A Closer Look – Page 4 – YCBA Teachers' Resources

A Fall Visit by Hallie Cirino

One day last week, I invited two students, who were in my class last year, to come in a share a sketch journal page with my new class. The two graduates (who happen to be twin brother and sister) are currently in Kindergarten. Each had looked through their journals at home and selected a favorite page to show and talk about with the new students. I’ve never done this before, so I really didn’t know what to expect. Hudson showed his revised owl, which happens to be a topic I covered in a blog post last year.

Sienna shared a “trail to a tree”.

With incredible grace and aplomb, both talked about how hard they worked on those journal pages. They asked my new class for feedback, and students made comments such as, “I like how you filled your whole canvas”, and “That’s a really good owl”, and “I like the colors that you used”. The comments were a bit cursory, but it is only the beginning of the year with children who are mostly still four years old, with little experience.

After our visitors left, the children went to work in their journals. As I circulated around the room, I asked the children about what they are drawing/writing. One little girl, Esme, said, “I’m making a path to a rainbow circle.” I asked where she got her idea, and her response was, “From the girl that came and shared her journal. She did a path to a tree, but mine is to a rainbow circle.”

A simple visit from an “expert” can be all of the inspiration our budding artist-writers need.

Table of Contents, Lists, Re-reading

“…those who fail to re-read, are obliged to read the same story everywhere” (Barthes, S/Z 16)

As we end the year I give students an opportunity to revise, add, re-work, any aspect of their journal work from the semester. And I give credit for any additional authentic work they add. All I ask is they explain what they added, where, and why. This practice gives us both an opportunity for reflection and re-reading.

When we start journals at the beginning of the year I tell the students to save the first few pages for a table of contents, to save a couple of pages at the end for lists, and to number the pages. Like the rest of us, they become busy and forget or I forget to remind them. So a few weeks before the end of the semester I ask them to work on their table of contents. This task at first seems too difficult for some, but as we talk they find ways to work. I suggest that a title for a page is like naming a poem or a movie or a chapter in a book. As they go through their journals, they are also reviewing for their Final exam. I ask questions on the exam about their journal work, so the task is a way from them to study while also creating their own view of the material we covered.

Each table of content tells a story. They find words to represent and signify. Sometimes the titles are pragmatic, sometimes poetic:

‘Making a Mark’

‘Literal/Abstract’

‘Art of Story Telling’

These tables give the students an opportunity of book-making where they are readers and writers, giving a re-reading of pages and pages of work.

In their last entry I ask the students to tell me what was their best, hardest, and most interesting work. Reading their responses gives me insight into their experience of the year. Sometimes I miss something that was valuable to them, so I can go back and have a look. Every year I catch something I missed in my first reading or the student reveals a discovery or the journal simply speaks for itself as something wonderfully made.

I had the students draw a painting and tell the story of the painting. This was a favorite for many and at the time I didn’t realize how many loved making up a story to go along with the image they had drawn.

We end the year re-reading and realizing stories abound: waiting, signifying, and inviting.

–James Shivers

Poetry as Possibility

In a classroom where visual literacy is explored, poetry is another ancient art form charged with potential. Good poems ask the reader to see and hear. From Emily Dickinson’s “I dwell in possibility” to Charles Bernstein’s “Of Time and the Line” poets see the poem as a vibrant opening of the possible.

The exercise of moving a poem to the page is not complicated. Too often we feel intimated by poetry. We worry about students not getting the sense. Consequently, we look for ‘easy’ poems where we understand every literary element. We can treat poems too mechanistically to the point of analyzing the life out of each line. Or choose poems we don’t think needs much interpretation, almost self evident. If poetry is an art of possibility, should it be for readers?

Throughout the year I choose different kinds of poems, depending on the class, their interests, grade level, and/or unit we are studying. I typically provide a copy of the poem to the class so we can work the text, annotating, writing, underlining, circling or doodling. I read the poem aloud, we have some class discussion, and I give some cultural context. I encourage students to observe, interpret, and respond. I make sure at some level they understand and experience the unique logic and beauty of poetry.

