From picture book to story...

Students, of all ages, learn in a variety of ways.  While some people are clearly auditory learners and others are visual learners, there is the potential for varying degrees of both.  While some people may read a simple sentence such as, “The sky is blue,” a picture a summer sky of azure blue others will be so caught up in wondering what shade of blue that they will lose the intent of the paragraph that contains the sentence.  For those that are challenged by color blindness the sentence has an entirely different meaning.  Using a combination of colors, images, and text through there is the opportunity to provide information to a more diversified group of studnts.

Everyone has a set of information filters that resided within their brain.  It is their knowledge base that helps them interpret not only the written word, but also the images, sounds,  and experience.  And even the author’s choice of words will add another potential filter layer.  For example, to say “The elephant roared” has a different connotation that “The elephant trumpeted.” 

In my illustrated text I addressed the loss of physical structure in a school yet created an analogy to the growth of former students through its current state.  Without the relationship of the actual images of the school the text could be interpreted in a totally different way.  The article refers to “students cannot create a picture in the mind due to lack of background knowledge or the complexity of the text.”  In this particular example students would most likely not envision the school as portrayed in the images, they very well could picture the abandoned school with windows boarded up that sits on the street down the from their home.  Perhaps they might imagine a lonely building, overgrown with weeds sitting in a vacant lot, or even a vacant lot.  Without the descriptive in the text to indicate height, color, and texture of the building there is not sufficient clues in the piece to define it accurately in the mind for most people.

“Finding the Way” was written specifically for this assignment.  The author was inspired by the photos of the school, as it stands today, which I provided to her.  She did not need to provide the detailed description as she knew that the imagery was going to be used.  However, without those photos, the piece has a much broader interpretation.  In theory, the author, used a “picture book”, a digital album of images with only limited text in my email, to write her interpretation.  Just as the students in the classroom were asked to interpret images to create their impression so too did my author.

As a young reader, and I have always been a voracious reader, I often selected books by the cover.  I chose the pretty, colorful covers.  Those covers gave me an insight into the content of the book and I was disappointed if the characters were not portrayed correctly just as students in the study noted.  There is an edition of “Kiss of Kin” by Mary Lee Settle that has an image on the front cover of 2 males kissing.  That image brings to mind that the content will be non-traditional, however, the content has absolutely nothing to do with homosexual love.  Imagery can be good, but it can also be detrimental.

The match of illustration to text is crucial.  In my presentation I wanted to use a slide of Coalwood School as it was that would then fade into what it is today.  When I was not able to locate a photograph I did the next best thing.  The first slide of the piece starts out at full color and as the second slide appears and the text states “Coalwood School is SILENT now,” the background image fades away just as the structure of the building has faded away. 

To apply this article into a curriculum setting that is applicable specifically to my teaching situation, it would be interesting to provide a series of images of a particular place and give a few basic facts about the images.  Who, what, when, where, and possible even why the images are significant.  In doing this I would be creating a virtual picture book that students could then interpret into a textual sense.  The final step in the process would be the creation of a multi-media piece such as an illuminated text to bring the assignment together.