Our students live in a world saturated with images. The modern era of television, film, commercials, YouTube, Instagram, and infographics have made it necessary to make visual literacy and visual rhetoric and integral part of our ELA classrooms. And why not? The skills needed to analyze a political cartoon or artwork translate very well language analysis. An artist creates mood with color; a writer creates mood with adjectives. Is there a single figure in the frame? Is there a single idea being expressed in the text? Connecting these skill sets not only prepares our students to enter into a world that will inundate them with visual media, but also makes them stronger readers and writers. In my own classroom, I try to incorporate a visual component into every lesson, but my favorite visual literacy lesson combines poetry, argument, analysis, and two American treasures, Edward Hopper and Joyce Carol Oates. This lesson usually happens well into the school year, after we have laid a foundation for writing and making and supporting claims. I start by asking my students if art “can make an argument.” Student responses here will vary. A lot of students generally say “no”, but a few will say “yes”, and may reference political cartoons, or if they’re really hip, graffiti artists like Banksy. At this point I allow about 10-15 minutes of Socratic style discussion exploring ways that art can be “argument.” I try to lead my students into a conversation that connects author’s purpose to artist’s purpose. Then, I generally provide a few quick examples of photographers or artists who are making a clear claim about something. The iconic "Migrant Mother" photo below is a good example for this early discussion. Most students are familiar with both the photo and its context, and so it’s usually easy to make and then to identify the claims this photographer is making. After this discussion, I display this painting by American painter, Edward Hopper. I set a timer for 5 minutes, and the students are to write down as many observations and/or inferences about the painting as they can. When the timer dings, I then tell them that the name of the painting is Nighthawks and it was painted in 1942. I give them another minute or two here to add to or clarify any of their observations. Students are then put in groups of 3 or 4. They have 15 minutes to share their observations and/or inferences, and decide as a group what claim(s) the artist is making. I usually leave the painting up during this time. When time is up, each group must share what conclusions they came to about the painting’s claim(s), and support this with evidence from the “text” (the painting). This introduction to the lesson usually 1-2 class days. The next day, I pass out copies of the poem “Nighthawks, 1942” by Joyce Carol Oates. Below is the full text of the poem. This poem is rich with imagery and figurative language. We read it together, and after we analyze the language effects, I ask the students if Oates has accurately analyzed the painting. Because essentially that is what her poem is—an analysis of Hopper’s artwork. Now, at this point most of our students have been trained to think about analytical writing as only essays and articles. The idea that analysis of a text or artwork can appear in the form of a poem, that you can make a claim about a work in poem form, appeals to them, especially the creative writers. What comes next is the coolest part. I give them a handout of other Hopper paintings. (See the slideshow below.) I use Hopper, not only because of the pairing of Nighthawks with the Oates poem, but because many of Hopper’s paintings are these beautiful, captured moments of time in which Hopper is making a clear claim about humanity, relationships, or the America of the 1940s and 50s. Students then have an exercise in imitation. They have to pick one of the Hopper paintings in the handout, and write a poem that analyzes the painting in the same way Oates analyzes Nighthawks. Their poem of analysis must be of comparable length to Oates’ poem, and they must imitate Joyce Carol Oates’ style, form, and language effects. I generally give them 2-3 “imitation goals” as well. For example in her poem, Oates references the female figure’s “pouty lip-sticked mouth.” We would have identified and discussed the adjectivalization of the word “lip-stick,” and one of their tasks in their own poems would be to make a noun that is not normally an adjective, an adjective. This poetry writing part of the lesson can be done in a day or in several days. I then have students share their poems in a Poetry Coffee House session. We have hot cocoa and cookies, I play music from the 40s and 50s, and as each student shares his or her poem, I project the painting the poem is analyzing on the board behind the student as he or she shares. It is by far one of the students’ favorite lessons of the year. And it’s one of my favorites because I get to show my students the connections between so many important skills: visual literacy, making clear claims, analysis, poetry, and critical thinking. This lesson is also the “kick-off” to their first research essay in which students pick a piece of art housed at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. that they think is presenting an argument, and write their first formal research essay. In their research essays, students must present the argument they think the artist is making in the painting or photograph, then support this “claim about claim” with research and their own analysis. This also provides my students with an opportunity to spend the day in the National Gallery of Art. (And who doesn’t like a field trip, right?) So WVCTE is wondering… What types of visual literacy lessons do you use in your classroom? How do you connect visual literacy and visual rhetoric to writing? And how can you use and adapt this lesson for your own classroom? Jessica Salfia teaches AP English, English 11, Mythology, and Creative Writing at Spring Mills High School in Berkeley County, WV and also serves as an adjunct professor at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV. Jessica is the President of WVCTE, an author, a poet, and was selected as the 2016 Berkeley County Teacher of the Year. When she's not teaching, writing, or rescuing shelter dogs, Jessica is probably with her three lovely children and husband at a baseball game. You can check out what Jessica is doing in her classroom by visiting www.salfiaenglishclass.weebly.com, or by following her on Twitter, @jessica_salfia.
