Top Ten Toolkit: Word Wall

I think this concept has been thrown around a bit. Can't remember where I read it or who mentioned it, but I thought of a neat little five minute activity that can be done once or twice a week.

So a particular piece of art is showcased on a bulletin board, complete with a caption of the title, artist, date. Students are responsible for coming up with words to describe the work, based on what they see.

• Line: bold, skinny, sprawling, quick, hurried, thick, meandering, sketchy?
• Color: saturated, muted, vibrant, dull, somber, shimmering, hazy, atmospheric, primary, acidic, fluorescent, naturalistic?
• Shape: geometric, organic, ephemeral, irregular, angular, rough, jagged, soft?
• Composition: linear, busy, minimal, ordered, vertical, horizontal, chaotic, illogical, symmetric, asymmetric, balanced?
• Movement: fast, sluggish, busy, complacent, rushed, impulsive, implied? 
• Subject: figurative, landscape, still-life, city-scape, abstraction, imaginative, realistic? 
• Mood: lively, awe-inspiring, transient, epic, calm, dismal, introspective? 

Those are just a few descriptor words I came up with off the top of my head, a few possibilities. Kids can throw post-it notes up on the board, around the artwork in question, and so it would be really easy to add to the list. It looks really good too, to have someone walk into the classroom, and see that kids are actively engaged with a work. This sort of instruction would take a little bit of modeling, to get students to really think about how to articulate what they're seeing. This would be a good strategy to use to introduce a new history lesson, or a new project, depending on the artwork involved.