READING ART TO TEACH READING

“What is the use of a book” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversation?”

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

READ THE PICTURE….

WHY STUDY ART AT ALL?

"Whatever our age, we all have different ways of telling a story, different lenses through which we see the world, and different experiences and characters in our lives. The pictures can act as the spur that opens the door to our creativity.”

(Art Peterson)

“Education can learn from the arts that the limits of language are not the limits of cognition. We know more than we can tell.”

(Janet Evans)

WHY STUDY VISUAL LITERACY?

From the lightening-fast pace of television programming to the barrage of interactive images on the Internet and in new video games, there’s no doubt that today’s children are growing up in a world saturated by multiple forms of media. Considering the shift toward more visual texts, it is unfortunate that the classroom literacy curriculum, as well as standardized testing, remains overly concerned with the printed text. This issue is particularly true for younger children in the primary grades.

(T. Lee Williams)

AND BECAUSE…

…so much of what primary students think of as literacy comprehension is really just describing. Who is the main character? What is the setting? Who are the characters on the book cover? Too often, parents, teachers, administrators, and testing officials may be only interested in defining reading at this age to mean retrieving surface-level information strictly from printed text.

(T. Lee Williams)

WHY I WANT TO STUDY VISUAL LITERACY…

One student had difficulty reading the picture for tricky words – even after prompting to get her to look, she was stuck. We asked her where she’d look in the picture and she couldn’t tell us.

Another student, when asked the same thing, merely spread his hand over the whole page and said, “here.”

In a non-fiction book, the students did not know where to look to define unknown words (they could read the words, but not understand what they meant)

I began thinking how I could re-teach this skill

WHAT WE SEE… (NOTICINGS, THINK ALOUD)

SORTING WHAT WE SEE…

What do you see? What do you infer?

What questions does that make you

want to ask the painter?

CREATING FROM WHAT WE SEE…

SOME BENEFITS FROM STUDYING VISUAL LITERACY… The quality of discussion during guided reading can

improve.

Students give more attention to the visuals included in both fiction and nonfiction books, some even question the connection between the subject and the image.

Activities such as this can help move students beyond basic description to developing their critical thinking skills.

Students learn that there are multiple viewpoints for a single image and begin to sort through those ideas to find one that fits with the context (whether that is their schema, the text in a book, or the relationship to other images).

LINKED STRATEGIES IN VISUAL AND LANGUAGE LITERACIES

(FIGURE 2 FROM PIRO)

Engage the reader

Enter the story

Explore the story

Evaluate the story

Sound, letter, and word development;

word identification;

employment of decoding skills;

whole-to-part phonics; use of

graphic organizer

Use of read-aloud, development

of verbal fluency, use of

story map, acquisition of a

sense of story and text, sound/spelling

relationships

Increase comprehension skills,

develop inferential strategies,

develop skills of summarization,

improve storytelling skills

Understand multiple uses of

writing, develop advanced

vocabulary, practice in independent

writing, improve

reading fluency

Inventory the work; list objects in

painting; write basic description

of the painting; analyze compositional

features using elements

of art (e.g., line, color, shape)

Read-aloud of painting descriptions;

use of principles of design

(e.g., harmony, tension, proportion,

rhythm, balance); examine

dominant visual objects

Examine how artist “stages” the

painting; describe action; probe

hidden messages by examining

use of allegory and symbols

Interpret the work; make judgments

about meaning; give

opinion on the quality of art;

determine if work should be

considered a masterpiece

Reader-Response Theory Language Strategy Visual Strategy

HOW COULD YOU APPLY THIS IN YOU CLASS?WHAT RESULTS MIGHT YOU EXPECT TO HAVE IN YOUR CLASS?

THE GIANT N. C. WYETH

BEFORE YOU THINK IT’S JUST FOR PRIMARY KIDDOS…

“While this study (How Illustrations and Graphics Enhance Meaning) is such an important study for the youngest writers who need illustrations to carry lots of meaning in their writing, I’d like to suggest that this is an interesting study even for middle and high school students. In the world where these students will grow to be competent writers, composition isn’t just about written text anymore. Composition includes possibilities for how a writer might make meaning using graphics, font, layout, audio, video, photography, and so on. The possibilities are endless, and composition to support work in many adult professions will require that writers understand them.”

(Katie Wood Ray)

SOURCESEvans, Janet. “Creative and aesthetic responses to picture

books and fine art.” Education 37.2 (2009), 177-190

Peterson, Art. “Spotlight on Think It Ink It: They Supply the Pictures, Kids Supply the Story.” NWP.org (2010)

Piro, Joseph M. “ The picture of reading: Deriving meaning in literacy through image.” The Reading Teacher 56.2 (2002) 126-134

Ray, Katie Wood. “Study Driven.” Pourtsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2006.

Williams, T. Lee. “’Reading’ the painting: Exploring visual literacy in the primary grades.” The Reading Teacher 60.7 (2007) 636-642