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by Melissa Elliott Some of my students from the 2016 graduating class will never forgive my daughter. I was on maternity leave when they were in my AP English Language and Composition class and read The Great Gatsby. My long term sub had my lessons and I assured them that it would be the same. They have assured me it was not. So much of what we do as English teachers is share our passion and experience with a book. Years ago, during a discussion about the novel, a student stopped, looked at me and said, “You love him.” She was correct. I have loved Jay Gatsby since I was a junior in high school. I have also hated Daisy. So much so, that I was called into a professor’s office due to his concern over my hate of her and by association, Zelda. As an adult, I understand her more but I am an idealist and a hopeless romantic. Love should conquer all, but sometimes, as the modernist led us to==it doesn’t. I believe that great works of art are mirrors. For the most part, I would classify myself as a New Historian. However, when it comes to The Great Gatsby, for me it was always personal. I share some of my experiences with my students. I share how often I have read The Great Gatsby, starting at 16, 19, again at 27 and every year since. My love of this novel has raised it to mythic status. Parents have sent in Peanuts comic strips with Gatsby allusions, numerous pieces of artwork from students decorate my room, and this year my AP class dressed in 1920’s attire and all signed a copy of the book as my end of the year present. But the Blame Game is about what students think. As a culminating activity for the novel we play The Blame Game. This was adapted from a lesson/idea I found many years ago. Here's how it works: Before class, I set up the activity by hanging character sheets evenly spaced around the room. To create a character sheet, simply write the names of major characters from the novel at the top of blank sheets of paper. I also include a "Someone Else" as a character sheet--you would be surprised how many people want to blame the dog or Pammy. (Sidebar: A teacher asked why the TV was named George.) To begin, I give students these instructions:
Depending on our year and previous discussion, the number of questions will vary from 5-8. As a culminating activity, I am able to assess my students' learning without a test, even though I often explain it as a “review game.” The Questions Below is a sample of my actual question sheet to show its development. What could begin as a Bell Ringer question turns into a whole day's activity. (Please excuse my handwriting and any spelling errors. I verbally give these questions.) The first two are always in order.
This can throw some students for a loop. I use it, however, to bring up one of my favorite things: specificity in language. Responsibility has more of a legal definition to it and blame is more of our emotional response. In any level class, creating an awareness of language and how it is used to frame a question can be valuable discussion. The remaining questions follow:
Responses & Reflections
After students have answered on the character sheets, I ask the groups to share. This allows for students to see how other students rationalize their choices and engage in whole class discussion. It is recommended that they use their books and those that do are able to provide solid textual evidence as support. This activity usually lasts one full 45-minute class period but could easily be a two-day activity. This is also easily adapted for any grade level or literary work. This is usually one of my students’ favorite activities with the novel. They also enjoy some of the other subtle aspects of this activity. First of all, they are out of their seats and moving. The fluid groups are based on their opinion; they are not “stuck” all period in one group or with the same people. I enjoy seeing their perspectives on my favorite American novel. I have had classes hate Jay and feel he is a “creeper”, and romantic classes who see his adoration and devotion as admirable. I invite all of them to reread Gatsby when they are older and see if they have changed their minds. What text could you use this activity with? What questions would you ask students? Do you have an idea for extending the activity? Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook! Melissa Elliott currently teaches Shakespeare, AP English Language and Composition, English 12, and 12 Honors at Martinsburg High School. Melissa is originally from Staten Island, NY and taught middle school for two years before relocating to West Virginia. The 2016-2017 school year marks a decade with Martinsburg High School and her husband. She is member of the Executive Committee of WVCTE and an AP English Language Reader. by Dr. Louise McDonald I teach middle school, which means I teach some students who are ready for college and others whose reading got stuck in fourth or fifth grade and who need a good reason to move forward. “Tricks and tips” then, from middle school teachers, have to be taken with a grain of salt—they work some of the time with some of the students. Anticipating what will work without experimenting is an inexact science. Discussions of Common Core have often focused on non-fiction texts, but literary source material is also excellent for teaching many of the skills outlined in the core. Poetry for middle school I taught at a university for many years and used to have a great time teaching poetry, but when I reached middle school I hesitated to do more with poetry than basically treating it like any other complex text to decode. One of the easiest ways for the students to access poetry is through lyrics. They