One component of Seven Oaks Classical School’s mission is to “train the minds” of students. Eventually, I hope to “train” my students to think and act in all the best ways of a good artist: observe and make beautiful things, practice self-government, engage and persist…
Training necessitates consistency and repeated practice, tasks that can become mundane or lose value for students. I have found that playing certain art “games” can make the “training” fun, purposeful and memorable!
You may recall from your childhood a party game involving a tray with random objects. The objective of the game is to memorize the objects on the tray and then correctly list them from memory. The element of competition and the opportunity to win a prize incentivize all to look closely, notice details and make connections.
This “tray game” can be redesigned and used in classrooms, particularly the art classroom. Sometimes I want students to observe a work of art for an extended period and understand relationships of elements before they react, point out the obvious or dismiss important details or relationships. When this is the case, it is time for the “tray game.”
Recently, my seventh-grade boy’s class was going to look at Picasso’s cubist rendering of Guernica. I knew that without a careful looking exercise the young gentlemen would “negatively” react to the painting by dismissing it as crazy, impractical, silly or something worse. Before providing my students with any background information, I wanted them to look closely at this work of art and take it seriously. We began class by spending two minutes looking closely at Guernica and discovering and recording in our minds all the details.
The room of seventh-grade boys was silent, yet energetic. The students were engrossed in the exercise of observation and discovery. Once the two minutes were up, I removed the projected image of the artwork and in its place, I drew a similarly sized rectangle on the board. I appointed six scribes to begin recording the compositional elements they remembered in the correct size and placement. Once these students finished their contribution, they passed off the marker and other students continued to add details. When time was up, I told them it was time to check their work. Then I heard some groaning and grumbling. The class did not want to compare their work to the original because they feared their drawing would not be accurate. However, to my shock as well as theirs, the elements in their drawing lined up almost perfectly to Picasso’s. The students were enthused with the result and surprised at their ability to observe, discover, and express.
I then asked the students what was going on in the drawing. The students pointed out animals and how they appeared to attack the objects on the canvas. They noticed severed arms and limbs along with the destroyed buildings and apparent lights exploding in darkness. With this memory exercise, my students were able to depict with a drawing and predict with words the contents of Picasso’s Guernica!
In the next blog, I will provide some practical advice and steps for how to employ narrative exercises in an art classroom like the “tray” game. Next time you hope to train your students, take a trip down memory lane and find a game to do the trick!
The Classical Classroom 