Establishing a Pattern of Making Meaning in the Classroom

20161014_09383620161014_100226

This week I visited the third grade classrooms at the Read School in Bridgeport, CT to coach teachers and students in Visual Literacy. The goal was to introduce a pattern of making meaning through these three steps: 1. visual experience; 2. picture-making; 3. writing. All the while, the underlying goal is to get them to slow down and focus, so that they can recognize their own thoughts and stories, and develop their writing voices. This pattern of talking about art, drawing, and writing (in that order) inspires them to make connections to their own lives.

As phones, computers and over-scheduled lives monopolize more and more of our students’ time, the practice of making meaning seems to need our instruction. The good news is, children are thirsty for this kind of self-awareness, and are thrilled to discover that they have so many experiences which are worth writing about.

I began in each class by talking about why I draw before I write. I shared my own journal, reading a piece which started with a sketch of a pair of scissors and led to my writing a memory piece about my mother sewing. The idea was that the drawing, in this case, is not for show, or for beauty; we are drawing like scientists draw: to explore, and to pay attention to the world and to our thoughts.

Then, we established the pattern we will practice to make meaning of our own thinking:

A Wooded River Landscape with Fisherman by James Arthur O'Connor
A Wooded River Landscape with Fisherman by James Arthur O’Connor
  1. Visual experience: Discussing a work of art as a class (this painting is on the YCBA website (www.britishart.yale.edu/collections) is an opportunity to: a) focus our eyes and minds; b) share vocabulary and prior knowledge; c) build community.

3rd grade copy of O'Connor paintingcarolinas-pic-3rd-gr-read-sch

2. Picture-making: The drawings above were both done in response to the O’Connor painting. Their choice was to either copy the painting itself (left) or to draw something it made them think of from their own lives (right). Both choices give the student the time to reflect, explore detail, and make meaning.

3. Write: Students can have a hard time transitioning from drawing, where they often feel comfortable, to writing, where they often don’t. But these students are predominantly bi-lingual, and easily understood my explanation that their writing is really just a translation of their drawings. This is where they explore their ability to share their thinking and to develop their writing voices. I wrote their choices for writing on the board:

  • Imagine you are in your picture. Describe what you would see, hear, smell, feel…help me to see your picture with your words.
  • Tell a story about your picture. Pretend it is on “pause,” and describe what happens when you press “play.”
  • Your choice: a poem, a letter, etc. about your picture.

Yadeslie’s poem (choice 1), as read to me:

“If I was in the picture/I would feel the water/and feel the bark of the tree/and hear the leaves crack together/and hear the birds chirping/and I would smell the fresh air and the leaves/and touch the leaves and touch the grass.”

Caroline, (choice 2), wrote about her memory with her uncle, saying that “the tree feels wind in the air.” When I read her piece to my husband, he said it reminded him of Wallace Stevens’ line from Of Mere Being: “The wind moves slowly in the branches.” I will be sure to share that poem with them next time I see them, and point out how similar their writing is to Stevens.

Angie (choice 3) decided to describe her process, which was so helpful to me as a teacher and learner:

“When I drew my picture I thought that it was just sand and chairs and water. But then the teacher said to pretend it is a video. I put it on pause and then I played it. The first thing I hear is birds flying everywhere. I was running in the sand. The sun was shining. It smelled like the sea. I saw a sea star. It felt bumpy…it looked orange. I felt the wind blowing through my hair.”

–Darcy Hicks

Save

Museum Questions Blog

Check out the Museum Questions: Reflections on Museums, Programs, and Visitors blog here. The blog “is dedicated to questions about museums and thoughts on creating a reflective practice.” The creator has some great insight into museum education and school visits to museums from her fifteen years of experience in various museum education departments.