know lyrics, learn lyrics, and value them already. I really like Paul Gallipeau’s lesson as an introduction to rap as poetry. It can be found here: http://www.paulcarl.com/teaching-poetry-through-rap/ . He brings literary language to rap music as tools that can then be carried on to use with more canonical work. His lesson plan can be downloaded from the site above, but before you do, pause in the middle of Paul’s blog or watch below Alkala’s TED talk on rap and Shakespeare; which connects Shakespeare, which students often read as inaccessible, to hip hop, in convincing and joyful ways. Once you convince students to read poetry as well as listen to it, they are ready to take some poems in as friends. I cast about for methods for putting together a whole essay using the literary language, until I found this video from Isabella Wallace somewhere in Australia. The kids have a great time with Ms. Wallace’s accent and her wayward hairdo and they don’t seem to worry too much that her target audience is older than middle school. They are very intimidated by poetry and like a tangible technique. I have them bring in lyrics from their favorite songs to practice the method before we go on to literary canon. Performance is another great way to approach poetry in middle school. I have the students pick among poems that I select in a variety of levels and perform for the class. It is useful to learn some poetry yourself to perform, and there are great poetry slams on youtube. One of my favorite performances is by the Canadian poet Shane Koyczan. It inspired a number of students to perform this poem themselves! This is even more remarkable when you see the poem: it has more than 100 lines! Once the students have analyzed poetry and performed it, I ask them to write some. Of course, they are happier and more successful if they take another work as a model. Maya Angelou has a number of poems that make great models and I guide their writing by asking them to write poems about tangible things at first. The first poem I assign is about someone who is important to them, the second about something they like to do, and the third about the kind of person they want to be. Strangely, these were their favorite assignments of the whole year, when the time came to evaluate at the end. They liked finding out that they “had something to say.” One of the most important aspects of converting skeptical middle school students to poetry is to bring a lot of enthusiasm. They may laugh at your verve, but it gives them permission to feel the electricity of a good poem themselves. If you feel the need for some inspiration, try the Academy of American Poets selection: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/anthology/popular-poems-teach Reading poetry is different than reading prose and I find students are not confident, so it is an unlikely equalizer—which all by itself, is valuable in not only a middle school classroom, but any classroom! WVCTE is wondering... How do you approach poetry with your students? What poems work? What activities make poetry click? Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook! Louise received a BA in political Science and International Relation from Carleton College and her PhD in Enlish/Composition, Rhetoric and Literacy. She taught at various universities until 2009, when she started teaching ELA at a middle school in Jefferson County. She finds middle school to be the perfect laboratory for learning about literacy and teaches some stuff there too! Louise serves as Secretary and as a member of the Executive Committee of WVCTE. By Dr. Louise McDonald I teach middle school, and like all of us, confront classrooms with students who read (per the STAR test) as well as college students, and others that test at the third grade level. Circumventing the issue of test validity, many of us who teach at this level find that reading is a barrier to the types of lessons on literary analysis and source citation that the curriculum requires. When I started teaching middle school, I came from twenty years of teaching at the university level. I was surprised to hear students tell me that they had learned to read in third grade, didn’t need to do it now, and to stop treating them like babies. I was surprised when they insisted that they had read a passage, but couldn’t tell me what had happened. Were they not paying attention? Couldn’t they read at all? Were they uncooperative? Did they not understand the vocabulary? My internal conversation, I soon found, echoed a conversation that university professors of freshman students have every year. “The papers from 101 are abysmal!” they say to each other “What are they teaching in high school? How come they can’t [fill in the blank]?” Do students really become less prepared every year? Or look younger? Recent research has found that as we get farther away from learning those skills ourselves (dare I say, older?), we forget our own ignorance—we even forget how much last year’s class had to learn before they got as smart as they were when we released them at the end of the year. I don’t remember learning to read at all—certainly not the early levels. Reading was a joy and passion before I knew it. How can I understand what my struggling students feel? Let me explain. Did you take high school Spanish? Try reading this Noble Prize-winning poem by Pablo Neruda. Really read it. Don’t just look at it and stop when you find it is in Spanish and you “don’t read” Spanish: Juventud Un perfume como una ácida espada de ciruelas en un camino, los besos del azúcar en los dientes, las gotas vitales resbalando en los dedos, la dulce pulpa erótica, las eras, los pajares, los incitantes sitios secretos de las casas anchas, los colchones