Visual Thinking Strategies

"What's going on in this picture?" With this one question and a carefully chosen work of art, teachers can start their students down a path toward deeper learning and other skills now encouraged by the Common Core State Standards. Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a teaching method that has been successfully implemented in schools and cultural institutions nationwide, provides for open-ended discussions of visual art that significantly increase students' critical thinking, language, and literacy skills. Philip Yenawine, former education director of New York's Museum of Modern Art and cocreator of the VTS curriculum, writes engagingly about his years of experience with elementary school students in the classroom. He reveals how VTS was developed and demonstrates how teachers are using art--as well as poems, primary documents, and other visual artifacts--to increase a variety of skills. This book shows how VTS can be easily and effectively integrated into elementary classroom lessons in just ten hours of a school year to create learner-centered environments where students at all levels are involved in rich, absorbing discussions. "You don't have to convince me of the power art has to open the mind to new ways of seeing and thinking. I'm sold on Visual Thinking Strategies. This insightful book unpacks a technique that transforms classrooms into engaging, exciting laboratories for the critical thinking and communication skills our children need to master." -- Daniel Pink, author of To Sell Is Human and A Whole New Mind "Practical and inspirational, this is arts integration for the twenty-first century. Distinguished museum educator Philip Yenawine presents a persuasive argument for using the art discussion approach called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) to develop the sophisticated thinking skills required by the Common Core. A lively blend of theory and practice, this book shows how VTS has sparked creative teaching in schools across the country." -- Peggy Burchenal, Esther Stiles Eastman Curator of Education and Public Programs, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Philip Yenawine is cofounder of Visual Understanding in Education, a nonprofit research organization that trains teachers to use VTS.