Pumping-up Middle School Critique
I started with critique as a pre-assessment of their ability to give and receive appropriate criticism. For this activity, students created a personal mini-museum using a black tri-fold board with one or more of their works for critique.
The look and feel of the room really changed with the tri-folds on the tables; they gave each student a sense of their own space. Students were given sticky notes and instructed to walk our class gallery to leave comments on at least four works. In a whole-class discussion, we reviewed the TAG critique method from AOE (Hare. 2016). TAG stands for:
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| Student artboards turn the classroom into a mini-museum |
- (1) Tell something you like
- (2) Ask a question
- (3) Give a suggestion
Students moaned and groaned as they were setting up their boards. I thought a few were going to walk out of the room. But with coaxing they all managed to choose and show at least one work, with a few showing more.
When I read the TAG comments I was appalled at how insipid most of the comments were. Students ignored the TAG prompts and left messages saying things like “cool”, “nice” and “I like it”. I thought the critique had failed. But the next day I overheard some conversations that changed my mind about that. For example:
Later another student informed me that she had started a series of landscapes because everyone liked the first landscape she did. I think what happened was that students were talking to each other about their work rather than leaving post-it comments.
Either way, the mini-museum critique was worth the risk. We decided to do it every 2 weeks.
They are taking their own work to the next level and I had nothing to do with it. They are working as artists in the studio.
After this first critique, I learned how a lack of vocabulary was holding my students back. They needed instruction to get beyond one-word comments.
To help them with the second critique I prepared a vocabulary worksheet to scaffold the language of critique for them based on something I found online (thoughtco.com). My very abbreviated version of this list is attached below. The comments really took off with bigger and better ideas. I'm looking forward to what happens in the studio tomorrow!
When I read the TAG comments I was appalled at how insipid most of the comments were. Students ignored the TAG prompts and left messages saying things like “cool”, “nice” and “I like it”. I thought the critique had failed. But the next day I overheard some conversations that changed my mind about that. For example:
Student 1: What'cha workin' t’day girl?
Student 2: Gonna paint me up some backgrounds on my stuff ‘cuz ya tol’ me they need it. Eric did it too.
Later another student informed me that she had started a series of landscapes because everyone liked the first landscape she did. I think what happened was that students were talking to each other about their work rather than leaving post-it comments.
Either way, the mini-museum critique was worth the risk. We decided to do it every 2 weeks.
They are taking their own work to the next level and I had nothing to do with it. They are working as artists in the studio.
After this first critique, I learned how a lack of vocabulary was holding my students back. They needed instruction to get beyond one-word comments.
To help them with the second critique I prepared a vocabulary worksheet to scaffold the language of critique for them based on something I found online (thoughtco.com). My very abbreviated version of this list is attached below. The comments really took off with bigger and better ideas. I'm looking forward to what happens in the studio tomorrow!
This video is another resource that really helped build background and context for critique, giving students a sense for the purpose of critique. Although it focuses on younger students, middle schoolers related to it as well.
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