How do you get your students to see beyond the surface level of a topic? Do you ever just give a picture to your students and have them talk about it? Analyze it? Beyond the Frame is a super quick strategy to start off discussion in your class.

Take a provocative picture and glue it in the center of a sheet of chart paper. Place your students into small groups of 3 or 4. Give each student a sheet of chart paper with the image in the center.  Challenge students to brainstorm what they would see “beyond the frame” – what is happening just outside of the image?

Your students can then respond to your question by either drawing the rest of the picture, or writing down sentences or phrases to describe what they would of seen. 

You could ask them simple spiral questions like: What do you see? Where do you think this image takes place? What is happening before the image? After?