Liv Ames for EdSource

Transitional kindergarten students discuss 19th century French artist Gustave Caillebotte's painting "Fruit Displayed on a Stand" at Figarden Elementary School in Fresno.

Art lessons for pre-kindergarten students are moving beyond finger paints and into the worlds of van Gogh, da Vinci and Rivera.

Teachers in a number of districts in California are using classic works of art to inspire some of the youngest students to observe closely, recollect critically and discuss respectfully – all cardinal elements of the Mutual Core approach to learning.

By looking closely together every bit a class at a Picasso or a Cezanne, 4- and 5-year-olds are learning how to observe and translate their thoughts into language and listen and respond to multiple perspectives.

This approach for K-12 students was adult about 20 years agone past the co-founders of Visual Thinking Strategies, a nonprofit based in New York that provides grooming in the method to schools and art museums. More recently, the nonprofit has introduced the concept to pre-K classes.

Alexander Chitay, a transitional kindergartner, uses a laser light to point out what he wants to discuss about the painting.

Liv Ames for EdSource

Alexander Chitay, a transitional kindergartner, uses a light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation lite to point out what he wants to discuss nigh the painting.

Information technology appears to be growing in its appeal since the introduction of the Common Core standards adopted past California and 42 other states. During the by two years, the nonprofit's national trainings of educators have doubled, said Amy Hunt Gulden, national program managing director. The nonprofit has trained teachers in more than seventy schools in the Bay Surface area, Northern California and Los Angeles.

Research studies on the method have shown that students in classes where the visual thinking programme was used had a better understanding of visual images, exhibited stronger growth in math and reading, and showed improve social-emotional growth than students in classes that did not use the program. The approach was particularly effective for English learners.

The visual thinking method asks three questions of young students: What's going on in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What more than can we find?

This approach teaches students how to accept the time to detect closely, describe what they come across in particular and provide show for their observations, Gulden said, "the kinds of skills that the Common Core asks for."

Such programs are office of a new move in English linguistic communication arts to develop visual literacy, said Kim Morin, a professor who teaches integrated art at Fresno State University.

"It kind of came in with the Common Cadre – a more holistic approach," Morin said. "As social club becomes more than digital, information technology's non enough to just be able to read words; we have to be able to read images."

"We accept to exist able to look at an image and sympathize it, not merely react to it," she said.

Some districts, such as San Francisco Unified, were applying this method long before Common Cadre standards were adopted. When Elizabeth Levett, who teaches kindergarten at George Peabody Elementary in San Francisco, introduced the Visual Thinking Strategies programme into her classroom most eight years ago, she said she saw the growth in her students' linguistic communication "right away from one lesson to the next."

"They'll outset the year with 'I see a brawl,'" she said. "After that it snowballs. It's amazing."

"We're giving them language they wouldn't normally have in a context that is meaningful to them right in the moment," said Elizabeth Levett, a kindergarten teacher at George Peabody Elementary in San Francisco.

Teachers respond to a student's comment on a painting by paraphrasing the comment and taking it to the next level, Levett said. Maybe a student will find a effigy. The teacher volition and then say, "then yous are noticing this figure in the left-hand foreground of the painting?"

"We're giving them language they wouldn't normally take in a context that is meaningful to them right in the moment," she said.

Donavon Quezada, 4, is looking closely at a painting in Peggy Allsman transitional kindergarten class in Fresno.

Liv Ames for EdSource

Donavon Quezada, four, is looking closely at a painting in his transitional kindergarten class in Fresno.

It is of import for the instructor to paraphrase the educatee's comment in such a style that the student feels understood and the residual of the group can grasp what the student has said, Gulden said. Teachers accept to let go of their agendas and ideas and follow the kid, she said, some other Mutual Core arroyo to learning.

Sometimes the educatee may be searching for a give-and-take and the teacher tin restate the student's idea using the word, she said.

The approach "builds vocabulary and fluency," Gulden said. The method is particularly effective with recent immigrants, she said.

