visual literacy – A Closer Look

When Adults Engage in Learning, by Darcy Hicks

20161014_100239 — Mrs. Romanello sketching and writing with her students

20161202_111536 — Ms. Williams drawing in her journal with her class

Ms. Mahieu with her class at the Yale British Art Center

This year, the teachers at the Read School in Bridgeport actively engaged in the the Visual Literacy partnership with the Yale Center for British Art. As teachers, we all know how hard it is to let go of the management role…and sometimes it is simply not possible, especially if the students require oversight and assistance. However, whenever possible, the teachers at Read participates in the process of discussing, drawing, and writing with their students. The effect has been powerful: the students take themselves and their creative work much more seriously, and are eager to work alongside their teachers. As a result, less oversight is needed and the role of task-manager becomes a background job in many instances, which is a welcome relief for teachers especially.

In the Fall, when sketch journals were introduced to the students, the teachers began using theirs also. I find that adults are much more nervous about sharing their drawings and writing than the kids, so it sometimes takes courage for the teachers to share their journal entries with their students. But the message the teachers send when they do this is that challenging ourselves, taking risks, and improving our skills is a lifelong journey.

20161206_111904 — Ms. Scali’s journal entries

Ms. Scali, a fourth grade teacher who came to the Summer Teacher Institute at YCBA last year (http://britishart.yale.edu/education/k-12-and-teachers), shared her journal pages with her students, explaining that there are times when she is proud of her drawings and other times when she is not as happy with how they turned out. But she said, “I never tear out my pages because I always learn from all my work, no matter what.” As a result her kids use their own sketchbooks with pride and care.

When the time came to visit the Yale Center for British Art, the parent chaperones were given their own journals, and asked to participate along with the students. During those trips, one of the biggest impacts was the strengthening of their community of artists/writers/thinkers, and the inclusion of more adults into their creative world.

20161213_123925 — Parent chaperones drawing with their kids’ class at the Yale British Art Center

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At the Read School, parents and students and teachers alike work alongside each other, sketching, writing, and sharing their thoughts. This gives them the powerful understanding that there are many ways to see the same thing. Working together across generations, combats rigid thinking, exercises empathy, and generally opens our eyes to one another. And we all need more of that.

The Music Doorway: Listening for Ourselves, by Darcy Hicks

The Great Gate of Kiev by Kandinsky on the whiteboard, Mussorgsky playing in the background

I have been using my Doorways approach with the third and fourth graders at the Read School in Bridgeport – specifically, taking in the world through our senses, and deciding what to do with that experience. This is a useful piece to the Visual Literacy experience, which already relies on the visual sense as the way to process the world around us and work towards literacy.

I begin this Sound Doorway lesson by telling the kids about the Great Gates of Kiev. The story is that back in the 1800’s, the city of Kiev, Russia had an exhibition of architectural renderings which were design ideas for their city gate. The composer Mussorgsky went to the exhibit and was so inspired by what he saw that he composed a suite of ten pieces called Pictures at an Exhibition. A short time later Kandinsky heard this suite at a concert, and was moved to go to his studio and paint what he’d just heard: a canvas full of vibrant colors and strong shapes, entitled The Great Gates of Kiev.

We listened to Mussorgsky’s suite as we looked at Kandinsky’s painting, and talked about what sounds translated to what parts of the painting: “The big clank is when he made that yellow sun!” “When they repeat that sound over and over he made a pattern in his picture.”

Then, keeping the music on, I handed out colored paper and glue sticks. I encouraged them to really listen to the sounds and translate them into color and shape.

They loved it. And what was thrilling was listening to their explanations of how the music directly affected their decisions:

Once they had spent a good 30 minutes on their collages, I put up some Writing Invitations and asked them to put their work into words.

Write a poem (not rhyming). Describe the sounds and colors and shapes
Describe what you would hear if you could step inside your collage. What would you feel?
Write words to the music you heard. Look at your collage for ideas.
Your choice!

