As I read chapter 5 of You Gotta BE the Book, and the two supplementary articles, I couldn’t help but keep thinking, “reading is an active process.” When reading, students need to be able to visualize what is going on and connect to the reading. It was so interesting about how incorporating graphic novels and art into the classroom can affect student learning. When they interact with visual protocols, SRIs, and drawing, students will be able to connect with literature on a level they may not have before. Tommy, Walter, and Kae all were so fascinating to read about. I liked their experiences of learning to connect with the different stories in the classroom.
Letting students draw in class to become more engaged is a great idea because they can do it without worrying about being wrong. “It was emphasized that there was no right or wrong way to depict ideas.” If the student was getting something out of the visual art and learning from his ideas, then learning is happening and there is no way to be wrong. They will also draw from prior knowledge and connect it to real life. Wilhelm said, “Since art requires drawing on personal experience of the world, it reinforces how prior experience is the raw material we bring to a transaction of text to create a literary experience with it, and encourages students to connect what they read back to their own life.” Learning in the classroom will be even greater if it is connected to a student’s life. This was seen well with Kae. She related many classroom activities to her home in Laos. Because Kae could make that connection, she grew as a reader. Students, like Walter and Tommy, who loved to draw also liked being able to draw in class because they said they usually got in trouble for drawing in school. It let them express their ideas and become involved in a way that they hadn’t even wanted to before. They would speak up and share their work with the rest of the class and students would listen to them and make them feel like they belonged there. I want to run my classroom in this way because I have always felt that students should be able to express themselves through any way possible. Students can draw interpretations of texts or how it might end. And students that do not have as much artistic ability, such as myself, would be able to use cutouts of pictures or take pictures to convey ideas. Students will also feel better about their work in class because they will not feel the stress of being graded by tests and understanding of what’s “right or wrong” but by the meaning they get out of the literature.
I liked reading the “Conventions of Comics” because I have never really read a comic book before. I never thought in depth about how a comic has so many “rules” about how it is made and how to understand it. I never realized there were so many important aspects that were included in comics. When reading American Born Chinese, I watched for these conventions and was amazed at all the details that go into graphic narratives. I can see how they relate to literature with words though, just like in the article of using graphic novels in high school. Having students use graphic novels and pictures can help them become better writers because they can relate those pictures into words. I have always been a good reader but never read comic books, so this article gave me insight to how graphic novels can be used I the classroom. I liked that the teachers in the article used scaffolding instruction with graphic novels to get writing prompts for the students. I feel like the students learned so much more with this technique and with the mini-lessons included (using dialogue, conveying multiple ideas), the students became much better writers. Because these students were in the process of learning English better, the pictures in the novels and being able to use the ideas of pictures helped their writing of English.
The classrooms should be focused around what the students’ need. If they need the visual protocols and SRIs to become engaged, they should be given the opportunity to use them. If students need to draw what they are thinking about, they should be able to draw as many pictures as they need. Tommy and Walter would draw either one picture, a series of pictures, and one even drew, what started to become, a mural. Kae would draw all of the main ideas so that she could connect what was important and what the author was trying to convey. Graphic novels are important for students to use when they may not be able to picture, on their own, what is going on in the story. From there, they can learn how the pictures would look in a novel that didn’t have pictures given. Each individual student’s needs should be accommodated by the teacher so that they can learn to read in meaningful ways.
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ReplyDeleteI also learned how important visualization is for students in helping to connect to a reading. After our class discussions, I realized that if a reader does not have this visualization, then the other parts of the story never really come together for the student and they can’t comprehend. I really want to be able to help give my students the tools necessary to achieve that strong visualization of a story.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your points when talking about incorporating drawing in the classroom. I also feel like this is a great way to incorporate visualization for students and it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be the most artistic person. I never liked drawing in school or having to do tasks that related to that, but by allowing students to use cutouts from magazines or their own photos, it gives them more of a choice which will help to make them not as reluctant towards these certain tasks. I think that the idea of using tools such as these for assessments is a great thought! Students would definitely not feel as pressured and they would not feel like they had to necessarily get the so called “right” answer. It teaches them that not everything in life has one solid answer and that differences in opinions are good! Ultimately, you’re teaching them a real-life lesson in the process.
I felt that I learned so much more about comics and graphic novels from the article as well. Before reading that, I never really thought about how I knew about a character’s mood from speech bubbles or from their gestural movements. It was something I just did! Now that I read about why we do that as readers and what each convention of comic means, I found it so much more interesting. My thoughts of graphic novels being easy reads with no meaning behind them definitely changed! It in fact takes quite a skilled reader to be able to dissect these types of novels to get the true meaning behind it all, just as much skill as the classics require!!
Lastly, I do agree with you as well on the fact that as a teacher you must be willing to work to the students needs and allow them to use whatever learning strategies best suit them. The one thing I think about though is how might I make a lesson just as motivating, enthusiastic, and effective and teach it in a style different from the ways that I am used to learning and know? For example, how do I help make a lesson more auditory for those types of learners, etc. if that’s not the style I’m used to? I feel like I may be able to come up with some great ways of teaching using the ways I like to learn, but I hope that I can learn useful ways to help teach in different styles so that all students can learn in their best way and benefit.
Exactly! The classroom should focus around the students' needs. There are so many different types of learners and I believe that a teacher must try different techniques in order to achieve the best success. There is a reason that there are pictures in graphic novels. Like you had said, the picture has more meaning to it. It is worth a thousands words. Sometimes a person cannot explain in words how they are feeling, but in a drawing or picture they can.
ReplyDeleteI have learned more about graphic novels than I ever knew before. It is great to experience new things and this is why I believe teachers should be able to teach multiple types of literature to their classes.
I agree with everything that you are saying. The only thing I have a difficulty trying to get is "the needs of the students". I think it will be very difficult to try and meet all the needs of all the students. What if some students are like us and like to read novels? Do you think we need to read both? I remember reading the graphic novel that we were assigned last week and having a hard time focusing and trying to read the graphic novel, after all, I am not trained to pay attention to pictures. What if we have students that find that graphic novels are hard to read because they are use to focusing on words? I think we just need to balance them out in order to make everyone happy. I think that is the problem with curriculums. They focus on trying to address the needs of students when the needs of each student is different. I agree when you mention that students need to be able to feel something when they read, that is what makes it enjoyable. Students need to find what works for them and it is our job to help them. I wish I would have read the article that Dr. Mortimore posted for us to read before I read the graphic novel because it would have been very beneficial. I literally read the words on the page and even skipped over pages where there were no words. I fI would have known how much goes in to a graphic novel then I think I would have been able to appreciate it more. Do you think graphic novels are going to replace graphic novels as a whole? I think graphics are so important to students and speak just as loud as words. After all, words can only do so much where pictures can fill in those details that are missing or maybe even confusing.
ReplyDeleteI agree when you say that the classroom should be focused on the student's needs. I think teachers are too focused on keeping all their students on the same page, but in all reality this is not what a typical middle level class will be like. It is important to have other options for the struggling students. While observing the other day, the students were doing a unit project and I was asking about all the different options for these projects. The teacher was saying a few years ago they only had one option and some students would just completely struggle. When she added these different options, she was floored by how much better the students were doing because they were way more into it. I thought this completely addressed all the students needs in the class.
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