Contributors

 Patti Darragh

Patti Darragh is a reading specialist and the Reading/Language Arts coordinator, at the K-5 level in North Branford, CT. Patti began integrating visual literacy strategies as a first and second grade teacher and continues to use them to make literature and writing more meaningful to the remedial reading students she works with today. Patti has shared her beliefs and knowledge about visual literacy through various professional development workshops with the teachers in North Branford and an instructor at the University of New Haven MAT program, training new teachers. She is a liaison for the Museum/School Partnership with the YCBA and is an instructor at the YCBA Summer Teacher Institute. Additionally she had presented visual literacy workshops at Yale Center for British Art, New England Museum Association, and American Alliance of Museums, and Examining the  Intersection of Arts Education and  Special Education. She holds a B.S. in Elementary Education and Advanced Certification as a Reading Specialist from Southern Connecticut State University and an M.S. in Education from University of Connecticut.

Darcy Hicks

Darcy Hicks was an elementary classroom teacher and art teacher in Massachusetts and in Connecticut for ten years. She has since worked as an educational consultant and teaching coach, with a focus on the integration of art and writing. Hicks uses art in the classroom to help children discover their own topics, and to develop skills in reading and writing. She developed a literacy approach called Doorways to Thinking, which integrates all the senses into the writing process. For the last three years she has been part of the Visual Literacy team at the New Haven Public Schools and the Yale Center for British Art. She conducts workshops for teachers, coaches one-on-one, and this year worked with a small group of children to explore the use of art as a way to develop their writing voices.

Publications:

Hicks, Darcy. Choice Matters. Teaching K-8, pub. NCTE October 2001

Hicks, Darcy; Levenson, Cyra. Opening the Door: Teaching Towards Creativity. Creativity in Art Education, pub. NEA 2013.

Presentations:

National Conference of Teachers of English,1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2003.

photo

Cyra Levenson, Ed.M., is Associate Curator of Education at the Yale Center for British Art. Prior to Yale, Ms. Levenson held positions at the Seattle Art Museum and the Rubin Museum of Art focused on gallery interpretation. She has worked closely with schools and teachers throughout her career and has researched and published on the topic of visual literacy in museum practice. Ms. Levenson is a also the co-curator of the upcoming exhibition, Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Atlantic Britain and is author of the article, “Re-presenting Slavery: Underserved Questions in Museum Collections”. Ms. Levenson has a degree in Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and has been working in the field of museum education for 15 years.

James Shivers Image

James Shivers (Ph.D.) is a poet, visual artist, and literary critic.  He teaches at William H Hall High School in West Hartford, CT.  In 2012-13 he developed with YCBA a visual based pilot program called Expanding Literacies, Exploring Expression for students in lower level English Courses.  At Hall, he also co-developed of a senior level media course, 21st Century Studies: Media and the Critical Eye which receives college credit through University of Connecticut’s ECE program where he serves on the English advisory board.  He also teaches courses at University of Hartford and University of Connecticut.

Hallie Cirino is engaged in a teaching career that has spanned over three decades and has included students from the ages of two to ninety-two. Currently, Hallie is working as a 5’s teacher at CHT Preschool in Westport, CT.  While working on her masters in teaching, curriculum, and learning environments at Harvard, Hallie conducted and published research about young children learning to write for the first time. This led to her emphasizing the incorporation of visual arts into literacy learning with her classes, and the process of doing so with her current 5-year-old students has a very natural, organic quality. Hallie firmly believes that all students, regardless of age, can enhance their learning while improving their writing through the use of visual supports such as fine art.

Yinan Eva Song

Yinan “Eva” Song is a senior at Yale University. She majors in Art (with a focus on Graphic Design) and Political Science. She worked as a Nancy Horton Bartels intern at the Department of Education of Yale Center for British Art for the 2012-2013 school year, and continues to work as a student assistant at the Department.

Sara Torkelson

Sara Torkelson is a junior at Yale University majoring in American Studies with a concentration on visual art and literature. She is a student assistant at the Yale Center for British Art in the Education Department. Sara will be posting on the YCBA Pinterest page; these posts will explore the British Art Center’s vast collection and focus on specific themes with each post.