dormidos en el pasado, el agrio valle verde mirado desde arriba, desde el vidrio escondido: toda la adolescencia mojándose y ardiendo como una lámpara derribada en la lluvia. "Juventud" from Canto General, 1950 Published in Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda Edited and translated by Ben Belitt Copyright © Fundación Pablo Neruda, 2009 If, like me, you are not fluent in Spanish, you can make out some of the nouns. Certainly there are cognates and words that we have picked up in English, so “camino” and “perfume” and “erotica” stand out. “Juventude” looks a bit like “juvenile.” You can identify the sequence of clauses. But would you be able to “analyze”? When you read the above carefully, how does it make you feel? Powerful and confident? Like I am silly for asking something like this? Are you ready to go on to the next blog post because this one isn’t any fun? Try the translation: Youth Acid and sword blade: the fragrance of plum in the pathways: tooth's sweetmeat of kisses, power and spilth on the fingers, the yielding erotic of pulps, hayricks and threshing floors, clandestine recesses that tempt through the vastness of houses; bolsters asleep in the past, the bitter green valley, seen from above, from the glasses' concealment; and drenching and flaring by turns, adolescence like a lamp overturned in the rain. "Youth" from General Song, 1950 Published in Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda Edited and translated by Ben Belitt Copyright © Fundación Pablo Neruda, 2009 The literary analysis writer in me gets pretty charged about this poem—wow! Doesn’t it speak to the universal experience of middle school? Look at the great images and the repetition of ideas of discovery and secrecy! OK, so maybe the example is extreme. I don’t read Spanish easily, and Neruda is not “easy” Spanish. But my point is that reading when you do not understand is not fun and the temptation to quit is undeniable. What about English? What about this first paragraph of Hamilton’s Federalist Papers:
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and James Madison
Posting Date: December 12, 2011 [EBook #18] Release Date: August, 1991 Last Updated: July 10, 2004 Not fair! you say. This is a blog post to be read on a summer’s afternoon, not a puzzle to be untangled under a fluorescent glare in class. Reading slowly and carefully, paraphrasing in your head as the sentences get longer and longer and the clauses mount – the inward toss of the head as to the futility of soldiering on… this is what some of our students feel when you give them Rick Riordan or J.K. Rowling. It feels like work; like digging a ditch when the blisters start popping. So how to reach them, when they say they “don’t read” and everything you do suggests this to be true? Yeah, that’s the trick. Here are some thoughts: 1. Give them sounds rather than text. OK, you say, but idle hands make mischief. I have lots of luck asking them to illustrate a scene from a book as it is read—either by them or by me—or by Jim Dale. Even if they just “doodle” their concentration improves. 2. Give them choices. Have students read one of, say, four books that are available. Have the students schedule their group’s reading over a certain number of weeks. I find students are less anxious when the bulk of graded work is independent, but make the groups responsible for some kind of responses/presentations together. Reading with friends and not just assigned groups has some difficulties for the teacher, but friendship compensates for the work and gives them something to discuss. 3. Read together. Make time for independent silent reading. And then talk about what you are each reading. Model it by reading a great YA book yourself. I like making a big circle and talking about books and characters periodically. Get excited! 4. Write stories. Yes, I know, standards in the eighth grade do not include writing stories, but students are so out of touch with the creative process that digging into a character they have invented themselves can really inspire them. If you hit a wall with this, sometimes writing fan fiction is a good way to differentiate. It is a great way to teach elements of narrative and work on transitions and sequencing. What makes you want to read a passage like the one from the Federalist Papers above? Well, being interested in history is a help, but if you aren’t? Make a game. For example, have three students paraphrase a difficult passage with “two truths and a lie.” Then have the students individually or in groups choose which one is the lie. The possibilities are endless and teachers do them all the time. Sometimes they “take,” and sometimes not. Often, we are swimming upstream in a torrent of negative internal discourse. I think the “take home” here is that reading can be difficult and therefore vaguely distasteful—sometimes not so “vaguely.” One of the most important gifts we can give our reluctant readers is the experience and then the memory of finding something joyful in reading. WVCTE is wondering...How do you engage reluctant readers? What texts and strategies are reliably effective? Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook! Sources Kelly Gallagher and Cris Tovani. Louise received a BA in political Science and International Relation from Carleton College and her PhD in Enlish/Composition, Rhetoric and Literacy. She taught at various universities until 2009, when she started teaching ELA at a middle school in Jefferson County. She finds middle school to be the perfect laboratory for learning about literacy and teaches some stuff there too! Louise serves as Secretary and as a member of the Executive Committee of WVCTE. |
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