Why Making Pictures Should Be Part of the Writing Process

 

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When a teacher makes the decision to bring art materials into the classroom and actually devote precious writing time to making art, that teacher is showing two things: 1. courage, and 2. a clear understanding of what makes a good writer. Susan Sontag said, “A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.” We ask children to use “visual imagery” in their writing on a daily basis. We tell them to “paint a picture with words.” The one thing we often forget, however, is how abstract words are for children, and how little experience they actually have with writing them down.

Words are a second language to all of us, if you consider the pictures in our minds to be our first language. When I ask you to remember your favorite childhood toys, do you picture the words “slinky” and “Legos?” More likely, you picture a silver coil climbing down the steps, and multi-colored blocks snapping together. As adults, we barely notice the steps we take to describe the pictures in our heads with words. But for children, the task of translating what they are thinking about into words is a challenge. Add to that the added task of forming the letters and sounding out the spelling, and you are asking for a lot of invisible steps to be taken.

Allowing time for making pictures in the writing classroom gives students – and teachers – the opportunity to see what they want to write. This provides opportunities for building vocabulary (“What do you call that color?” “What time of day is this taking place?” “Will you write about that moon?”). It also invests the students in their work, so that they desire success. It’s not always easy to get a student to describe what she wants to write, but ask her to describe her drawing and it is a different story. The time a teacher invests in allowing students to draw (before – not after – writing with words) is more than made up for when the students’ words flow more easily and confidently. Drawing loosens up the inhibitions, opens the lines of communication, and gives the student a voice.

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 “In my  picture I see a yellow spider resting on a cool leaf. The leaf touches the moonlight and the stars. The wind dancing with the sky suddenly dies down into a cool winter breeze. Good night sleeping yellow spider.”

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Columns

Seeing Cores

by James Shivers

Summary/Goals

Views. Perspectives. Students. Teachers. Lessons. Classroom space, digital space, spaces to explore.  The purpose of Seeing Cores is to provide practical, reflective resources for the 6-12 teacher.  These practices are attempts from and in a current classroom.  Seeing Cores is a space that seeks vibrant, challenging and engaging ways of bringing the Common Core into the classroom.

Outline & Direction of Posts

  • Explore the new content demands of fiction, non-fiction, and media can be facilitated by working directly with the visual arts
  • Provide ongoing snapshots into the day-to-day workings of visually integrated classroom
  • Discuss practical issues that arise –from supplies to technology—when embracing multimodal discourse
  • Discuss the pilot program framework and results of Expanding Literacies, Exploring Expression

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.

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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.