KS2 Art and Design: The Superpower of Looking

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

The superpower of looking is a skill which is taught via a simple question and answer method. Answers are discovered simply by looking at great works of art and responding to question prompts with your students. You can learn to really look together.

Each suggested lesson plan is based around a key artwork and follows a series of signposted stages which gradually introduces the question methodology to your students, improving their and your visual literacy skills and confidence in analysing images. Let's look at a lesson and watch each stage unfold.

See if you can look in a very careful way and decide what you'd like to tell me in a moment.

Here I am teaching the first lesson in the everyday life category. A short context paragraph provided at the beginning of each lesson offers some background information on each painting, only if you require it.

Stage 1: Look, describe and discuss.

The first couple of stages introduce the key artwork to your students by asking accessible questions that anyone can answer.

And does anybody have any observation of any kind? Excellent.

PUPIL:

It kind of looks like it's some sort of experiment or something.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

Excellent.

At this stage and throughout, encourage your students to substantiate the points they're making by giving you evidence of what they actually see. At first, students may offer a generalised point while looking at you rather than the painting. If this happens, simply ask the question again and redirect them to the image. They very often change their minds but catch on very quickly that they need to see it in order to say it.

PUPIL:

I can see in the background that there's like a picture of the moon. It's like a small... It's like a small part of the painting. It's just like a moon in the background.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

Yeah. It's interesting – it's a small part of the painting, but you noticed it, didn't you? And what I want you to think about is how might that small part of the painting be actually quite important to what's going on here? That's what I want you to think about for a moment.

The fun is when they discover that they got there for themselves.

So, what are we seeing? I'm going to ask you to look more carefully. Yep?

PUPIL:

People with straight faces looking at each other like, "Oh, what's happening?"

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

Okay, so is it quite serious? Yeah.

PUPIL:

Maybe it's because they're planning something, but some people are worried about something or other.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

Excellent. There's sort of anxiety.

Stage 3 is the core of The Superpower of Looking because it asks questions from the Superpower kit based on key formal elements, or art terms. This is where you can focus on suggested areas from the kit to help your students read the image they are looking at. The answers to these questions can simply be seen in the work. The accompanying Superpower kit film explores these elements further.

If you have a painting, would you put the most important element of that painting over in the corner? Do you think that the moon is the most important element of this painting, or do you think it might be something else?

PUPIL:

I think the moon might not be the most important element. I think something in the middle and the people. Something to do in the middle of the painting might be the most important.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

Absolutely.

During stages 3 and 4, you may wish to introduce knowledge from the context paragraph featured at the start if it helps keep your discussion flowing.

So, in terms of composition, is there anything else you can remember? So any shapes that you can see that are standing out? Any focal points? Let me see is there somebody... Yep.

PUPIL:

I think it's like a triangle so it's trying to point to the glass at the top.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

Fantastic. It is a triangle or a pyramid. And then, does anyone remember the letter beginning with 'a'? The top of the pyramid that often catches our gaze?

PUPIL:

Apex?

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

Well done.

Suggested activity ideas are provided to break up the lesson and allow children to apply their skills and demonstrate their learning in measurable ways. The activities are also a great way to hand over to the children to work in pairs or in groups.

A final review stage allows your students to recap on what they have learned and how much their understanding of the painting has changed since they first looked at it.

PUPILS:

I enjoyed how we had different people sharing their different ideas, so we knew like maybe someone said an idea that was a bit different to someone else, so we could hear what everyone said.

I found that when you really look at a painting more closely, that it's really interesting because you really get to know what's going on.

If you just looked at a painting in like the Tate maybe, and you just looked it and you said, "Okay. It's just a man painting." But instead, when you really closely look at it, it's just got these details, like, it's not just a man painting.

