Connecting the Visual to the Verbal in the Classroom

Teaching Strategies:

One of my main objectives for this unit is for students to learn how to interpret text and image in a meaningful way, so that they are able to create the sort of experience they seek in the world in a positive way. I want them to gain skills of analysis, and here are some tools that I will give my students when we talk about art in a large group.

What is the image in front of you?

What is the artist trying to say?

How does it make you feel?

Are the words and images supporting each other?

How are the words and images working as devices?

What is the story behind the piece?

What are some interesting choices the artist has made?

How would you in the place of the artist say the message differently?

If you were the artist would you change anything?

Students will be given these questions as prompts for analyzing a piece of art. They will have to form conclusions about images and text and create a plan of their own if they intend to make a piece of art with a similar idea.

Another element that I am striving to impart to my students is critical thinking and analytic skills. I will introduce my students to famous poems that they will analyze. There are several reasons for this teaching strategy. Students will learn to appreciate words—particularly the sounds of words, the symbols and stories they represent. Students will gain an appreciation for the craft of poetry and the devices present in poems. Students will also acquire an understanding of how a writer puts images together in a strategic way. The structure of a poem, with its line breaks, are important in how we read and interpret the poem. I will model these things by going through a sample poem and pointing out structural features on the board. Students will have the opportunity to supply feedback and to answer questions on the materials presented.

Ekphrasis as a tool in understanding the Text and Image Relationship

There is a form of poetry called Ekphrasis, when a poem and a picture are combined to create a narrative. I will use ekphrastic poetry in my lesson to get students accustomed to looking at words and images together. My professor at Yale, Paul Fry, has made apparent that really wonderful things can happen in the conversation between a painting and a poem, or, for my purpose in this unit, an image and a poem. When paired together one speaks of the other in support or almost as a debate concerning the confines and expansiveness of each disparate medium. The reading or narrative that the reader walks away with is muti-layered and complex, and often times it has been said in our seminar that one cannot pin down everything the poem could mean in relation to the picture and beyond it. This form of art asks many questions and also provides the reader with a lot of investigation prompts to learn the true meaning. The readings are always very subjective for each viewer, which seems to be the intention of the artist. By creating a dialogue about an art piece sometimes whole centuries later, long after the piece was historically contemporary, ekphrasis really engages the reader in a new way and challenges habitual reading. Paul Fry has taught me more than anything that two media, when alongside each other, create a third space of intermediality that is of particular interest. I will convey this art-form to my students as they are learning to see and analyze image and text.

For my teaching strategy concerning Ekphrasis, students will first read out loud the poem about Van Gogh's "Starry Night" by Anne Sexton and then we will look at the painting in relation to the poem. I will give them the definition of Ekphrasis and then we will discuss it. Finally, students will be given a postcard of a well known piece of art and be asked to write a poem about it. I will talk about poetry and how it conjures images, has a beat, line breaks etc. before they start. They will also be given a worksheet that explains how to create a poem.

The Use of Technology in Research

Students will use technology in research that can be combined with a poem that may illustrate or challenge it. They will be given a list of artists and writers to choose from.

Templates and Visual Tools: I will also make templates and handouts based on: Lynda Barry's Picture This, Gabrielle Bell's Graphic Novel, Cecil and Jordan in New York , and Craig Thompson's Graphic Novel, Blanket. I will teach the structure and the sequence of comics with power-point presentations of Chris Ware, Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, David Weisner's Tuesday, Jillian Tamaki's Graphic Novel, Skim and Maurice Sendak, In the Night Kitchen. Drawn and Quarterly will be a website that I reference throughout my teaching. It is a wonderful resource for Graphic Novels. Discussion. There are a variety of ways to stimulate discussion. I begin a lesson with a whole group discussion to stimulate ideas and then focus on large group discussion. Active Learning. Meyers and Jones (1993) define active learning as learning environments that allow "students to talk and listen, read, write, and reflect as they approach course content through problem-solving exercises in small and informal groups, role playing, and other activities — all of which require students to apply what they are learning" ⁹ Many studies show that learning is enhanced when they are having first hand experiences with the materials.

Lesson Plan One: What is Poetry?

I will introduce the medium of poetry to my students by asking them to come up with a definition. I will write what they say on the board and then return to it after we have read several poems.

Strategies for Teaching Poetry

The first thing is to think about the title of the poem and consider whether the title contributes a special meaning or image to the poem. Is is important to pay attention to formal structure. This is simply the arrangement of words on the page. Look at the placement of lines and how they are paired. Observe whether the lines and stanzas form a pattern. Listen to the sounds the words make. Is there a rhythm as you read the poem aloud? Do the sounds point to important imagery? Pause where punctuation marks appear, not only where the line ends. It is helpful to read the poem aloud several times and to determine the rhyme scheme. Poets often use near rhyme to make the reader focus on an important word. Determine the purpose of the sounds. Because poets have few words to use, they must decide how to use them interestingly. Are there any personal connections that you as a reader have to this poem? Summarize the poem's meaning as a whole. What was the writer's intention? I will be using Kim Addonizio's Ordinary Genius as a course reader.

Procedure

I will discuss the above information and read Kim Addonizio's poem, "What do Women Want," out loud. As a class, we will complete the suggestions above. I will model how to determine the meaning of a poem. I will encourage them to dig deeper to find meaning. My students will analyze a poem with a format for written analysis that I give to them. We will discuss this poem as a class.

