The Open Mind Portrait: An Innovative Method to Promote Reading Comprehension and Critical Thinking

Abstract

This teaching tip article highlights the “Open Mind Portrait” as a visual art strategy to assess middle and secondary students’ complex expressions of texts backed by research, the steps involved for implementation, and a student example to highlight the power of visual art projects. Employing visual art projects to promote reading comprehension and critical thinking offers classroom teachers an innovative reading response method to the standard constructed response. Through the combination of reading and art, teachers can assess students’ comprehension of literary characters as students analyze the role of a character in a story, as well as the larger social, historical, and cultural world occupied by the character when responding to texts.