Seeing new paintings can be exciting and getting to know new things is exciting as well.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

The Superpower of Looking kit is the core of each Superpower of Looking lesson and is the focus of stage 3. The kit is formed from a series of questions which introduce the formal elements we consider when we read an image. Sometimes it's difficult to ask the right questions of an image, especially if this is the first time you've ever seen it. That's why the Superpower kit does all of the hard work for you. It reminds you of the types of questions you need to ask of an image in order to really read it. The kit also introduces a series of relevant art terms which build lesson by lesson to empower detailed description and evidenced discussion.

Okay, so here, I'm looking at composition in the painting and I'm pointing out the the pyramidal form if you like, which I'm calling a triangle and I'm getting the students to notice that one very important aspect of the triangle is the apex, so the bit right at the top, and that often holds our attention. Interestingly, and I think it was a source of curiosity for the children, a very important but small element of the picture was right at the apex, and that was the experimenter's hand and they found that quite interesting and actually already worked out that he might be controlling something at the top. There was something going on there and it was actually looking at the pyramid that allowed them to make their journey up to the apex and spot that.

In terms of the composition, it's arrangement of things, yeah? Because that's what you do, probably, in your own spaces. You arrange things. Big scary word composition. It's quite difficult – arrangement of things. But also, where we're made to look.

Other compositional elements that they noticed were how there were certain groups of figures on either side and we had fun looking at the different gestures as we moved around the composition.

PUPIL:

There looks... There's a bird in there and it looks like he's pointing at the birds.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

It was quite early on that they noticed something actually that was really off-centre and that was the moon and that seemed to be a source of fascination for them because even though it was off-centre, and so actually wasn't dominant in the composition, they actually slowly journeyed through to understand that it was the light elements that were creating the mood.

So, we've got what kind of light? We've got the natural light, which is the?

PUPIL:

Moon?

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

And then we've got the artificial light, which is?

PUPIL:

The candle?

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

Right, so we've got two sources of light in this work deliberately to illuminate what's going on.

Another element of the Superpower kit is where we focus on the figures and poses and gestures. It's really important actually to do this because sometimes the narrative unfolds through very careful looking.

Okay. Who else? Yep. Over there.

PUPIL:

I can see that there's a woman and she's covering her eyes while the man is trying to like ease her and then there's the daughter holding on to the woman.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

Ah, okay. So you've just spotted a relationship there, haven't you? So you've noticed gesture and this gesture of crying usually is quite a strong one and you were saying you think that this man is what in relation to these two?

PUPIL:

Maybe like the dad or the husband to the to the girl and the woman.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

Yeah. I think she looks quite young so I think you're right. I think that's probably her father.

The responses that the children gave at the start were a little bit generic and sometimes they were looking at me rather than looking at the painting. When I redirected them to the painting and asked them to really study the facial expressions of individual characters, we got down to the minutiae of a furrowed brow and I think that that was the moment actually when they realised that that's how acutely I wanted them to look.

Do the same arm positions and try and pull the same face. I'll let you know how good you are. The last time you looked like that, what was on your mind?

PUPIL:

I think he knows that it's not very likely that this is going to be okay. I think there's like a melancholy look on his face.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

When using questions from the Superpower kit, feel free to adapt them as you see fit. You may ask fewer questions to focus on those most relevant to a particular work, or even reword or rephrase questions to differentiate in accordance with the current knowledge and understanding of your students.

How are you able to tell me? And I need evidence with your eyes, very good evidence. Yep.

PUPIL:

You can tell by the light and where the light is like shining on some places. Like on the velvet, you can see that it looks shiny and you can see the material.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

So, I agree a hundred percent, but how exactly? Yep.

PUPIL:

Because he's really distinguished the shadows. The shine on the velvet is kind of a whitish colour, which is commonly used as light.

PENNY HUNTSMAN:

You're right.

Don't forget that the skill of looking is what The Superpower of Looking is really all about. The kit is the knowledge element, but it's there to guide you to allow you to pause over certain elements with your students and build on the knowledge which is the vocabulary.