One of the primary things I do in the art room when I design learning experiences for the students is to set problems for them to solve. An example of this setting problems to solve are the way the Warm Up prompts are designed to be starters or entry points. (See Warm Ups) 

I know that my students come into the art classroom with a wide variety of experiences, skills, knowledge, cultural backgrounds and so on, so it is important that I establish similar imagery students can draw on for subject matter that all students share. Because of this, I try to incorporate a great deal of observational drawing so that students share similar imagery.