Teaching Visual Critical Thinking - 2 : The farmer and the field

I have always wanted to enhance the critical thinking skills of my students using different activities when I happened to stumble upon The New York Times Learning Network resources on “What’s Going On In This Picture”, a tool to teach critical thinking using visual thinking strategies.

I used this picture  and asked my English class three questions - “What do you think could be going on in this picture?” “What did you see that made you say so?”, “What more can you find?” 

I knew that I needed to give the children ample time to not feel rushed and at the same time carefully observe all the details before they could come up with their observations and inferences.  I informed them that they would have 15 minutes to view the entire picture and write down what they observed. 

Sarah was skeptical of inferring from a picture but I told her to first make her observation and then make inferences. Hanan raised her hand in 3 seconds and started describing the picture.  I had to stop her and told her to first write down her thoughts on paper.  That would give her an opportunity to observe carefully, recheck her observations and change/modify her thoughts or ideas if needed. 

I wanted each student to observe, re-observe, come to a conclusion and form ideas confidently.  Then, later, based on the others’ observations, they could change or modify their own opinions.  This  would teach them to observe more carefully the next time, thinking with varied perspectives before jumping to conclusions.  This skill cannot be taught in any class by lectures.  The children need to learn to develop a sharp eye for detail and correct their own way of thinking when and where necessary.

I did not want the children to be in a hurry to form conclusions to prove they knew the answer.  My students took 30 minutes and each one was allowed to describe what they observed.  They were allowed to comment on the peers’ observations and modify their own understanding based on others’ views.

Izaan started the conversation saying the farmer lady was trying to cover the entire field with a net, maybe she wanted to protect her crop from a locust attack.  I was thrilled to know they were aware of the recent news of the locust infestation in India.  Last year, we had to really insist on newspaper reading at school but this year kids knew what was happening around them even if it was through the news on TV.

Sarah told me she felt like the lady was clearing a spider’s web but then, based on the others’ observations, she now believed it was a net she was spreading.  Hafsa postured that these were paddy or wheat fields and the woman was probably protecting the crops from the birds.  Khadija pitched in saying that it must be a village because there was a lot of greenery around as well which is difficult to find in a city.  She also pointed out that the lady probably lived close by, as she was working alone on the field. They saw a building in the vicinity and concluded that the farmer woman probably lived in it. 

Muhsin said that it must be cold in the early morning as she is wearing a full-sleeved coat and has covered her head.  He was also surprised at the enormity of the job of covering the field which was huge as the net extended throughout the field in the background as far as the eye could observe. They came to the conclusion that she was pulling the net over the crop using a stick as they could see the net around the stick.  Khadija observed the woman’s expression and noted that it must be strain on the woman to pull the net using a stick.  

Hanan added that she must have regularly worked on the fields as she had tanned skin and the bandana on the head showed that it could be cold. She also spotted that there was a grasshopper trapped under the net but it was not very clear if it was really a grasshopper.  They all chorused that it was a wheat field except Sarah who felt the grass was too tall as it was up to the lady’s shoulder.  I drew their attention to the grain on the grass but, sadly, since these children live in the city, they were unable to recognize the paddy crop.  I reminded them about their visit to Sirudavur paddy fields last year to get them to connect that it was paddy that they were looking at.

Initially, Sarah observed that it was probably evening time because it was bright enough but the sun or sunlight is not seen so the sun was probably setting behind the trees.  Much of the sky was not seen in the picture so Sarah later changed her guess to it being early morning. She supported her argument with the fact that the birds were not there in the fields to eat the grain.

I nudged them to comment on the ethnicity of the woman and they said, it’s probably NE India or Assam or maybe even Indo-Nepal border but we finally generalised that she was Asian.

The caption was revealed to the students at the end of the class, “This is how crop is protected in Java-by covering it with a fishing net.” from the section Your Evening Briefing on NYT Now. 

This took an entire 50-minute class but there was the satisfaction of my students embarking on a journey of not just observing carefully for minute details but also providing supporting evidence to justify their claims.  These are the first steps to developing higher order thinking and questioning skills.   What more can we ask for?!   

Naqeeb Sultana

Note : Student chosen aliases have been used instead of real names.  Due to copyright restrictions, the actual picture cannot be reproduced. Instead a student drawn illustration has been used and a link to the actual picture has been provided in the article as well as below:

https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/whats-going-on-in-this-picture-march-16-2015/

Teaching Visual Critical Thinking - 3: The Ladies in Waiting

I was chewing over the idea to introduce the ‘What’s Going On This Picture’ or not with my 6thers as the previous graders 6 were not really enthusiastic about picture prompts and discussions.  I always wondered why teaching English language had to be limited to reading passages, comprehension with an excessive emphasis on grammar.  

