Picture Writing

Teaching Strategies

The first step in teaching strategies for using pictorial biography to teach history and language arts is to teach students to read paintings. Observation tools include portrait images from on-line museum galleries projected for whole-class discussion. I will give out a graphic organizer for students to take notes on what they see and what they wonder. Students will sit in pairs and share before the discussion is opened to the entire class to share. I will also use various practices to help students analyze a book. We will look for motifs and notice patterns of lighting that express mood and foreshadowing, in the way that reading specialist Suzette Youngs tested in her study, which proved the positive outcomes of increased discussion among students over the text when they consistently practice picture-book analysis. ¹⁸ In conjunction I will also teach the codes described by William Moebius, who lists position, size and diminishing returns, perspective, frame, line and capillarity, and color among his interactive graphic codes. ¹⁹ These lessons will build observation skills over time.

Next I will integrate reading and writing by having students read biographies and take notes on post-its. They will practice re-telling the story to a partner and then write a summary. A second writing exercise will be creating a timeline. Students will be able to use the same post-its to organize events and add dates. A third writing exercise will be to have the partners work together to create side-by-side poems. This will help them discern the emotional aspects of the life of the person whom they are reading about and encourage them to make personal connections.

After students have had four or five successful attempts at reading pictorial biographies, I plan to teach students how to conduct research. They will choose one of the women subjects of their biographies and discover more information through books, encyclopedias, websites, and databases. This will mean frequent visits to the computer lab and library. The students will pose questions, research answers, and present their findings in a clearly written research paper. Students will work together on posters and art projects, such as portraiture, to illustrate their work.

By the end of the unit, students will plan an event to share their knowledge. They will invite their families to a living history night. Students will present living tableaus, dressing in costume with props to act out scenes depicted in the illustrations of their biography. They will perform side-by-side poems. Research papers, posters, poems, and art will be on display.