We will read other poems out loud by Neruda, Harjo, Olds etc. that are visual in nature and evocative of the senses. Students will be asked to describe the imagery as it relates to pictures or illustrations. They will be prompted to draw several of the images and defend the writers' choices in a few sentences. We will speak as a group about this. I will convey to my students that just as words conjure images, images conjure words. I want them to think about this concept and write about it. They will be asked to give several examples in the text or image to describe their point of view.

Assessment

There will be a grade sheet that I devise that will prompt the students to make a packet of their work for this portion of the unit. They will have to write about how their view of poetry has changed and what makes poetry unique. They also will have to speak about specific poets and what makes them good examples of the craft.

Lesson Extension:

Using collage and found images, students can make a poetry comic. A great example is the Prufrock poem illustrated by Morse in PoetryComics.

Lesson Plan Two: What is Comics?

Strategies for Teaching Comics

I will ask students what is a comic and write the definition on the board. Students will then read a Charlie Brown comic by Charles Shultz, Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay and work by Chris Ware . We will talk about how the breaks in the comic are different/similar to the breaks in a poem and why the artist chose to make those edits.

Procedure

I will give students a handout from Scott Mc Cloud's Understanding Comics that visually supports and illustrates this concept of commonalities between comics and poetry in the rhythm and breaks. We will talk about what makes a successful comic versus what makes a successful poem. Students will be asked to identify similarities and differences between the poetry and the comics. Kim Addonizio's Ordinary Genius will be used to emphasize the craft of poetry in this segment. I will provide my students with a passage in the book that supports this notion.

Closure

As a class, we will modify the original definition of poetry and of comics on the board. Then as a class, we will create a column chart that includes the elements that are similar and different in poetry and comics, respectively. Students will then fill out the chart for each poem and each comic we have read. We will discuss these elements as a class.

Assessment

Students will be given a gradesheet in the beginning of the lesson that specifies what homework and classwork activities will be graded and how many points they are worth. The homework assignments include bringing in a comic from a newspaper, drawing a comic of one's day in five panels, and bringing in the work of a cartoonist they admire and writing about why.

Lesson Extension

Later in this unit, I will provide my students with warm-ups, activities and lessons that instruct students in the basics of reading comics, the history of comics, and the art of comics. The last lessons guide students through a simple process of creating their own comic book through characters, plots, settings, and vocabulary. Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics will be central to the other strategies and content that I assimilate.

Lesson Plan Three: What is PoetryComics?

Prompt

I will ask my students to think about what PoetryComics might be. If they know what poetry is and what a comic is, could they describe in a sentence what the hybrid artform might be?

Summary

Poetry Comics is a medium that combines poems and comics in an interesting way. I will prompt my students to create a PoetryComic by describing how to create one without giving them an example just yet. Through creating a poetry comic, students will learn even further of the similarities between comics and poetry.

Procedure

Students will be given a handout of "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe. Then, students will be broken into groups of three and asked to illustrate the poem, drawing from the exact words. They will be told to cut up the text, make comic panels for the words and create images in each text panel to create a comic of the poem. Each group will be given 25 minutes to complete this.

Closure

I will show my students "The Raven" by Poe as illustrated in the book, PoetryComics by Dave Morse as an example. We will talk about the process and what they chose to do as artists, versus what the artist in Morse's book chose to do. Students will make copies of their poetry comics and trade them with each other. We will review what makes a good PoetryComic and look at other examples from the book, PoetryComics in a power-point presentation.

Assessment

Students will grade each other using a rubric which we have created at the beginning of the assignment.

Lesson Extension

Graphic Novels are also a great way to illustrate these ideas. You can talk about these conventions as they work together in Jillian Tamaki's Skim, Craig Thompson's Blankets, and Gabrielle Bell's Jordan and Cecil in New York.

Lesson Four: What is Animated Poetry?

Procedure:

Students read a poem by Billy Collins. Then, I will show the students an animated version of that same Billy Collins poem. We will write down how the experience was different as a class and talk about it.

I will ask my students about any sensations they thought were produced in each experience. Were the images you saw in your mind the same/different depending on the different media choices? If you were Billy Collins would you like the way the artist interpreted the poem? If you were the artist what would you do differently?

Closure

Students will be given a handout about creating a powerpoint of a Billy Collins poem of choice by combining text and images. The poem/image powerpoint will reference the techniques learned in the example of an animated Billy Collins poem. The work should be an original piece of art that can stand on its own.

Assessment

Teacher will devise a rubric that contains sections for craftsmanship, innovation, and understanding of concept. Work habits are also taken into consideration.

Lesson Extension

Music videos such as Van Halen's Right Now, Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer, and David Byrne's And She Was and Burning Down the House will be shown. In my opinion, these videos were the first animated poetry, prior to Billy Collins or anything of this kind we see now.

Lesson Five: What is a Tableau Vivant Skit?

Prompt

Students will be given a picture in a magazine and be asked to get in groups of as many people as are in the scene and pose as if they are the figures the picture. They will be asked to move in the exact position of their character and stay there like a frozen sculpture. I will have brought in images that are interesting.

Procedure

As a class we will talk about that experience and what the students might think a Tableau Vivant is and why people may choose to use this art-form. I will give a handout concerning the history of Tableau Vivant and we will discuss it further. Then, I will show the skit of Killing My Lobster's Patronizing the Art on video. We will talk about what happens when the Tableau Vivant moves and becomes a skit in which the character is in motion and has feelings that are human.

Closure

Students will get a handout about creating their own Tableau Vivant skit in a small group, they will choose a famous painting as a group, deciding who is going to play the parts, and writing dialogue that brings the artwork to life.

Assessment

Students will be graded on their performance and interpretation of the piece of art. They will also write about the original piece of art's narrative and meaning and how as artists they brought a new life to the piece by making the choices they did and why.