Everything you need to run ACE Image Inquiry cold, in one period, with any painting in the gallery. The teacher's job is to protect the looking — hold back the backstory, slow the interpretation, and make students point at their evidence.
Timing at a glance
Step
Time
Teacher's core move
① Articulate It
3–4 min
Project with no title. Ask for 8 observations. Accept only what is visible.
② Connect It
4–5 min
Reveal title/artist/date. Push for evidence and point of view.
③ Extend It
3–4 min
Ask what's missing and what source comes next. Collect the exit ticket.
Why "look before you're told"
The routine draws on the slow-looking tradition (Project Zero's Visible Thinking, museum "See–Think–Wonder"). When students describe before they are told the answer, they build the surface knowledge the rest of the routine transfers. Give the title away too early and the looking collapses into recall. Protect the first three minutes.
Facilitation prompts (keep these on a card)
Articulate: "List eight things you notice." · "What is happening here?" · "Where does your eye go first — and what did the artist do to send it there?"
Connect: "What event, era, or issue does this connect to?" · "Point to the evidence." · "Who made this, when, and why might they have shown it this way?"
Extend: "What does this painting leave out?" · "What source would you need next to check it?" · "Would a photograph, a letter, or a newspaper from that year agree?"
When a student interprets too fast: "How do you know? Point to it." — turn every claim back toward visible evidence.
Choosing a painting
Match the era you're teaching — each gallery card lists its TEKS hook, so pick the one nearest your current unit.
Start with a story-rich image the first time (The Problem We All Live With, Washington Crossing the Delaware) so students feel the payoff of looking closely.
Use a "made-later" pair (Trumbull's Declaration + Christy's Signing) when you want the point-of-view lesson: both are dramatizations painted long after the event.
Difficult history — teach the omission, not around it
⚠️ Several paintings carry bias or hard subject matter (American Progress, Both Members of This Club, Sacco and Vanzetti, The Problem We All Live With). Preview them, and teach the bias as the lesson — whose progress, at whose cost, and what the image erases. Keep it factual, age-appropriate, respectful, and never inflammatory (TEC §28.0022). The Extend move ("what does this leave out?") is exactly where difficult history belongs.
Supporting every learner (UDL & ELPS)
Multiple means of expression: the eight observations can be spoken, written, sketched, or listed in a home language first — the point is noticing, not polished English.
Sentence stems (on the routine page) scaffold emergent bilinguals through each step; let students rehearse a stem with a partner before sharing.
A single image is a low-barrier entry — everyone can notice something. Build from there. See the suite's UDL and ELPS supports (7 languages).
Assessing the exit ticket
Use the three-level rubric on the routine page. Read the Extend line first: a student who names a specific next source (a photograph, a letter, a census record, a newspaper from that year) is transferring — that is the whole target. Collect a set over several weeks to watch the historian's habit grow.
🧩 Related routine: ACE here is the same Articulate → Connect → Extend arc as the ACE Powered Jigsaw Organizer ↗. Pair image inquiry with a jigsaw reading when you want students to bring several sources together.