School psychologist Julie Montali likewise finds the method works well with English learners. Montali has an art degree and has been trained in the visual thinking method. She adult a similar curriculum for pre-K students at Fresno Unified with English language arts instructional passenger vehicle Claudia Readwright.

"Kids act as language models for other kids," Montali said. "Oft another child is the best teacher."

The open-ended arroyo to discussing the painting also equalizes the feel, she said. The fine art is new for everyone, sometimes including the teacher. The discussion of the ideas inspired past the art does not crave prior knowledge, and there are no wrong answers. That makes it easier for shy students or those learning English to participate, she said.

Children also reply to the ideas of other students and learn to expect at things from another person's perspective, Montali said. They keep the word moving with minimal intervention from the teacher, the kind of cocky-directed learning emphasized by the Common Cadre.

In the process of discussing the paintings, the children learn how to have unlike opinions without rancor, Levett said. They use terms such as "I'chiliad noticing" or "I want to build on what he said."

Juliet James, who has been using the method to teach second-graders at Old Adobe Simple School in Petaluma for the past v years, said students are polite. "They'll say, 'I disagree with Karen because of this reason.' They take to give the prove," she said.

Using high-quality artwork is also of import, Morin said, particularly in terms of stimulating observations by the children.

"You tin keep going back to a masterwork and meet something different every time," she said. "If it's not a high-quality work, it doesn't take that depth."

Students in a transitional kindergarten class in Fresno discuss amongst themselves the work of art they just discussed as a class.

Liv Ames for EdSource

Students in a transitional kindergarten class in Fresno talk among themselves about the work of fine art they merely discussed as a class.

On a recent day, the transitional kindergarten students in Yvonne Stout-Barrett's course at Figarden Elementary School in Fresno eagerly gathered around a print called "Fruit Displayed on a Stand up" past the 19th century French artist Gustave Caillebotte. They began talking most what they saw, including shapes and colors. Edifice vocabulary by discussing shades such as magenta, carmine or chartreuse is i manner talking about fine art builds more sophisticated language.

Teachers say they see the outcome of the method in other subject areas.

Brian Harrigan, who teaches preschool students at San Francisco Unified, said that since he has used the visual thinking method, he notices the divergence when he is reading a story to the children.

"They get-go describing things in the moving-picture show more fully," he said.

Such shut observations of fine art help children larn to visualize, which helps them when they begin to read, Morin said. "If you can visualize what you are reading, you lot are a stronger reader rather than just reading word-to-word," she said.

The same methods of showing evidence for what y'all are thinking or saying tin work with deconstructing a story or a mathematical graph, Gulden said.

James uses the method in educational activity all subjects to her 2d-graders, such every bit when she introduces the 100s number nautical chart to discuss place value.

"They will talk virtually it being a grid, how each space is equal," she said. "They will find the numbers going across are 1 to 10. I then come in and say that the horizontal numbers are 1 to 10. Then they volition notice the vertical numbers are counting past 10s."

"Very ofttimes young children have an most deeper perception of what they're seeing," said Fresno State professor Kim Morin. "They don't accept preconceptions. They don't think: 'I don't go it.'"

Fresno has decided to implement the curriculum by calculation it to a grade each year, commencement with preschool children last twelvemonth and transitional kindergartners this twelvemonth. The integrated approach will follow the children as they movement through the K-12 system.

Starting young has its advantages, Morin said. "Very often young children have an nigh deeper perception of what they're seeing," she said. "They don't have preconceptions. They don't think: 'I don't become it.'"

In a enquiry newspaper on talking about art with young people, David Bell, an associate professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand, says that "children are less inhibited than many adults in their engagement with artworks."

"They may be surprised, entertained, puzzled or challenged by what they encounter," he said. "They are also probable to express their various responses to the works in exclamations, comments or conversations."

Teachers laud the method for slowing things downwardly in a fast-paced world and building on young children's natural power to learn through observing.

"Everyone is worried about kids having access to engineering," Levett said. "They're too piddling. They need to larn how to look slowly, really discover. Everything in engineering is click, click, click. This method hones the craft of looking deeply and really listening to each other."

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