drumcroon
school projects
Pupils' as Art Critics
Developing Writing Frames to Support Critical Response to Art
Whilst pupils in Key Stage 3 find it relatively easy to articulate their preferences verbally in response to artworks, many encounter difficulties when required to express these ideas in writing using " appropriate technical vocabulary".
The writing frame concept is familiar in many schools as a means of promoting literacy across the curriculum by providing compositional structures to aid the development of varied syntactic patterns. The sequence of frames developed in conjunction with art teachers John Whitehead Cath Magnall and their Year 8 pupils at Hawkley Hall High School Wigan, were specifically in response to four works from Drumcroon Schools Loan Collection, namely:
The four pieces had been selected by the Art Department to support their scheme of work on the theme of landscapes.
Pupils had previously encountered the concepts of content, form, process and mood to inform their thinking about art. Some had internalised these ideas more readily than others.
The first stage in working with pupils was to promote an open discussion about one of the artworks, based loosely around the four criteria. Parallel classes of pupils received different inputs. One class was presented with two pictures, displayed simultaneously in a room, to discuss individually and then comparatively. The other class was divided into two from the outset. One half of the class discussed one picture in a room apart from the other group, who studied a separate picture in a different space. The groups then combined, shared their impressions and drew out comparisons from their findings. All pupils were provided with a writing frame related to one of the art works they had considered. Several higher attaining pupils were invited to respond to frames requiring comparisons to be made between two pieces.
The latter approach was undoubtedly more successful in promoting high quality discussion and interaction, the advantages being that:
The quality of written response emerging from pupils who had initially worked in a smaller group was generally of a higher standard than that from pupils working in the whole class setting, possibly because they had comparatively more time for reflection.
Developing a climate where quiet reflection and speculation are encouraged and valued is at the heart of critical appreciation; just as we would not expect instantaneous judgements from a critic visiting an exhibition, neither should pupils be denied time for examination of the work of others. Finally, the frames presented here are intended to be supports to pupils as they develop an independent writing style. They are not inflexible questions but rather prompts for thinking and writing so that pupils' strategies for critical response are developed as new opportunities for seeing are maximised. Pupils selected the cues which they felt to be of most relevance to the work they had observed and rejected other aspects of the frames.
Eventually, it is hoped that pupils will be able to generate their own frames for each other. The development of critical responses to pieces of work undertaken by other pupils (perhaps GCSE art students' final exhibition pieces ?) will create a further school based opportunity for developing cross curricular literacy .... and of course GCSE pupils could be special guests interviewed by younger critics about their methods of working and sources of inspiration .....
Downoad the Exhibition Catalogues for ther above artists from the the Drumcroon Portfolo
Click here to download a PDF file of 'Pupils as Art Critics' - document includes the witing frames used by the pupils.
S. Ziebicki and N. Leighton
Summer 2000