I always wanted my students to observe, analyse, question, infer and then support  their claim with evidence observation. So I decided to go ahead and introduce my students  to The New York Times Learning Network resources on What’s Going On In This Picture.

I chose to show them a simple picture and gave the three guiding questions -  what do they think was happening in the picture, what did they see that made them say so and what more could they find.  They were given 15 minutes to observe and then present their observations and inferences.

Ashfaque told me he had finished observing and so he set the conversation rolling.  He stated that he thought they were chefs with white aprons with disposable chef caps on their heads.  Maybe they were taking photographs of a special dish they made.  I wanted him to observe more carefully as there were no aprons seen and rather it looked like white coats over their dresses.

Next Hajira suggested she thought they were doctors or surgeons with their caps on and they were probably celebrating the recovery of a patient who had come into the hospital in a critical condition.  She had come to the conclusion of a hospital setting because she observed a name print on their coats which might be the name of the institution although it was not easily readable in the picture.  She also observed some kind of a light or device on the wall in the background from which she inferred it to be a hospital.

Then Muiz spoke up that they were either waiters or nurses as they all seem to wear similar white coats over their dress and he observed some of them had similar long, black sleeves.  Since they were all holding cameras, he inferred that they were taking pictures.  He said  that it was either outside the hospital or the hotel and that there were at least 20 men and women.  Looking at their faces he inferred that it was an English(speaking? or Western?) country and they all seemed happy.  So probably there was a celebrity who was visiting them and they were all taking his/her pictures.  He could see the hospital or hotel name embossed on their coats.

Then Zoya told that she thought they must be factory workers probably capturing pictures of a visiting VIP.  She observed that she noticed the name of the company or factory along with a name tag pinned atop the name print on their coats.  She also inferred that this photo must be old because she saw them all holding cameras vertically and horizontally.  If it was taken recently they would all probably be holding their mobile phones.

Hamdan told me that he believed that it was a hotel kitchen with the cooks taking pictures of their dishes.  He had observed what looked like pipes in the background on the wall although a little blurred.  He thought that it was a pan on the wall and that it was a huge kitchen where the countertop or stove was not visible in the picture.  He also noticed that while the people in the front were taking pictures, a few of them at the back seemed to be having a discussion or conversation.

Mansoor told me that they were probably chefs in a hotel or a school cafeteria as his previous school in the US had a cafeteria.  They were taking pictures of a special and tall cake they had made as they all seemed to be looking in the same direction and taking pictures holding the camera horizontally as well as vertically to cover the tall cake.

Just then Ashfaque wanted to add something he noticed.  He said this picture was taken before the corona pandemic as none of them seemed to be practising social distancing or were wearing masks.

Hammad just mentioned that he thought they were all taking pictures in different angles.  Luqman added that he thought they were all wearing rain coats and shower caps because they were expecting to go out in the rain.  I felt he had not really paid attention to the picture or the discussion.  

I drew his attention to the idea that they could not be rain coats as there was no hood to cover their heads from the rain water and also the necks of the coats exposed the clothes worn by the people which could then easily get wet which was not what a raincoat was meant to be.  The others started discussing that there are rain coats without hoods and that could be the reason they were wearing the shower caps. 

I was really impressed with their keen and sharp observations based on which they inferred most of the information from the picture.  I would dedicate my entire 50-minute class to sharpen their observation, inference and analysis skills if I needed to.  Not only me but the children also enjoyed the activity thoroughly and it had set their minds thinking.  The conversation flowed with such ease that I did not expect it to end.  I appreciated their observations and told them how impressed I was with them. Finally, I revealed to them that this picture was taken in a jam factory when Queen Elizabeth visited them on a tour and the jam factory workers had taken her pictures.  

Naqeeb Sultana

Note : Student chosen aliases have been used instead of real names.  Due to copyright restrictions, the actual picture cannot be reproduced. Instead a student drawn illustration has been used and a link to the actual picture has been provided in the article as well as below:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/learning/whats-going-on-in-this-picture-april-20-2020.html

Teaching Visual Critical Thinking - 1: What's with the crowd?

If education has to move beyond rote memorization and onto real learning, educators must create lessons which stimulate students’ thinking and curiosity. In a previous set of articles, I discussed how teachers at Al Qamar Academy  have tried to increase the depth of student engagement by provoking questions.  Another important set of cognitive skills that educators must build involve observation, inference and analysis. These skills are interdisciplinary and should form the foundation of learning. 

