• Can you find beauty in this [image, story]?
• Can you find truth in this [image, story]?
• How might beauty reveal truth?
• How might beauty conceal truth?

PURPOSE

What kind of thinking does this routine encourage? 

This routine fosters students’ critical analysis of information (news, images, stories), revealing the nuances and complexities of an issue, event, or concept and how it is represented. 

APPLICATION

When and where can I use it? 

This routine aims to slow down students’ thinking, inviting them to reflect on the ways works of literature, art, and journalism, for example, use beauty to engage us and motivate us to learn more about an issue and seek truth. The routine also invites a critical analysis of the ways in which beauty can mislead. 

LAUNCH

What are some tips for starting and using this routine?

This routine invites you and your students into a broad and deep conversation about an image or story. Allow time for individual students to share ideas of beauty and truth—constructs they are unlikely to have explored explicitly in their past learning experiences. (When focusing on photographs with this routine, be alert for the misconception, held by many students, that photographs by their very nature reveal truth.) In Questions 3 and 4, the terms “beauty” and “truth” can be inverted.