This last quarter we read T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and then I asked them to make a visual interpretation of the poem. After some basic discussion about components of composition — such as rule of thirds, the numerous ways the page can be divided to create effects, how placement of design, color, and words work to visually persuade — I asked them to make a visual reading of the poem using both text and the page in their journals. If these pages could sing, what would we hear?

–James Shivers

Reflecting on Their Reflections

Sylvia, my co-teacher, and I, had the children reflect back on their learning for the year. We had studied trees, birds, stars and space, flowers, and octopuses, along with the artists Henry Moore (“Bird and Egg”), Vincent van Gogh (“Starry Night”), John Hoyland (“Space Warriors”), Beatrix Potter, and Georgia O’Keeffe (“Red Poppy”). Here are some of their reflections regarding artist studies:

Although their statements may seem concrete and basic, the children are accurately applying new vocabulary that they learned this year (abstract, fiction). They are also visually expressing their learning through their illustrations, which they all created first, before writing their statements. They are showing that they understand the “big picture” of each artist.

Some children wrote about other areas of their learning:

It is interesting for us to see which facts “stuck out” for the children. We also had the children reflect on the things that they will miss about our class.

We also asked what they WON’T miss:

We were sad to see that “messy art” and “so much writing” were in this set of reflections. Ah, the realities of teaching your passion…

Reading by Candle Light

O the delight of reading and marking a text! Each year I try to transfer this delight over to the students by establishing a range of annotative practices. I explore the many ways we might fused together words and markings, how we might give a visual record of the reading experience.

Our day to day world is filled with visual, textual, sound, and interactive ‘texts’. This multimodal discourse dominates student lives, and is also a part of the history of books and reading. In fact, we still have ‘visual’ books everywhere — from children’s books, graphic novels, to vibrant digital nodes. So, a question arises for me: Is there a way to weave together critical and creative annotative skills with the history of the book and ancient practices of reading? A further question also arises which the students may not ask, but one that I ask myself: Why do this at all? What is the purpose? We are all about words and deeds in our daily life, so why not in reading and writing? What happens when we see what we say?

Although the thought of teaching Shakespeare may seem daunting, I have found curious ways to enter into the text that adds a visual dimension to the task of reading. We read A Midsummer Night’s Dream using various literary strategies that foster creative and critical experiences. We annotate, discuss, write, listen. We are not seeking a perfect understanding of all of Shakespeare’s nuanced story-telling, but rather a level of authentic participation where students find ways to enter into the story. After we finish reading (using our loaned books), I photocopy the entire play and give a copy to each student. As a side note: one problem with reading in High School is that students don’t own their books. In the real world, real readers mark their texts in a variety of ways.

By second semester the students comfortably and confidently annotate texts. But, I want to keep the story going and not wax into a dull, mechanical practice. So, I give them an assignment that simply asks, ‘What if we made art out of our visual record of reading?’ You can imagine their first responses! I won’t go into all the details of the assignment, but here’s a glimpse.

To introduce the assignment, I show a wide range of texts: the works of Tom Phillips, some children’s books, artist books and contemporary novels. Each example delights in the dance between word and image. Then I ask them to make a visual reading of the play. As a first step, the whole class does the first page. Then we show and tell, discuss and wonder. No two pages are the same. The larger assignment asks them to choose one page from the play as a focus. Other aspects of the assignment ask them to create a gloss and commentary (yes, just like the ancient manuscripts I’ve shown them throughout the year). The work is always unique, engaging, nuanced, unchained. Here are a few examples:

Each visual work was unique. Some students drew; others wrote and pasted. All of the students were thinking how the text could be imagined (as we do when we read). Upon completion of the assignment, each student holds in their own hands, their ‘reading’ of the play. The word on the page hums and the work of the heart and mind fuse into unique physical book. Below, we see the word and the design in a new, yet old light.

These wonderful students working at their desks at home, bringing their work into class, showing their peers, step into first hand the joy of the book, the page, the word. Now, click on the image. We are still reading by candle light. O the delight!

