Axial Arts

Reverse Curriculum Design

From: www.bartelart.com Lesson ideas that promote a student's individual creative solutions.

"I use a kind of ‘reverse engineering’ to plan art lessons. Reverse engineering an artwork allows us to teach creativity instead of imitation. It provides an unlimited source of ideas for classroom questions, experiments, play, practice routines, and so on, for art lessons. This leads to artwork that the students individually invent instead of stuff that is imitated or copied. It is a way to find the strategies for students to learn how to invent content and creation strategies based on their own lives. I am looking for the engineering of the invention process itself. Of course there are many answers to this. Most questions that are worth asking and answering have many answers. We can use and teach this empathic imaginative approach to help our students learn to experiment, discover, practice, design, persist, self-critique, think, feel, and express themselves as artists instead of relying on examples, demonstrations, imitation, or copy work."