Creative and Critical Thinking Skills

Key competencies Thinking, Using language symbols and texts
Curriculum strands Visual Art: Understanding the arts in context, communicating and interpreting
Achievement objectives Visual Art
Level 2: Share ideas about how and why art works are made and their purpose value and context. Share ideas feelings stories communicated by objects and images. Level 3: Investigate the purpose of objects and images from past and present cultures and identify contexts in which they were or are made viewed and valued. Describe the ideas objects and images communicate. Level 4: Explore and describe ways in which meanings can be communicated and interpreted in art work. Level 5: Investigate and consider the relationship between the production of artworks and their contexts and influences. Compare and contrast the ways in which ideas and artmaking processes are used to communicate meaning. Level 6: Investigate and analyse the relationship between the production of artworks and the contexts in which they are made, viewed, and valued. Investigate, analyse, and evaluate ideas and interpret artist’s intentions in art works.

Programme content Students will: Develop their creative, critical and metacognitive thinking skills in response to the artworks. Activities will be designed to encourage students to: reflect on their own learning, draw on personal knowledge and intuition, ask questions, and challenge the basis of assumptions and perceptions.

Activities may include:

  • Using metaphor to describe what they can see in artworks, and discussing meaning and value in relation to the artworks.
  • Discussing how personal experiences influence the way we interpret artworks. (political cultural social gender)
  • Using creative thinking and narrative in pairs or groups to write/tell stories inspired by artworks.
  • Posing and responding to questions about artworks which examine issues raised by the works, and include an exploration of the artwork’s contexts.
  • Problem solving and taking part in individual and/or group activities which explore the roles of artists, curators and critics.
  • Discussing artist’s intentions, and relating ideas to their own creative work