Promoting a culture of thinking in the senior classroom

1. Promoting a culture of thinking in the senior classroom Jennifer Pullen and Elizabeth Phipps

2. How do we know what thinking is occurring? • How can we ensure that every student is actively engaged in their learning? • How can we access the voices of students who are reticent to contribute? • How can we empower students to take responsibility for their learning and have the confidence to articulate their ideas? • How do we make the thinking visible so that we can track progress on a day-to-day basis not just through formal assessment tasks? • How do we provide students with scaffolds to encourage higher order thinking?

3. RUBRIC: Textual Conversations In this unit of work called “Textual Conversations”, students will consider the tradition of ekphrasis. This is where one text responds to another text. Traditionally, this has been poetry written in response to artworks. The purpose of ekphrasis is to develop a relationship between one text and another by defining and describing its essence and form. Consequently, the responder is able to gain new insights and appreciation of the original artwork and the poem. Simply put, it is as though the two texts are having a conversation.

4. RUBRIC: Textual Conversations In their imaginative, interpretive and analytical writing, students will consider the following ideas and questions: • What is your initial response to this text? • How can there be more than one interpretation of a text? Are they all valid? • What factors shaped your response? (visual elements; your personal, social, historical context) • How can the reading of an ekphrastic text reshape your response to the artwork? • Can the artwork reshape your response to the poem? Can it influence response both ways? • Does reading the poem and then reconsidering the artwork limit, enhance, illuminate, confront, confirm, challenge, surprise, reinforce, crystallise, affirm your original understanding of the artwork?

5. Our Aspirations: • Students are given the opportunity to engage in deep thinking about an artwork and develop a personal response to an artwork • Enabling students to make connections between what they already know with the interpretations of composers • Students are able to engage in hypothesis and speculation, knowing that all responses are valid • Enable students to articulate the complex connections between ekphrastic texts and their own understanding.

6. SEE THINK WONDER a) Brainstorm only what you SEE b)Brainstorm what you THINK is going on in the painting c) WONDER – what questions do they have? What would they like to know? “The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt

7. A Short Story on a Painting by Gustav Klimt by Lawrence Ferlinghetti They are kneeling upright on a flowered bed    He      has just caught her there                                 and holds her still      Her gown                   has slipped down                                             off her shoulder  He has an urgent hunger                        His dark head                                   bends to hers                                              hungrily  And the woman the woman      turns her tangerine lips from his             one hand like the head of a dead swan                     draped down over                                                  his heavy neck                          the fingers                              strangely crimped                                           tightly together          her other arm doubled up                       against her tight breast              her hand a languid claw                                            clutching his hand                  which would turn her mouth                                                            to his          her long dress made                                 of multicolored blossoms                                          quilted on gold          her Titian hair                        with blue stars in it 

8. A Short Story on a Painting by Gustav Klimt by Lawrence Ferlinghetti Connect How are the ideas conveyed in the painting CONNECTED to the ideas constructed in the poem? And his gold                            harlequin robe                                               checkered with                                                          dark squares         Gold garlands                        stream down over                                                her bare calves &                                                    tensed feet  Nearby there must be                a jeweled tree                       with glass leaves aglitter                           in the gold air  It must be                 morning                              in a faraway place somewhere  They         are silent together                                    as in a flowered field             upon the summer couch                                    which must be hers     And he holds her still                                     so passionately           holds her head to his                                  so gently so insistently               to make her turn                                   her lips to his  Her eyes are closed                                 like folded petals  She        will not open                           He                                is not the One Extend How does the poem EXTEND or push your thinking in new and different directions? Has your personal response changed, been reshaped, affirmed? Challenge What is CHALLENGING you in the poem? What questions or wonderings do you have? How has the poem challenged your initial understanding of the photograph?

10. SUGGESTED PAIRS OF EKPHRASTIC TEXTS • Painting:“The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt • Poem: A Short Story on a Painting by Gustav Klimtby Lawrence Ferlinghetti • Photograph: “Napalm Girl” (1972) by Nick Ut • Poem: War Photograph by Kate Daniels • Painting: “Night Ferry” by Tom Carment • Poem: Late Ferryby Robert Gray • Poem :Ode on a Grecian Urnby John Keats (1819), • Grecian urns • Painting: “Nude Descending a Staircase” by Duchamp • Poem:Nude Descending a Staircase by XJ Kennedy • Painting: Paolo Uccello “St George and the Dragon” • Poem: Not my Best Sideby Fanthorpe • Painting: “Landscape with Cypress Near Arles” Van Gogh • Poem :“Vincent” by Hesketh • Painting:“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by Bruegel • Poem:Landscape with the Fall of Icarusby William Carlos Williams; Musee des Beaux Artsby WH Auden. • Painting: “The Scream” by Munch • Poem:The Screamby BC Leale

11. Other routines • Think Puzzle Explore • Claim Support Question • Creative Questions: Generating and Transforming Questions • To help students: • connect prior knowledge or connect to new insights and understanding • develop curiosity and questions • lay the groundwork for independent inquiry • develop a personal response (interpretation) • reason with evidence • make counter-arguments or ask questions to challenge the interpretation • Develop speculative and hypothetical thinking • Foster deeper inquiry into a text

12. Creative Questions: Generating and Transforming Questions What would it be like if . . . . . Suppose that . . . What would change if . . . . What would happen if . . . . Choose ONE question and explore the possibilities it offers in an imaginative way: Dialogue or monologue with figures depicted on the urn Create a scenario or speculate on the “backstory” Conducting an imaginary interview

14. ASSESSMENT THE CONNECT-EXTEND CHALLENGE THINKING ROUTINE • CONNECT – What is your personal response to the artwork, and how does your personal response to the original artwork CONNECT with the ideas explored in the poem? • EXTEND – what new ideas, perspectives and ways of thinking did the poem offer that you had not previously considered? How does the poem broaden and magnify your initial understanding? • CHALLENGE – what questions or puzzles about the texts do you have? How has the poem challenged your initial understanding of the artwork? • CRITERIA FOR ASSESSMENT • You will be assessed on your ability to: • Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the ideas in poetry. • Explain how the language features and structures of poetry shape meaning and influence response. • Make connections between the poems and the visual elements of the paintings which inspired them, and reflect on how these connections shaped/reshaped personal response to texts. • Organise, develop and express ideas using language features and structures appropriate to audience, purpose, context and form.

15. Student responses • “Daniels challenged my thoughts about the events in the photograph by questioning the nature of humanity, evident in the line “How can she know what we really are?” This rhetorical question shifts my thinking about the girl’s plight from a specific to a universal level, suggesting that the altruistic and empathetic society she thinks she is running to, may not exist at all.” • “The quiet beauty of the harbour captured by Carment in his painting “Night Ferry” was challenged by Gray, who depicted a harbour characterised by artifice and theatrics, allowing me insight into an aspect of the harbour I had not previously considered. Gray’s representation of the bridge through the simile “The bridge like a giant prop” creates questions within the responder as to what the harbour’s identity is.”

17. Where to from here?