Helping Students Talk About Art: From Blank Stares to Confident Critics
Talking about art can feel intimidating, for students and teachers alike. When students learn to reflect, share, and listen with intention, something shifts. Over time, I’ve found a few strategies that help students move from silence to sharing, and from passive observers to confident critics.
At the center of it all in my classroom:
WOW Projects: Wonderful Original Works of Art are a structure that makes reflection, feedback, and inspiration part of the creative process.
#1 Value Looking at Other Artists’ Work:
Inspiration Shapes Student Voice and Vision
✔ Look at art often
✔ Practice having opinions
✔ Use the DAIE critique method
WOW projects don’t exist in a vacuum. I’ve seen firsthand how much students are influenced by the art they explore in class. Last year, one of my students fell in love with Basquiat. His next WOW piece exploded with bold lines, symbols, and raw emotion. That inspiration became a turning point in his work.
We explore art constantly through journal prompts that are historical, current, weird, funny. The goal is to build comfort and curiosity around art without fear of being “wrong.”
Then we introduce DAIE:
Describe, Analyze, Interpret, Evaluate This structure helps students move beyond “I like it” and into deeper thinking.
Tools like Gallery Gossip, Choose-Your-Own Critique Paths, and Scavenger Hunts bring critiques to life. Eventually, students apply the same language to analyze and explain their own work.
#2 Encourage Students to Talk About Their Own Art
Artist Statements Give Voice to the Work
✔ Their voices matter
✔ Reflection takes practice
✔ Ask questions, not just answers
When students finish a WOW project, they’re not done yet, they write an artist statement that walks through their goals, process, successes, struggles, and reflections. It’s a space for clarity and voice. When reading them I often see surprising insight.
When a student asks, “Does this look good?” or “How can I make this more realistic?”, I resist giving a quick answer. Instead, we hang the work and bring in a peer:
“Let’s look at this together — what’s working? What could help this get closer to what the artist intended?”
We talk a lot about intent. Was that color choice on purpose? Is the scribbly texture intentional? As I reflect their thoughts back to them, they begin to trust their own judgment. Their artist statements and our conversations start to show that growth.
#3 Learn to Talk to Each Other About Art
Peer Feedback That Builds Confidence and Community
✔ Peer experts build culture
✔ Use games like TAG
✔ Make feedback part of the process
Every WOW project must include peer feedback before it’s submitted. This isn’t just a checkbox, it’s a culture. We use TAG to scaffold feedback:
Tell something you like,
Ask a question,
Give a suggestion.
We practice, model, and even gamify it.
Over time, peer critique becomes a strength. If someone’s struggling with cardboard and Bennett’s the cardboard expert in the room, myself and the students place a high value on his experience. (Every kid can be the go to for something)
Students begin to see each other as artists with something valuable to contribute. WOW projects help build that community by requiring real dialogue, not just teacher input.
Helping students talk about art takes time. But when you weave it into the structure, from inspiration to reflection to peer conversation, the students grow more confident, articulate, and engaged.
That’s the power of the WOW Project:
It’s not just about making art, it’s about building voice, vision, and a community of critics who care.
