Keeping students engaged once the year is in full swing can be a challenge. You carefully construct your lessons, crafting visually appealing slides filled with fascinating facts about art history, media, and methods. It’s frustrating when it feels like students don’t put in the same effort to look, read, and retain the information you share. If this resonates with you, you’re not alone. The key is to take a step back and redirect your energy to building intrigue so your students can’t help but want to explore on their own!
Get your students excited to investigate these five art mysteries—all while boosting learning!
1. Turn the lesson on its head.
Sometimes students need a little guided practice to build foundational skills. If there’s drawing involved, make it a little more exciting by turning it into a mystery. Don’t tell students what they will be creating, and have them draw it upside down. The class will be buzzing with excitement as they guess what the mystery drawing will become! More importantly, they will eagerly await each direction and carefully study every line and shape.
This is a great strategy to get through the early stages of a drawing project together. You can even use it as a quick and easy game. Offer a small prize, like a sticker, for the first student to identify the subject. If you’re short on supplies or have multiple rounds of drawing, add an environmentally friendly twist by using dry-erase boards instead of paper.
2. Thrill with a mystery artist display board.
Every day or every week, post a different fun fact or identifying clue about an artist. Make it a competition and offer a reward to the first student to identify the mystery artist. You can also randomly select from all of the correct guesses. Simply put out a small box to collect responses. If you want to go digital, display a QR code to a Google Form.
FLEX Curriculum has hundreds of student-friendly artist bios to help students investigate. For more challenging mysteries, provide a collection of potential suspects to narrow their focus. In their investigation process, they will not only learn about the mystery artist, but they will also learn about several others as well.
3. Create a wonderwall to share mysteries and solutions.
Why are most pencils yellow? What happened to Mona Lisa’s eyebrows? Why are there holes in marker caps? Students are full of questions, and they often pop up at the most inconvenient times. Create a space where students can post their questions. Then, make it a routine to devote a little class time to answering them. Answer one question a day to keep students quiet during studio time or schedule a “Weekly Moment of Wonder” to answer several questions at once. Try challenging students to investigate, solve each other’s mysteries, and present their findings to the class. A good wonderwall will encourage students to think critically, give them ownership over their learning, and provide a productive outlet for curiosity.
4. Build a board game to crack the case.
Create an art history mystery game in the style of Clue or Guess Who. Introduce the game by saying that the world’s worst supervillain, Dr. Meaniebadguy, has commissioned a forgery of a masterpiece from art history. He is planning to steal the original and replace it with the forgery. Your students must travel around the game board to figure out which artwork their nemesis plans to steal. When they crack the case, students submit their report to the authorities, identifying the correct masterpiece.
Follow these steps to make the game for your classroom:
- Curate a collection of artworks.
Collect a variety of artworks, including different styles, time periods, and diverse artists. Select from what students have already learned this year. - Create a set of cards with clues.
Each card will have a description of what it looks like. For example, one clue could be that it’s a landscape. Another clue card might say it was created by an Impressionist. Level up the intrigue by using colored cellophane to reveal “invisible” text on the clue cards! - Set up the game board.
Make a simple template to photocopy for each table group. They can use art supplies like erasers and glue sticks as their player tokens. If you want to get the students moving, borrow some polyspots from the PE teacher to lay out pathways around the room. - Use a randomizer.
Select a mechanism, such as dice or a spinner, to control movement and player turns within the game.
5. Recruit students to solve mysteries while reinforcing expectations.
Every art teacher encounters balled-up paper towels in the sink, pencil tips embedded in erasers, glue spots on stools, and other items that leave you wondering, “What were they thinking?” Take pictures of unsolved mysteries around the art room. Then post the picture in a slide deck, asking, “What could go wrong?” Students love to turn and talk about what disasters they imagine as possible consequences. As they discuss the impacts of various behaviors, they will remember what you expect and, more importantly, why they need to meet those expectations.
Incorporating an element of mystery into your art room will not only capture students’ attention, but it will transform them from passive recipients of information into active investigators. Start small by tweaking your displays or guided practice exercises into mini mysteries. Or go big and make a game of it! Whatever approach you choose, embrace a little curiosity for deeper engagement. The shift from information delivery to information discovery will foster critical thinking, collaboration, and genuine excitement for any lesson.
What mysteries have you encountered in your art room?
What’s your favorite way to get students engaged?
To chat about art room intrigue with other art teachers, join us in The Art of Ed Community!
Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.
