Self portrait/Critiquing

Reflection: How would you effectively conduct an art critique for an elementary classroom? What considerations would you have to make?

As future teachers (mostly), we need to be able to teach our students how to critique art. There's 4 different things they need to do in order to critique art effectively and properly. They are describe, analyze, interpret, and judgement (http://oak.kcsd.k12.pa.us/~projects/critic/; lecture in class). Through this process, students can learn ways to look at and describe art in ways they never have before. To really get the meaning behind it or to spark interest in a particular artist or artwork. I would hope to use this process in my classroom as I teach them about the arts. I'd also give them art terms so they could use them to appropriately critique art in class.
When having students critique each other's artwork, it can be a bit of a challenge. They might not know what to say to fully express themselves or they might say silly things to get the class to laugh. You can't be too derogatory with them either or they'll get upset by your comments--more the students words than the teacher's. The best way to have them critique their artwork is to keep it simple and positive. Ask unbiased questions. Offer supportive prompts. One teacher had this happen to her and had a few good ideas for helping students critique their artwork and their peers' artwork. She asked one of her students "what is your painting about?". The girl responded and then the teacher asked the class audience what they liked about her artwork. By the raise of a couple hands only a few were willing to respond. The teacher told the girl that she got to pick who got to speak. Gradually the whole class was raising their hands to respond. It helped the girl feel good about what she did as well as helping the students pay more attention to what they liked about their peer's painting. (The elementary critique: talking about children's art, Shirley Ende-Saxe.) I thought that this was a very good way to go about it, especially since it includes all four parts of the process at the same time. Students are saying what they like about it (judgement) and why (describe, analyze, or interpret).
I think as we introduce the principles of art and elements of design to our students, they will be able to get a better sense of what they are looking at. So that they understand them better, you could show them famous pieces or artwork and ask the class to tell you ways that the painting portrays it. Then when it comes their turn to create a work of art, you could ask them what they noticed about the artwork that everyone created. "Students always learn from seeing how someone else completed the same task."----Mrs. Baker, Highland Elementary School website. You could do this for all grades, but as you get into the older grades, expect more of an 'in-depth' answer than that of lower grades. (I'd do this because the lower grades aren't going to understand everything as much as the upper grades, so you'd have to keep it simple.) I'd also eliminate any negative feedback from peers--no kid wants to know they didn't do well or that they aren't liked by someone in the room. One way to do that is to ask the students if they themselves want to change anything or ask what they felt their strongest points of the piece are (lecture in class). Ask them questions in relation to the elements and principles of design about what they notice.

In addition to my reflection... I'm posting what we've recently done in class. We recently learned how important it was to look at something while drawing instead of pulling it out of your head. If you're looking at something, you can have things be more proportionate and fluid on your paper or canvas than if you went off of memory. We were asked to draw ourselves first from memory, second by looking at a photo and third by using a 8x10 graph.

First Attempt

Second Attempt

Third Attempt
With this set, I wanted to express how important it is to draw for sight as well as measurement. Through the first draft, we had to go off of memory. The second we could look at our photo, but I didn't measure it too well. The final attempt, we used a graph and had to shade based on the values we saw in the photo.