinking Routines.  These are different routines you can use to discuss artwork.

This program was originally designed to be used by homeroom teachers.  The purpose of the Artful Thinking Program is to help teachers regularly use works of visual art and music in their curriculum in ways that strengthen student thinking and learning.  It has two broad goals: (1) To help teachers create rich connections between works of art and curricular topics; and (2) to help teachers use art as a force for developing students’ thinking dispositions (Artful Thinking).

I am using Artful Thinking routines at the beginning of my units this year as a way to introduce my students to the artist(s), culture, and/or artwork.  I have found that my students really enjoy using these routines and I get quality discussions about art.  Below I provided an example of how I used Artful thinking with my kindergarten classes.

We just finished studying lines and I was introducing Primary colors.  I chose to use Piet Mondrian's Composition (Blue, Red, and Yellow) to introduce the next project. 

The Artful Thinking routine I used was: What do you see?

 

 What do you see?  Describe.

How does it make you feel?

We discussed the artwork in more detail and discussed the art concepts that I wanted them to learn for the lesson.  Then I asked:

What do you see now that you didn't see before?

Here is the website that I use as a reference.

Artful Thinking.  Retrieved on November 10, 2011.  http://www.pz.harvard.edu/tc/overview.cfm