Teachers at school have struggled long and hard to come up with ways and means to foster the above mentioned skills.  The recent experience with using videos to stimulate minds, made us think of using a visual stimulus. The New York Times Learning Network has some brilliant resources, including one called “What’s Going On In This Picture”. In this, the NY Times shares a picture stripped of its caption every week.  Students are invited to discuss what they think is happening and to justify their guess with evidence from the picture.  Eventually, the caption is revealed on the website. Naqeeb & I decided to try this approach in our English class for the 7th and 8th grade students. 

I showed this picture to the students and asked them to study it carefully for a minute. Then I called on each student to explain what they thought was happening. I asked them to provide a justification for their guess.  Hana started up “I think it’s some sort of a Black protest. I think it is in America.” She thought it was connected to the recent George Floyd killing in the United States.  Afwan concurred. Others noted that all the people in the picture were Black, so it must have something to do with the Black protests. Maybe this was a shop they were trying to get into? I mused at the power of media - and its ability to successfully reduce an entire community to a unidimensional image - “protest”. It also struck me - here are a bunch of Muslim kids, already sensitised to media’s narrow portrayal of Muslims, aware of the negative imagery of “corona, violence and the skull cap”. Yet when they were placed in a position of a viewer of another oppressed community - they fell into the same trap. 

Then Izzy piped up - “It can’t be a protest. There are balloons there”. I could have hugged her. She looked beyond and thought deeper. This was obviously a “positive” event. “Maybe they are waiting for someone to come out. Someone who has been sick.” Others joined her - maybe someone recovered from Corona. They all caught on to the fact that the picture was recent - everyone had masks, so the picture must have been taken in Corona times. 

“Yes, it can’t be a protest - they are standing there. No one is trying to get in.” (Back to the stereotype peddled by the media about “shop looting”). I zoomed in on writing on the balloons - “Happy Mother’s Day”. “Oh maybe, they are waiting for their Mom. Or someone’s Mom!” they guessed.

I asked them to think about where the place could be, beyond being in the United States. Was it a house? Ahmed thought so. But Hana, who has lived in the US, said it didn’t look like a house. There were too many “Warning” & “Stop” signs on the door. Plus the door wasn’t wide enough for it to be a hospital. She noticed the sensors and CCTV cameras in the picture - not usually found outside houses. Afwan thought maybe it was a police station. But no, it didn’t look like one. What about a shop? But again, would the warning posters be posted outside a shop?  I called their attention to the foliage behind the people. “Palm trees!” “Maybe it’s California.” Someone guessed “Jamaica”. I liked the way the children started spotting clues and inferring facts from them.  

One child was hesitant. She simply described the scene to me “Many people are there. They are Black. They are looking inside a room.” I had to nudge her “I can also see that. But what can you tell me about what’s happening from all these facts you’re seeing?” “I don’t know what you mean…” she replied. “What do you think they’re looking at?” “Why are they standing there?” It took several minutes of deep silence on both ends - hers as she thought, and mine as I waited for her to proffer a theory. “Maybe they are waiting for someone to come out.” Good start!! 

Eventually I revealed the caption - family members waiting to wish an 82 year old woman living in an Old Age Home on Mother’s Day in Covid times of social distancing. The photograph was taken from the May 11, 2020 article “After Months Apart, Mother’s Day Visits Through a Doorway”.  I congratulated the children on having been quite successful in inferring a large part of the situation from the visual clues.

This was a great exercise on many counts. On a very basic level - we worked on conversation - this was after all an English class!.  Beyond that, children enjoyed the thrill of solving a puzzle, of having to spot clues and making guesses. The fact that the milieu was quite alien to the children didn’t pose a great challenge - maybe because of the few who had lived in the United States could explain the different hairstyles, sensors on doors or typically American warning sign posters.  Or maybe that thanks to cultural dominance, symbols of the US culture abound in popular media. 

There were some loose threads left hanging - we could have gone deeper in the whole perception of protest just because they saw a group of Black people. We could have talked about the social isolation of the aged necessitated by COVID. Or simply the variety of hairstyles in the picture. Or clothes.  The picture gave so much scope for discussion - it would have taken a whole period. And maybe next time, thats what we will do - devote an entire class to “What’s Going On in This Picture.” 

Aneesa Jamal

Note : Student chosen aliases have been used instead of real names.  Due to copyright restrictions, the actual picture cannot be reproduced. Instead a student drawn illustration has been used and a link to the actual picture has been provided in the article as well as below:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/learning/whats-going-on-in-this-picture-may-18-2020.html