In addition to exercising their listening skills (in a really new way), and getting them to stretch their ability to translate one sense into another, they then showed me that they could put this into sensory language.

“I feel when I look in my collage I can feel relaxed, also calm. I hear high pitch and low pitch music and beats and the smooth beat passing along the instrument and to each kid, and the sound is going to the people here and they feel like a smooth beat and they’re relaxed and calm.”

I was especially drawn to this one, where a student labeled each shape with a reason for his decision:

The red wavy shape on the left says, “Red trumpet hitting the concrete floor with extended sound,” and the yellow triangle says, “Lightning filling the sky with yellow light strong enough to outshine the stars.” I was struck by the abstract thinking, and the ability to translate sound to visual art to words. It is surprisingly mature, and yet it was not unusual in these five classes of 8- and 9- year-olds. Music is truly powerful, and an entryway we all too often forget to use!

YCBA Gallery Visit with 3rd and 4th Graders, by Darcy Hicks

Five teachers from the Read School in Bridgeport, CT brought their students to the Yale Center for British Art last week, as part of their Visual Literacy partnership. They were divided into groups and headed off into the galleries with their parent chaperones and their group leaders (either a docent, their teacher or myself). Each group visited two paintings, and discussed what they saw in the paintings as well as what they thought might be happening.

The children were equipped with pencils and their sketch journals, which they have been using in the classroom for drawing and writing as they engage in Visual Literacy. They drew what they saw in the paintings into their sketch journals. Drawing the paintings forces them to observe carefully and they see things they would have missed. As Donald Graves said, “We see with our hands.”

There are a number of things that happen when children talk about paintings. First, as they tell what they see, they share and build vocabulary at a rate I never see in other conditions. One child says “The horse has a seat on his back,” and another says, “It’s a saddle.” I kept notes as they shared new words, but could barely keep up!

The other thing that always surprises me is the easy connections they make to these paintings, which at first glance seem so distant from their lives today. Looking at these scenes allows the children to share their own previous knowledge and life experiences with each other. One little girl said, “I think it’s morning because the sun is shining some pink, and that’s what I see in the morning.” When describing a dog in a hunting scene, a little boy said, “I think he’s trembling because he is about to enter the woods and woods are dark.” Note the vocabulary: words like “trembling” catch the attention of us teachers, who are often surprised that they know these words.

For the last half-hour of our visit, the children met in the Library Court and wrote in their journals about what they saw. They were given choices for writing. Some told a story about a painting, others described it. Some also chose to write from the perspective of one of the people or animals in the paintings. A few wrote poems.

"The sky is blue and the sun is out. It is a sunny day. I'm feeding my horse Pumpkin. But then I began to sweat. It's humid outside. I see the clouds reflecting in the sparkly lake." — “The sky is blue and the sun is out. It is a sunny day. I’m feeding my horse Pumpkin. But then I began to sweat. It’s humid outside. I see the clouds reflecting in the sparkly lake.”

The kids are learning to live in the paintings, and write from there.

"It looks like the horse is trying to turn away because the lion is trying to kill the horse. And the lion is biting his neck and that makes the horse not to breath. And his mouth is open trying to breath. And if I was in that painting I would hear the loud roar and last but not least I would hear him running!" — “It looks like the horse is trying to turn away because the lion is trying to kill the horse. And the lion is biting his neck and that makes the horse not to breath. And his mouth is open trying to breath. And if I was in that painting I would hear the loud roar and last but not least I would hear him running!”

These journal entries are seeds for all sorts of writing: personal narratives, poems, stories, informative essays, expository pieces, etc. The paintings are the bridge to their authentic topics and voices.

Establishing a Pattern of Making Meaning in the Classroom

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

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.

