The Art of Dialogue

In order to challenge ourselves to get better, we must first identify where we are lacking. I recognized a problem in my curriculum and this project was my solution to rectify it. I did not use art interpretation in my classroom, even though I knew it is an integral part of art education. I believe that we need to teach students how to interpret artwork in order for them to learn to appreciate and understand artwork. Knowing that I needed one concise environment for art interpretation methods and techniques in order to use them in my classroom, I assumed that other art teachers would benefit from this resources as well.

I created this website in order to assist elementary art teachers to incorporate art interpretation into their classrooms. As teachers, we are constantly inundated with new and progressive methods of doing our jobs. There are standards we have to teach to on the national, state, and district level. There are campus initiatives we have to consider as well as individual needs of our students. It can be very hard at times to incorporate all that we need to into our lessons.

The Art of Dialogue is a project based on meeting the needs of elementary art teachers in order to more successfully incorporate art interpretation into their curriculums. Along with this website, there are resource cards to accompany each lesson. Each page on this website is complete with an artwork, a little bit of background on the piece, writing prompts, a lesson plan, and additional resources. The resource card that accompanies each artwork, has two methods for facilitating group discussions. The first method is based on Visual Thinking Strategies, and the second is based on Terry Barrett's methodology.