Looking Closely, Thinking in Transfer

There’s something deceptively simple—and powerful—behind the three questions museum docents use to guide conversations about art:
​

• What’s going on here?
• ​What do you see that makes you say that?
• What more can we find?

At first glance, these can feel almost too basic. But they do real work. The first question gets people looking and gives everyone a way in. The second pushes beyond opinion—participants have to point to something specific.
​The third keeps the thinking going instead of shutting it down too quickly.

This really clicked for me during a recent session offered in collaboration with Christina Marinelli, Supervising Museum Instructor/Associate Manager of Adult Learning at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. We started with a work of art and used these questions to build a shared analysis. Then we shifted to a poem. The move felt natural—almost like we didn’t have to explain it. Participants were already looking closely, backing up their ideas, and staying open to other interpretations.

What stuck with me was the transfer. The structure held across two very different types of text—visual and written—without needing to be re-taught. Not your typical text-to-text comparison. The thinking routine did the heavy lifting.

The approach was influenced by Shaun Nolan’s Visual Thinking Strategies for Reading Engagement, which looks at how VTS can support English language learning.

We started with Wild Flower (Lotus) by Hung Liu
and did a short VTS discussion. Participants named what they saw, built on each other’s ideas, and started to develop shared language. From there, we moved
​to Things We Carry on the Sea by Wang Ping.

The questions stayed the same. Only the text changed:

• What’s going on in this poem?
• What do you see in the poem that makes you say that?
•  What more can we find in the poem?

Participants wrote, shared, and did some guided peer review. You could see the earlier discussion carry over—both in how they approached the poem and how they supported their ideas. Less hesitation, more specificity, and a sense that everyone had a way in.
I keep coming back to how little needed to change. Same questions. Deeper thinking.

I leave you today with two questions: Where might this fit in your instruction? And what would your students need—language, time, structure—to feel ready to step into this kind of work?

Happy teaching! 
 Lizelena

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