How To Teach Students To Painting?

By Author: Adela Smith
Total Articles: 74
Comment this article

While creating collages provides an effective avenue for teaching students to paraphrase by using visual images, it can still be a challenge to some student: So what other forms can visualizing take? Anyon wandering into our classrooms might find student sketching out their preliminary ideas or sweeping broad strokes of color onto white canvasses. In fact outsiders might mistake our English class for an art class as students work to create symbolic representations of novels in the form of 11" x 14" paintings. For some, this task provides an avenue to explore their ideas and interpretations in a creative way or allow them to showcase their artistic talents in a forum that usually focuses on written language. For others, just getting started is a struggle because the novel's meaning and messages continue to elude them. Take Jake, for example. A sophomore, Jake simply did not sec himself as a successful student. He struggled to keep up with reading expectations and rarely completed a writing Tag Heuer Carrera Replica assignment. When asked to visualize ...
... what he read, his first reaction was to throw up his hands in defeat. He simply did not know how to complete this task. Yet, he wanted to. All around him, he watched] his classmates laughing as they set to work, stopping from time to time to ask their peers to read their pictures or to share their visions with us. This, he recognized, was not the typical English assignment, and he wanted to experience it just like everyone else.

To begin the assignment, we asked the class to free write on a series of guiding questions: When you think of your book, what is the overall feeling you walk away with? Which scenes in the book are attributed to this feeling? What is the overall theme or message of the book? We talked about symbolism and how to use concrete symbols to represent the abstract ideas presented in the books. The students spent an entire class period writing and sketching their ideas. When Jake left the classroom that day, his page was blank. Although he had completed his book, / Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan, he could not see how our class discussions could apply to this < teen suspense novel. His understanding of the book was superficial. He could recite the basics of the plot but could not move his comprehension to a deeper thinking level. Thus began a series of conversations between us.

We started with what Jake did know. The book, he explained, was about four teens who had been involved in an accident the previous summer, which resulted in the death of a young boy. Months later, each of the teens was reminded of this crime as an unknown figure stalked them, sending them alarming messages. We talked about the setting of the book, pointing out that while the bulk of the book takes place during the time of the stalking, the past has a significant impact on its events. We talked about how the characters felt about what they had done, as well as about what was happening to them. We talked about the significant objects in the book that helped relay the tone and message in the book. And then we gave Jake time to think, to imagine how these elements could all come together in a single visual image. While a cohesive picture did not emerge all at once, Jake had progressed at each check. The first image he settled on became the centerpiece of his entire painting (see Figure 3). On a sheet of paper, he had sketched a large rectangle across the top third of the page. This, he explained, was a rearview mirror. It represented the actual accident because it had been a hit-and-run, but he chose the mirror rather than another part of the car because the characters were being forced to look back on what they had done. Already, Jake was demonstrating that he had moved to a deeper understanding of the book.

His face lit up when praised about his progress, and he eagerly turned back to his sketch when presented with more questions to consider. We repeated this process as Jake worked on his confidence as a reader. By the time he had completed his painting, he had obviously made great progress Tag Heuer Replica in his visualization skills, resulting in a deeper understanding of the book itself. The rearview mirror reflected details like a noose, signaling the threats of the stalker, next to a set of child's clothing hanging on a clothesline. From the mirror hung the traditional evergreen air freshener, but this one was covered in blood, symbolizing how sour everything had gone, Jake explained. Through the process, Jake had learned to use the details from the book, as well as his own detailed interpretations, leaving him with a much stronger understanding of what he had read than he had possessed before.