The following Essential Questions might guide a whole unit of inquiry on responding to art through poetry and performance:

Essential Questions around writing:

• Does playing with language help me understand a work of art differently?
• How can my thinking become a poem? When/how does that happen?

• How can improvisation help us to make interesting connections between image-language-voice-body?
• How much do I need to know about craft and technique in order to improvise in interesting ways?

• How do poets look at and experience contemporary art?
• How do visual artists look at and experience contemporary art?
• How is it the same? How is it different?
• What are some ways that another artist's work might inspire mine?
• What happens to my original idea when it is incorporated in to a collaborative project?

To begin this lesson, the teacher/teaching artist should model responding to a work of art using the prompts that follow.

This activity is best done in galleries with the actual works of art, but if that is not an option, this Set includes 20 artworks that could be used for student writing. Clicking on the MORE INFO button below each image opens an item detail page for each artwork.

Following the prompts in the next slide, students write individually about the work they have selected for about 10–15 minutes.

Students select one artwork in the galleries or from the 20 included in this Set and write for 10–15 minutes responding to the prompts below.

These prompts are modified from Critical Response.

If taking this activity to the galleries, print out these prompts from the Choreopoem Performance Lesson PDF attached to the end of this Set and have students select an artwork from the ones on view.

Writing prompts:

1.    Describe what you see. Start with shapes, textures, colors—be specific and make a list. Now use your poet ears and describe what you hear in this piece; what sounds? Be specific and/or compare things and connect things. For example: “I hear fingernails scratching a chalkboard” or “I hear pings—like the sound of an open car door with the keys left in the ignition.”

2.    What does it remind you of? Use short lines/phrases—broad sketches: for example: “It reminds me of walrus teeth” or “It reminds me of the time I played hooky from school in 11th grade and drove to Iowa with my best friend for no good reason.” “It reminds me of a piano piece by Chopin.” etc, etc. WHATEVER it reminds you of is fine.

3.    What emotions or feelings live inside of this piece? Write up to 2 single words—Anger; Nervousness; Panic; Gratitude; Exhaustion; Envy; Glee; etc.

4.    Now name a specific color you associate with this emotion. Even if it is not present in the piece. Don’t just write blue, but write what precise shade of blue you are seeing. Put it into a context. For example: “Grief lives inside this piece. Grief is the color of the gray wing of a pigeon in flight.”

Next Steps:

1. Pair and share: Students share with a partner some lines that stand out in the writing response.
2. Teacher/teaching artist facilitates: Ask each student to share one line they generated for Writing Prompt #3. List on a flip chart: "The color of _______ (one emotion word that you surfaced in your individual writing) is _________ (one specific color that you associate with this emotion).
3. Teacher/teaching artist (with suggestions from the class) divides the class into groups of 4 to 5 students by grouping together related or similar emotions listed on the flip chart.

Class divides into the small groups.

1. Each member of a group offers a response that fits this model: The color of _______________ (emotion) is __________ (a specific and detailed color) like __________ (a memory or experience from prompt #2).
2. Identify four to five additional lines from individuals' writings that capture the essence of of the evolving poems. If the poems are of varying subjects, each subsection can have its own refrain. These lines should be simple and catchy. Use these lines for transitions between different parts of the poem.
3. An Exercise in Improvistion: Encourage students to collaborate with other students to make their poems speak to each other. Example: I say this line, you say that line; back and forth through our poem. Or one "rapping" while another contributes  sounds like beatboxing, clapping, snapping, drumming. Incorporate many voices. That is, single voices, double, group, etc. One student may say a color aloud and also the line behind it. It is all an exercise in improvisation.
4. Teacher/teaching artist and students start to build a script together based on the ideas above.

1. Students arrive with written drafts of their group's Choreopoem for each member of the group.
2. Each student should think beforehand about the words, lines and poems and plan specific movements to associate with them. Memorize your lines.
3. Rehearse as an ensemble. How will your group stand, move, and perform as an ensemble?
4. Practice more than once. Encourage students to be confident, project your voice, make eye contact, enunciate your words, have FUN.
5. Project randomly the artworks students wrote about in a slide show as a backdrop to the performance.

PERFORM!

Over the 2009 and 2010 school years the Walker Art Center worked with teachers and students from Minneapolis Public Schools to develop model lessons for teaching with contemporary art for middle and high school students using works from the Walker's collections. This Set and others identified "Art Today and Tomorrow" are the result of this partnership and collaboration.

Art Today and Tomorrow is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Walker School Programs are supported by the Pentair Foundation and Xcel Energy Foundation.