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

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Drawing and Writing

Practicing visual literacy skills throughout the year opens opportunities to explore new combinations of reading and writing. In this exercise I wanted to explore creative writing using a film, a painting, and drawing. As a whole class we had recently watched a film. I spent some time looking through the online collections at YCBA and I chose this image due to the film’s content concerning the inner workings of a court life. The first part of the exercise was to draw the whole picture in their journals.

ba-obj-877-0004-pub-large — The North Prospect of Hampton Court, Herefordshire by Leonard Knyff, 1650-1721, Dutch, active in Britain (by 1681)

The following day we used the painting as the setting for a scene between characters in A Midsummer’s Night Dream and the film we watched. They had to pick at least one character from each story. Inside the painting they had to choose a place for their scene to take place and draw a mini-scene.

The story was opened ended, but had to be accurate to the characters in the stories. Each student chose their own characters, imagined what characters from two different stories would say to each other, and then chose the best visual location for the story to take place.

The creative writing prompt gave them very specific tasks. Each student had to draw the whole, but then within that whole had to choose a specific location that would be meaningful for their story. The writing had to construct a story with characters from two different stories (and mediums) and place these characters (in character) into a third space. Within these requirements the students were free to imagine and explore. Although some students chose similar characters, no one story was the same.

–James Shivers

Using the Online Collections — Part Two

Students are accustomed to searching for materials online. Often the search comes from the browser they use. Using a curated collection like the one at YCBA is a different matter. All the materials exist, have been researched, catalogued, placed in the community for viewing and dialogue. I regularly search the collections and encourage my students to do the same. I have even designed lessons around the searching through the collections.

When we were reading Speak, I wanted a tree the class could draw. I found James Ward’s (1769-1859) ‘Mr. Howard’s Large Oak, August 5, 1820′ to be perfect for the assignment. As this was our last unit of the year, I was able to ask the students to draw in a different way. I asked them to draw the image of the tree as they felt at the beginning of the year. In other words, I asked them not to just copy the tree, but to use the tree as a starting point for a visual interpretation of their own experience. Their images were very personal and full of surprises. One student drew the tree with very little leaves. The only leaves he had, he wrote ‘a new hope’ for this year. The students were able to look back at themselves at the beginning of their High School experience and reflect using their visual literacy skills. The assignment also stretched their sense of drawing. Instead of drawing as ‘copying’ drawing was a way of seeing. They were free to modify, add, enhance, alter the image in order to communicate a particular experience.

As a general rule, I do the assignments with the students. I decided to draw the tree, but to fill the limbs from some comments written in my journal from quarter one.

Since I do the assignments with the students and tell them if they want to see my work they can. Occasionally, I will show them what I’ve done. But, I am careful here. I do not want them to fall into the mimetic role: only do what the teacher does, then copy it slavishly, and then you are finished. More important that seeing my work is seeing me work along side them instead of answer emails, grading, working on something for another class. Obviously, at times, I need to work the room and take care of paperwork. However, I don’t ask the students to do something I haven’t done myself.

–James Shivers

Visual Summaries

Reading Shakespeare is a challenge. Yet, with an annotated text, students find their way. Along with the normal strategies of reading an old text, in an unusual language, I have also explored using visual literacy skills to enhance meaning and explore the progression of the story.

Drawing and working with visual mediums as a regular practice affords many opportunities to work on critical and creative skills in order to develop insight, awareness, understanding, and enhance articulation.

For this exercise, I asked students to make a visual design of the particular act. A design that communicates both the meanings of the play, but also their interpretations and understandings of the play’s story.

I encourage students to pay attention to the page design, to incorporate place, subjects, people, even conversation that seems significant. I also suggested that they create a visuals that will tell the story but also remind them of their reading experience. The page becomes a canvas of visual knowledge, open to any arrangement that is meaningful to them. The journal without lines gives us this freedom. A freedom they completely explore. The page in the journal becomes a composition and like all the images we view, discuss and draw, a visual medium awaiting discovery and dialogue.

–James Shivers

The Visual Word

Having established a journal practice in class, I found multiple ways of using it for day to day assignments. One advantage of the journal is archival. Students begin with their work at the beginning of the year and keep adding to the pages as the year progresses. They can look back, refer to their previous work, re-read and use as a source. Students have a record of their ongoing learning, an archive.

