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. The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) teaching method has been successfully implemented in schools, districts, and cultural institutions nationwide, including bilingual schools in California, West Orange Public Schools in New Jersey, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It provides for open-ended yet highly structured discussions of visual art, and significantly increases students’ critical thinking, language, and literacy skills along the way. 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, including writing, listening, and speaking, across a range of subjects. The 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.

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilities Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study. Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines?small sets of questions or a short sequence of steps?as well as the documentation of student thinking. Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students' different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed and reflected upon. Helps direct student thinking and structure classroom discussion Can be applied with students at all grade levels and in all content areas Includes easy-to-implement classroom strategies The book also comes with a DVD of video clips featuring Visible Thinking in practice in different classrooms.

Visuals of all kinds (photographs, checklists, line drawings, cartoons, flowcharts, stick figures, etc.) are commonly used as supports for individuals on the autism spectrum who tend to think and learn visually. However, not all visuals are created equal and, therefore, visuals don't all work equally well. This companion to Learning With a Visual Brain in an Auditory World helps the reader understand how to match the developmental levels of pictures and visuals to the developmental level of the person looking at the visual. In this way, appropriate visuals provide the language development for children with autism spectrum disorders. Drawing from their experience with children and youth for decades, the authors also show how effective communication can help reduce the confusion and anxiety that often lead to behavioral outbursts. --Google Books.

This book focuses on how to effectively integrate the teaching and learning of visual and media literacies in K-12 and higher education. Not only does it address and review the elements and principles of visual design but also identifies, discusses and describes the value of media in learning diverse and challenging content across disciplines. Finally, this book provides a balanced treatment of how visual and media literacies support deep content learning, student engagement, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, and production.

Visual Thinking Strategies for Preschool shows how teachers can add visual thinking strategies (VTS) to their existing curriculum to encourage language, critical thinking, and social skills for children ages three to five. In this sequel to his popular book, Visual Thinking Strategies, author Philip Yenawine describes using art and other visual experiences to create powerful learner-centered environments for young children just beginning their formal school experience. Drawing on interviews with preschool teachers from public, private, and charter schools from around the country, Yenawine highlights the benefits of these discussions for students, including English language learners and students with special needs. "VTS masterfully encourages children to see, think, speak, and analyze--enhancing vocabulary and fostering creative thinking. Philip Yenawine provides a step-by-step guide on how to implement VTS in a classroom with young children, while providing an in-depth overview of the theory behind the method." --Keith Whitescarver, executive director, National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector "Visual Thinking Strategies for Preschool is a wonderful resource for early child educators! Drawing upon theorists from Piaget to Vygotsky, the methods of Montessori and Reggio Emilia, and the practices from early childhood classrooms across the country, Yenawine provides innovative strategies for creating environments rich in language and visual stimuli for teaching young children." --Martha Barry McKenna, university professor, director of Creativity Commons, Lesley University "One can learn much, with pleasure, from this book. Yenawine shows that children in preschool learn that images can be interpreted with simple strings of words which, as the children realize they are being listened to, become sentences describing their own interpretations, and thus their own stories." --Lella Gandini, US liaison for the dissemination of the Reggio Emilia Approach Philip Yenawine is a cofounder of Visual Understanding in Education, former director of education at the Museum of Modern Art, and a recipient of the National Art Education Association's Award for Distinguished Service.

"Isaac isn't interested in much, but when a mysterious shopkeeper tells him about a legendary book that holds the answers to every question ever asked, he embarks on a lifelong search for the Book of Gold"--

* Fresh approach to engineering design, innovation challenges, and stereotypical thinking; provides alternative methods that come closer to the heart of the visual creative process.

Teaching in the Art Museum investigates the mission, history, theory, practice, and future prospects of museum education. In this book Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee define and articulate a new approach to gallery teaching, one that offers groups of visitors deep and meaningful experiences of interpreting art works through a process of intense, sustained looking and thoughtfully facilitated dialogue.--[book cover].