Teaching Tips
Questioning Strategies
Whitney educators ask different types of open-ended questions to elicit varied responses to a work of art. Some questions ask students to look closely and focus their attention on the visual elements in the work. Other questions encourage students to share personal interpretations and individual experience. Below are different types of questions that you may consider asking your students while looking at a work of art at the museum or in the classroom.
Students eager to respond to a question about an artwork, 2011. Photograph by Tiffany Oelfke
Tips
Questions that support close looking:
- What do you see? Be specific with your description.
- What interests you about this work? Record details that interest you.
- What is going on in this scene? What suggests that?
- What do you notice about the materials used?
- How does the work change as you look at it from different angles or distances?
- Learn more about discussing images with your students.
Questions that build upon prior knowledge and connect to experience:
- What do you see on a walk through your neighborhood?
- What kinds of propaganda do you see in your everyday life?
Questions that encourage critical thinking and engagement:
- Compare this work to the previous work. In what ways are they similar? How are the two works different?
- Share a quote about the art and/or artist. Ask students if they agree or disagree with the statement. Why?
- Reveal the title of the work. How does knowing the title change students’ initial observations or reconsider the artist’s intentions?
- Ask students to imagine that they are in the artwork. What kind of space is this? What would it feel like to enter that space?