The assignment here was to place image work along side their word-work. I don’t do this with every set of vocabulary words. As a visual literacy strategy, the word and the understanding spill into the experience of learning. Later, the student can look back and ‘see’ what they know. As is the case with drawing and designing, they often feel the urge to re-vise both. I ask the students for context, part of speech, definition, an example, and a visual.

Students learn words live in contexts with a narrative. Students create a unique iconography and links outside the text. The word then has a visual component along side a link outside the reading. Since the goal is practice and exploration, I can look at their work as a process of knowing and be flexible in my assessments. As their language use expands from ongoing practice in various modalities, students find more nuanced ways of communication. As their journal becomes an archive they see a residue of their growth or even see places where change is necessary. They continue to learn on their own.

–James Shivers

Seeing Perspective – Part Two

Perspective is an essential narrative feature. Each page of a book, each scene with a character provides another way of seeing the story. In many texts, the narrative has recursive features of time and knowing. We see the story different when we have finished and look back. We see the story different when we are given another vantage point. We see the story from our perspective as we read.

Each perspective generates a narrative of seeing, feeling, and knowing. If this is the case, then the exercise of drawing a sculpted figure from different vantage points should generate unique insights (follow the link to see what the students drew). As with reading a narrative, we see what we are given and what we look for. So, I asked students to draw the image first and then describe the mood. The act of description calls forth their own knowledge and experience: How is this person standing? When I stand this way how do I feel? How have I seen this stance before? What does this stance communicate?

“[L]ost, lonely, depressed. It seems as if this man is outside and is alone and thinking to himself. He is in a situation (stuck) but doesn’t go for help. He is desiring something without reaching out”.

“Nonchalant. He is on his phone but it’s cold out so he has one hand in his pocket and is wearing a sweater and pants. He must have heard something so his head is turned in a casual way. He is not in any rush. Maybe he is waiting for a bus”.

“Confused, Pondering. Maybe he’s thinking. I watch this man, he’s thinking or looking for someone. He’s looking for me. He doesn’t know I’m right behind him”.

Each student brings their world to bear on their expression and interpretation. Students can discuss what they see and why with each other. Students can also look at the progression of their work. What did they think at first? How do the three perspectives construct a whole? Some students wonder why I would show the “same” object three times, suggesting nothing is different. This leads to further conversation and closer looking. What would we know if we only had one of these vantage points? A question like this brings the sense of perspective to the forefront.

But why do this exercise in an English class? Simply, it’s a story of reading. As we go through a book, we are building a sense of the story. The longer we read, the more we ‘see’, and soon, we are living with a story with various narrative strands linked. Each link has value. Some students will see this quickly. Others, will need more time. If we choose not to ignore this multiplicity, we allow change and growth to occur. Allowing room for the process of knowing and practicing this skill makes the classroom a rich environment of dialogue and discovery.

–James Shivers

Growing the Abstract – Part Two

If we think of abstraction as a practice, we open a way for students to build meaning with themselves in mind, negotiating moment by moment their inner and outer worlds. In an ongoing space of practice, they access and utitlize their own experience of story, viewing, memory and imagination. Their work then becomes a fusion of the old with the new embedded with creative and critical acts of knowing.

“The statue represents the balance between order and protection.”

“As I lay thinking I wonder how to get to the top. There are so many obstacles. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to do it. Once I get to the top should I…what should I do? Life is an obstacle that is hard to get past.”

“Life itself is very boring, but with a little twist and a little bit of personality, life can be something that is spectacular.”

Each student response was unique. The next day we had open sharing. Students read their work to the whole class or conversed one to one. Orderly chaos ensued: words and worlds, stillness and laughter filled the room. As we debriefed on the exercise, discussing why we did the assignment and how we felt, everyone realized that ‘growing’ the abstract opens the door for a seeing and making of the “spectacular”.

The full period was nearly over and we began collecting our bags and journals. Just before the bell rang– in that one quiet moment before we ended, one student asked with some interest, ‘What are we doing next?’

–James Shivers

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