–James Shivers

One Student’s Journal

On the first day of using their sketch journals this year, one 4-year-old student sketched a bird in a nest. When he told me about his picture, he stated, “This is going to be my bird journal.”

I didn’t really understand what he meant. However, each day that we had a writing time, he would pick a specific bird book off of the shelf and copy a picture of a bird from it into his journal. He would then ask which words on the page described that particular bird, and he would copy the words from the book onto his journal page. We became fascinated with his process. When he finished every single bird in the book, he asked for help in finding a new bird book and completed the same process.My co-teacher, Sylvia, then found a folder with copies of beautiful watercolors of birds. The boy went through the folder, piece by piece, drawing each bird.

After that had been exhausted, he started asking for pictures of specific birds. “I want to draw a kiwi today.” “I think I’ll sketch a white peacock, but it is going to be hard on the white paper.” “Today I will draw the daddy peacock.” For each of these specific requests, we pulled up a Google image on the class laptop for him to use. He learned how to tap the touchpad on the laptop to regain the image when the screen faded to black, and kept working. Over time, his illustrations became more and more detailed.

Other students in the class couldn’t help but notice this child’s process. Some student’s followed his lead and drew from books, while others copied his work:

Interestingly, his twin brother also wrote a “themed” journal. His was all about monsters! Every page that he created came from his imagination: baby monsters, swimming monsters, monsters with three heads, etc.

Now that our school year is coming to a close, I asked him why he decided that his journal should be all about birds. He simply stated, “Well, my brain told me to draw a bird in a nest on the first page, and that told me that this should be a bird journal.”

Higher Order Thinking

Remember Bloom’s Taxonomy of higher order thinking? Here’s an infographic reminder, just in case:

We are following our extensive study of Beatrix Potter with another woman of about the same time…Georgia O’Keeffe. As is our routine, the children looked at several of Ms. O’Keeffe’s paintings for a few days before noting their observations.

The initial comments that the children make tend to be very concrete (“I see a skull” and “I see lots of flowers”, etc.). When those have been exhausted, they begin to note other compositional elements such as the background (“The peaches are on a towel” and “The skull looks like it is on a napkin”). When those peripherals have all been identified, then the children look deeper, and it is exciting to note the higher order thinking that starts to happen. “Beatrix Potter used water colors, but I see Georgia O’Keeffe uses a different kind of paint.” “That painting (of a flower) reminds me of a red forest.” “The black middle of that big flower looks like a turtle.” “She paints very neat(ly), not like John Hoyland.” The children are making connections in ways that are new, all thanks to their immersion in the visual arts.

We also incorporate other elements of visual literacy in our artist study, such as a Venn diagram. This one asks, “Which Georgia O’Keeffe paintings do you like?” and the choices are “flowers”, “skulls”, or “NYC”:

Next, the children had an opportunity to “paint like Georgia”, as recounted in their “experience story”:

“Georgia O’Keeffe

We looked at Georgia’s paintings. We got clipboards and went outside. We found flowers that were growing, and we chose one to sketch. We studied the flowers. We noticed the colors, the shapes of the petals, and the middles. We drew the middle first, and then we drew the petals. Then we painted the flowers with watercolors. We wrote about our paintings.”

Instead of just titling their paintings, this time we asked the children to tell something further about their process, again reaching for some higher order thinking. Here are some examples:

Digging deeper by reflecting on a creative process, especially when accompanied by full immersion in the study of art or an artist, brings about the higher order thinking skills we all want our children to routinely use in our classrooms.

Revising the Task of Revision

I can still hear the collective groan from my third grade class when I first announced that we would be “revising” our writing. The task of going back and re-considering, re-thinking, and changing something we wrote is not always a pleasant idea, even for the best of writers, and for a bunch of elementary students it’s even harder. Kids this age are not used to slowing down (we don’t often get a chance to let them), and I’m sure I’m not the only teacher who has heard her share of the phrase, “I’m DONE!” after only five minutes of writing. They are all about moving on to what is next.

