A lesson starter to encourage looking and thinking. Students love these puzzles - they will not be able to identify all the images and that helps them start to look for clues and guess, a key part of looking and questioning what they see. This is good for any age where you want a starter to engage on entry and will work well working in pairs or small groups. The slide contains 7 images of diverse images with a connection in the title.

8 engaging starters, some will extend into tasks for class or homework research and planning. Great for creating a culture of looking and questioning - a state of mind you want your students to be in, whatever the age.

A starter activity and extension task to use as a lesson of idea development, challenging students to be more ambitious in thinking how art can be made in unusual and sometimes quite fun ways. This can be used to focus students as they enter and will encourage curiosity in exploring the images as to how they might be done. Super for GCSE and A Level groups.

I developed this after a conversation with a student about a celebrity they said was now too old to be beautiful. It prompted the question at what age does someone cease to be attractive? Is it 29, 35, 40? etc. This is a fun starter with a homework task to explore this idea and will engage the students on entry having to identify 9 "beautiful" people from photographs when young with them as now, with some of them quite old! This leads into questioning on age and looking at ideals of beauty across time, which all neatly explores equality and diversity and multi cultural aspects. This is great for any age group and provides good opportunity for wider thinking and development of discussion skills.

A quick starter to get them thinking on entry, I find these always get lesson off on the right foot - students re keen to guess and it sets a good positive atmosphere to get going with.

It's always good to get students to think big and challenge themselves. This lesson asks students to plan and develop ideas for working on a large scale and comes with an odd one out starter to stimulate thinking at the start of the session. The lesson is in the form of 16 page power point which I use to get ideas going for ways in which artists can work big scale and leads into tasks with learning objectives to guide the lesson. This can be used as an intervention lesson or as part of a SOW involving scale from KS3 to KS4 and 5, hitting AO1 2 and 3 nicely.

A set of 7 starters to get students thinking and engaged. Always popular with students as they can enjoying looking for clues and connections between the images, and learn some new things along the way. Suitable for primary and secondary age groups.

A collection o keep students thinking - the lessons build from a starter and are great for cover or intervention lessons. The approaches here give good integration of critical thinking with practical activities.

A nice little starter that will get students making some links with different approaches across cultures and hook up with their Geography. There is a trick one also to get them guessing. They will enjoy spotting the countries as some are easier to identify than others. Useful for links between Art and Geography, so can be used as a starter in either or in form tutor time

A useful intervention or cover lesson - comes with a starter task to engage on entry and leads through examples of how fashion designers are using artists as influences in their work. The task has suggested artists to explore and has learning objectives to focus the students on outcomes

A useful intervention or cover lesson which focusses analysis through a discussion style question on why the sea is a popular theme for painters. There is an odd one out starter to engage students from the start and a set of images for them to consider in response to the question. I find the discussion question approach much more useful than the standard art historical approach as the students can explore context and meaning through this.

A starter activity to promote thinking skills for AO2 and AO3 for GCSE and A level - how artists use media, and how they review, modify and refine. This one works really well to break down barriers of not wanting to go beyond the comfort zone when developing work and shows students how artists work in ways where they change their minds when working. Ideal for a lesson involving drawing and reworking a drawing

A starter activity designed at getting students to consider and explore the ideas and concepts behind the design process and how this affects the look of the product. This is ideal for any age group but particularly good for GCSE and A Level graphics communication in particular, and will give information on which students can show an informed response.

A starter activity to engage students and help them think outside the box. I've always found that odd collections of images are of much interest to all students and helps them to try to spot connections, which develops thinking skills and the nature of the activity in making guesses throws up really interesting and unexpected ideas which helps to generate interesting discussion. Working in small groups of mixed ability helps in bringing out ideas and seeing how ideas can be explored in different ways. Suitable for any secondary stage, good for GCSE and A level as a way of processing possible ideas. This is on a power point slide with notes accompanying, and if you search for the Fatboy Slim video it acts as a clue and thinking time.

This starter activity really gets students looking and questioning. I like to make students look beyond the obvious connections and really question what they see in an image - this one works really well in giving students new ideas to explore for AO1 in asking of them what artists are doing in different ways and includes statements by the artists in terms of what the work is about for students to be able to demonstrate Informed responses. This is great for GCSE and A Level but will work with any age group in giving them opportunities to make connections and guesses around what the are seeing, and that's a key thing I think in getting to students to look more closely where they usually only register what they see at first glance.

This lesson covers AO 1 and 2 really well giving good opportunity for students to comment on working practice and philosophy as well as practical activity in exploring the approach. It can be used as an intervention lesson or as a part of a scheme of work in exploring different practical approaches to painting. The presentation uses close up photos of Blotter by Peter Doig taken by myself to show what peter talks about in his comments on ways of working and the lesson plan includes questioning for AFL as well as E&D .

A starter activity the promotes looking harder. This gives some extra understanding to how painters hide things, or make them less obvious and challenges them to question why which is great for AO1 and AO4, making informed responses and commenting on the work of artists in ways which help them develop ideas and understanding. It works for most age ranges as it really relies on them looking and making connections with what they can see. Great for small group work and useful for building skills in responding to works of art through comparing and contrasting approaches.

A PowerPoint run through of a mid grade sketchbook which throws up good opportunity for students to spot what could be improved, and help them identify what they may be doing wrong. The starter activity focusses them on identifying what the differences are between approaches from students and proper artists and gives opportunity to challenge why there may be differences. A really useful lesson to focus and redirect students and hits AFL nicely with self and peer assessment.

A starter to engage the students on entry, looking for clues as to what the connection might be with a difficult fourth image which doesn't quite fit. These starters really make the students look and think and give good opportunities to look across cultures for why artists might choose the subject matter. Suitable for any age group - KS2 KS3 KS4 and KS5, and good for some background knowledge on art history AO1

A fun starter to spot how the images are linked. Gets your class interested in looking with a set of images they have to link, with the fun bit being they have to work out what the link might be - throws up some interesting ideas for them.