What shared language emerges?
I was inspired by...
I notice...
Another way you could do it is...
I wonder...
Maybe...
How did you...
What if...
6. Reflections About Critique
What habits began to form?
Asking for advice
Sharing observations
Sharing ideas
Copying is acceptable
Referencing past experiences
It seemed important to begin establishing this culture of critique explicitly and intensely, to keep the conversation constant and to consistently reinforce the vocabulary we were developing together. When children were painting at the easel side by side and I noticed similarities in their approach, color, or subject, I would comment: It looks like you are being inspired by each other to use similar shapes in your paintings. Are you talking with each other about what you are doing as you paint?
Some further thoughts about critique
Critique gives both the artist (writer, block builder, mathematician) and the observer something else to go on, a suggestion for a new turn in thinking and action.
If we are successful at changing the lens of comparison, subjectivity, and favoritism through new language and attitudes, and if we make clear that every child's every effort has value towards learning, then children are encouraged to develop a habit of expansiveness in their thinking.
The idea that "copying" is being inspired by someone else's work is a positive learning tool can be an uncomfortable one. Parents, too, in looking at their children's products, need to know that in a culture of collaboration, the sharing ideas, working from each other's beginnings, and offering suggestions, are welcome parts of any individual's learning. We can all ask children, "Where did that idea come from?" and "How did you learn to do that?" thereby encouraging children to reference their own past experiences and the contributions of others to their own thinking and discovery.
When children are engaged in looking carefully at each other's work, their ideas expand. They regard other people's work as resource, and so discover new paths of thought to pursue, new techniques and strategies to try. They enter another realm of imagination; that is, through the ideas of others and through the very effort of expressing their ideas about another's work they imagine and explore unfamiliar ways of expressing themselves.