reading – A Closer Look

Seeing Perspective

Here’s a classroom activity using Reg Bulter’s Man (early 1960s) from the online collection.

Lesson: Explore the value of location, view-point, and narration.

Activity: class drawing, reading, and writing

Process: Use all three images from the online collection

Draw image (10 min) whole or detail. Respond in writing to the following questions (5 min). What is the mood? What is the story?

B1993.37.3

Draw second image (10 min) whole or detail. Respond in writing to the following questions (5 min): What is the mood from this perspective? What is the story?

Draw third image (10 min) whole or detail. Respond in writing to the following questions (5 min): What is the mood from this perspective? What is the story?

Reflection and follow up: If you had only seen one of these images what would you know in terms of mood and story?

In what ways might we use our classwork today towards understanding the effect of location, view-point, and mood when we read literature? When viewing works online? When reading a news story?

Example: Although I generated the lesson for the students and their needs, I too benefit from ‘seeing perspective’ and participating with them. Here’s a clip from my journal covering two of the steps.

seeing perspective example1

Place in the Classroom

The activity generated quite a bit of conversation in the classroom the following day. Students gained perspective on a range of skills and frameworks — from seeing perspective to the role of location in story telling.

–James Shivers

Cultivating the Desire to Write: Teacher and Students Journaling Together

Kindergartener journaling in Daron Cyr's class — Kindergartener journaling in Daron Cyr’s class

What if kids were exposed to writing in the same way a trailer exposes us to a movie that isn’t out yet? How do we create that feeling of anticipation, so that rather than force-feeding our lessons, we are quenching their thirst to communicate?

At the Brennan Rogers Magnet School in New Haven, Daron Cyr sits with her twenty-five kindergarteners on the rug, gazing up at a Smartboard image of Renoir’s painting The Umbrellas. Daron says, “Remember, we read a painting like we read a book.” She tells them to take a Think Minute: “Our eyes are on the painting. I want to know what you see, but also tell me the story that you see. Put your thumbs up when you’re ready.”

The children take turns sharing their thoughts about the painting. They focus on the weather, the characters, the details, what’s going to happen next. After a while Daron asks them to get their sketch journals. They make choices about where to sit, what art materials to use, and whether to copy the painting or make a picture of something the painting made them think of from their own lives. There is no scribbling, there are no blank pages, and the noise in the room is from the kids talking about their pictures, sharing and building vocabulary: pre-writing at its best. I record their quiet chatter in my own journal: “These are the ladders on the playground, and this is where the water goes down the slide.” “It was raining and I saw a rainbow.” “She’s wearing her party dress.” At the end, they share their work by having a Gallery Walk.

If you’ve tried this kind of lesson – especially with a challenging class of 25 four- and five-year olds – you may know how easily it can fall apart (I certainly do). Afterwards, my burning question for Daron was, “How did you introduce their journals to them?” She picked up her own journal, saying, “I started by sharing mine.” Before giving her students their own, Daron spent weeks enthusiastically showing her kids pages of drawings and writing from her own journal. She also uses her journal in class, to scribe what her students say to her, often reading their words back to them. By the time Daron gave them their own journals, “they were so excited. They knew how important they were.”

"Capturing the every day" from Daron's journal — “Capturing the every day” from Daron’s journal

"Playground" from a kindergartener's journal — “Playground” from a kindergartener’s journal

By sharing her journal with her students, Daron is teaching the most important message to children about writing: that their thinking can be captured, recorded, and shared. This is giving her tiny students the most important ingredient for writing: the desire and anticipation to be a part of the writing world.

Do you have experiences with a sketch journal to share? Please post in comments!

But I Hate Reading & Writing

After many years in education, it has finally occurred to me that I really need to market the idea of reading and writing to my remedial reading 
students. Reading and writing has always been difficult for them and at the ripe old age of 9, they don't choose either as  free time activities.

Despite my encouragement of, “practice will make you better” or my pleas:“you’d never say this to your football (basketball/soccer/dance etc) coach," reading and writing remain on the NOT TO DO list for these children.

So, I decided that I would bring sketch books back to the reading room this year. My goal: Let the kids discover for themselves that they ARE creative and DO have great powers of observation and ideas. For the first 15 minutes of each reading class, the students sketch, write and share ideas.

Guess what??? They LIKE it! They are beginning to buy into the idea that they are smart…just in a different way from some of their peers.

Very quickly, after the first 3 sessions, I had students requesting sketching/writing time. In the beginning, I collected images from the YCBA collection, book illustrations, and online images from various art museums. I am storing them in what is becoming a rather large power point. Each slide is an image with several writing invitations.

Van Gogh: Shoes 1888

Students sketch and write for equal amounts of time.

JWMTurner; The Morning After Deluge 1843

Two important observations over the past month:

1) Kids get right to the writing. Not one student (grade 3-5) has uttered the dreaded words, “I don’t know what to write.” Or better yet, “How many sentences does this have to be?”

2) The kids are starting to notice that their writing is getting longer and more detailed. There is pride in their voices when they share. They are excited with the language they are using and making links to literature. They are applying figurative language and making inferences (and actually know what both of those terms mean now!)

Teacher note:

This takes very little planning. Just give students time and opportunity and they will amaze you and, more importantly, amaze themselves.

I sketch and write with my students to model and practice what I preach.

Contributors

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 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.

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, 21^st 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 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 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.

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