Viewing Like a Writer: The Art of the Week

The Common Core State Standards ask students to closely examine multiple types of texts. This includes informational articles and excerpts from literary works, but it can also include visual texts, such as paintings, sculptures, charts, graphs, or infographics (to name a few). I teach students to analyze visual media by incorporating an "Art of the Week" assignment for the final quarter of the school year. Below you will see what my assignment sheet looks like (left) and an example of how to "mark up" (or annotate) an image (right), which I share with my students. 

Original Document (in color) and Annotated Sample for Students (Photocopy). Collage Created with Fotor.com

THE PROCESS
First, I select works of art that I feel students should know, but may not already be familiar with: Klimt's The Kiss, Fuseli's The Nightmare, Wyeth's Christina's World. (I'm a scholar bowl coach, so I selected several works of art from NAQT's "You Gotta Know" list.) For this assignment, I want students' first impressions. I don't want students to begin the assignment with much background knowledge.

First, I select works of art that I feel students should know, but may not already be familiar with: Klimt's The Kiss, Fuseli's The Nightmare, Wyeth's Christina's World. (I'm a scholar bowl coach, so I selected several works of art from NAQT's "You Gotta Know" list.) For this assignment, I want students' first impressions. I don't want students to begin the assignment with much background knowledge.

I project the image of the artwork on my whiteboard and give students a couple of minutes to take it all in. Then, we begin annotating. I ask them to label what they see: people, objects, colors, and textures. I also ask them to list the emotions that the work evokes. We spend about five minutes just recording our "noticings." Then, I invite students to share as part of a whole group discussion, although this would work well as a Think-Pair-Share activity, too. Students are allowed to "borrow" observations that they like and want to use to supplement their own, as long as they also contribute to the group list. (Think of it as the "Take a Penny-Leave a Penny" jar at a cash register.)

After students are finished with their annotations, then the fun begins: writing! We have a brief discussion regarding inferences and using textual support. Students are given the prompt to write the narrative of the artwork: you have the story in visual form; now translate the story into words. Generally, responses can vary greatly and there is no "wrong" answer, as long as the narrative can be supported by the text.

This is one of those assignments that really polarizes my students: they either love it or hate it. Some students love the chance to be creative, while others beg to have the structure of the nonfiction article of the week return. Student enthusiasm can also vary based on the artwork you provide them with. For the final Art of the Week of the year, I allowed students to choose their own work of art to analyze, and the results were really great! Almost everyone completely the assignment--with great effort--and the results were very entertaining!

Note: Need more 'Core? Add optional language requirements for more rigor: clauses, phrases, semicolons, MLA formatting, etc.