The last time I wrote I talked about the importance of sketch journals for students and teachers, as a place to collect ideas and about drafts the way a greenhouse is used for nurturing young plants. Revision can be seen as the moment to harvest what we’ve grown, and create a meal to share with our readers. After using our journals for a couple of months, there are enough entries from which to choose. Because each journal entry consists of a picture and writing, we became committed to honoring the picture in our revision process in my classroom. Going back and re-drawing something became the first and most important step in our revision process. There are many ways to revise a picture: 1. use a different art material; 2. take a different perspective; 3. change the setting; 4. zoom in; 5. zoom out; 6. add more details or characters. The kids came up with countless ways and were happy in this stage of the process.

What they didn’t realize as they re-made their pictures was that they were already beginning to revise their writing. All these changes led to re-thinking what they wrote. And it made it easier for me as the teacher to conference with them, pointing out that changing perspective might mean a change in voice; a different material might change the mood (one child decided that using pastels turned her picture into a “long ago fuzzy memory” and re-wrote it accordingly; and certainly more details meant more description. And the revision just happened, pain-free. I don’t know if it’s the fact that the pictures kept them engaged and committed to their work in a deeper way, or if the visual stories they made helped them to see what they needed to do – or a combination of both. Below you can see the explosion of writing that came from the child that drew the islands above: the original writing as compared to what he wrote after revising the picture:

Marc’s second writing: “I thought there was a shark under us because it was all bumpy because we were going so fast. We finally reached the island. We all got off the boat and set up our tents…we were able to see the sunset. It looked beautiful. The color in the sky filled my eyes.”

The collecting of little drawings and short spurts of writing which were filling our journals became clear when we chose a piece to revise. And instead of hearing, “I’m done,” I swear I started hearing the occasional, “Can I revise this?”

Into the Wood

Recently, the children of our class became enamored with a large, golden volume entitled Tales of Mischief and Mayhem. It was in this way that we came upon our next British artist, Beatrix Potter. Although her elegant watercolors can not be found at the Yale Center for British Art, her work has been wonderfully documented throughout her children’s books.
Both naturalist and artist, Ms. Potter was also a trailblazer, bucking the trends of Victorian England. Her parents moved her out of London, up to the lakes country, and let her explore the wilderness. Schooled by a governess, Beatrix was allowed to catch rabbits, frogs, and the like, and keep them in cages as pets. She spent a great deal of her time sketching, painting, and learning about the animals that would later become the inspiration for her books’ characters.

As a watercolorist, Ms. Potter would first sketch her animals in pencil, and then add the watercolors. Later, she would “pop out” her paintings by adding black outlines. Our students learned this process, and even created their own watercolors with my co-teacher, Sylvia, before sketching, painting and titling them.

Ms. Potter’s work has not only filled our bookshelves and walls….We found a darling poem by Ms. Potter that the children are working on memorizing as well as illustrating called “We have a Little Garden”. Two of the children met by happenstance at the public library, and made it their mission to find more books and bring them in to class. One of the children recounted this in her “Weekend News”:

In addition, many of the children painted gorgeous murals to help transform our dramatic play area into “Beatrix Potter Land”. It’s amazing to see how inspiring simple bunny ears can be:

Any classroom can become immersed in the study of an artist, allowing him/her to influence all areas of the curriculum.

Drawing Inspiration

Sometimes the authors of our class need a bit of encouragement to either begin or continue writing. The other day, I noticed that several of the children were drawing inspiration from sources that had never before been tapped. Nicolas came to me and said that he was “done” writing, but his journal page looked only half finished. I was in the midst of asking the class if they had any suggestions for Nicolas, when suddenly Hudson’s page jumped out at me. He had a circular design that he had been working on, similar to Nicolas’. However, Hudson’s was much more detailed and colorful. I suggested to Nicolas that he sit beside his friend and see how he might continue to add to his page. It was just the influence needed.

Some other children had brought stuffed animals to school that day, to take to the “vet”, Sienna, when they played in the dramatic play center. I noticed several had sneaked them over to the tables during journal time. Instead of being the distraction I feared, they also served as a positive catalyst to some children.

More frequently, we see books, paintings, and art cards being utilized by our students.

Seeking new ways to inspire journal entries keep our writing experiences fresh and interesting.