I had always planned on creating a classroom where all sorts of media would be involved with the learning process. I will be (as long as what I hope to happen pans out) both a theatre and an English teacher, so literacy is extremely important to me. That literacy would have to be the all-inclusive definition of the word that the reading pushes: visual and verbal (verbal meaning both words on the page and words we speak). For me, however, the idea of really separating these kinds of literacy is rather new. I have always seen writing as an example of both kinds of literacy, even if it is a long essay. The way an essay is formatted is something read visually, and it is brought into your reading before you even get into the verbal language written on the page. You cannot have one without the other. In the appendix we’d read, “On Reading Visual and Verbal Texts,” it illustrates this. Of course, it mentions it more in the poetry section of the appendix more than anywhere else because of the large part that formatting has to play in the meaning of a poem, but I truly do believe that any page’s formatting speaks levels. If I, as a teacher, received a book report that had one-and-a-half inch margins and was double spaced, it would speak levels about the writer when comparing it to a report that came in as single-spaced with half-inch margins in order to keep within the page limit. Reading “On Visual and Verbal Texts” helped me recognize that I can teach my English students how to read not only different types of written works, but how to read paintings and photographs as well.
Reading “Observing the Ordinary” gave me an idea. I loved the essay “Ode to an Orange” by Larry Woiwode. His prose is intoxicating and brings out the most amazing sensations of eating an orange. He even discusses ways to eat one that I have never thought about before, such as sticking a pencil into the orange and sucking the juice out before going in for the pulp. It is creative and a fun read that seems to sell oranges just by its masterful description. Then, when turning the page, there is an advertisement of a half-peeled orange and the words “Have One.” It gave me a teaching idea in which I could ask my English students, after studying the different types of literature and how to read them, to look at an advertisement of their choice (being school appropriate, of course) and to write an essay that sells the product in a different way than the ad. Another idea came from the series of telephone advertisements. I would ask my students to read ads for a product over time and ask them what differences in implications were in each one, and then either create advertisements themselves or write an essay on the differences in selling points that they saw. In “On Reading Visual and Verbal Texts” it gives great guiding questions that I could ask my students to make points on and therefore help in my creation of a grading rubric, such as “what is the viewer’s eye drawn to first in the advertisement?” and “What is the underlying ‘logic’ of the advertisement?” Guiding questions and rubrics have been a large part of the lesson plans I have been asked to make in the Theatre Education major, and it was great to have some there to help me teach a deeper lesson on how to read, no matter what kind of reading it might be.
I plan to teach my theatre students through the written word as well as through images. Reading this text has helped me understand all of the different ways I can tie different media sources together to help students better understand how to create something that can be read by any person as a quality work of art. I am exited to use the many forms of reading and creating in my classroom, no matter what subject I might teach.
2 comments:
Lela, I really like your observation about the visual aspects of a written text. I think that often people forget about that part, but it’s very important and it does impact how the reader reads the text. I think a great example of this are blogs, like this one, because the way that a blog is set up and how it looks effectively creates a lens for the viewer to read the content through. Does that make any sense? I have a personal blog that I started for a writing class and at the top of my blog is a picture of a bookstore with a bike outside and it’s kind of a rainy day. Underneath that I have a quote from one of my favorite books A Confederacy of Dunce, which reads, "When my mind begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip." - Ignatius J. Reilly. The overall look of my blog immediately conveys to viewers that I like to read. Another blog that I read a lot is my friend Tim’s and because he is a professor of economics, a lot of his posts are about innovation and finance which is reflected through the professional look of his blog. I think it’s important that we teach our students how to recognize and analyze all the different aspects of a text, whether it’s visual or verbal or both.
As you mentioned in your post, there is a lot of cross over between different types of media. A verbal text ultimately helps us to create a visual image in our heads and a visual image should help us to create some sort of narrative. I loved your idea of having students write an advertisement that complements a visual advert. I think that’s a great way to show students how some aspects of a visual image also play into a written text, for example creating focus or evoking tone are things that most types of media do. In the case of visual and written advertisements, students could look at how a picture creates tone and focus and then how they might be able to replicate that in a written text. One of my professors had us do something similar, but with famous works of art. We had to choose a piece of art and then write about the history of the piece and the artist in the same style as the painting. I liked this assignment, but I remember being very confused up until the very end because we didn’t spend a lot of time talking about how the aspects of the art overlapped with aspects of a written text. I wish I had seeing and writing back then because I think the sections we read this week would have helped me to see what the two types of media have in common and how they differ. One of the things that’s emphasized a lot in the English Teaching program, and I’m sure in other programs as well, is teaching students skills that are transferrable, meaning that they can apply what they know to more than just the assignments they get in class. I think that seeing and writing really sets us up for this type of teaching because it shows how to approach any piece of art, or poem or picture, etc. Using the questions and information from seeing and writing, we can teach our students skills that they can apply to a wide variety of different media that they will likely come across outside of the classroom (as well as within it, hopefully). I liked how you termed lessons like this, “deeper lessons,” because I think that’s an apt title. The goal should be to embed these skills in our students so that they have them wherever they go. Thanks for pointing out how guiding questions can help with a rubric! That’s a great idea. Good luck with your goal of incorporating different types of media into your class, I hope I can do the same thing! I think it’s a good goal seeing as how our world seems to become more media-oriented every day.
When I read an essay I can almost hear the words coming out of the writers mouth, like you talked about. I really like hearing peoples voice in their writing. That is why I like reading novels a lot more then biographies, or textbooks for that matter. I never had thought about how the way a person spaces their work matters. I have been trained that 12 point font double-spaced is the professional way to do things. Typically I do not deviate from this preset pattern. However if I am working on an artistic project I tend to change fonts, spacing, and the size of words. I wonder what my teachers thought about me and the contrast in both writing styles? I would be curious to find out what you think about this as well.
I absolutely loved Larry Woiwode’s poem, and thought that his descriptions evoked the most vivid images. I have to admit that I really wanted to eat an orange after I read it. Your teaching idea based off this ad sounds fantastic and I would love to steal it from you. Students find the most interesting ways to view things, and I think it would be fun to see what they could come up with in an ad. Another way of doing this activity would be to just give the students an object they use everyday (pencil, hairband, etc), and give them 5 minutes to write down everything they know about the object. Then have them write an ad based on five of the words they wrote, or even an ad that cannot reference anything they wrote. Media is such a huge part of what we know, that it will be interesting to see a students view on it.
Rubrics are every theatre teachers best friend, because they are what we use most. Having to grade this particular type of assignment can be hard, and rubrics help us to grade in the most unbiased way we can. That and rubrics are also helpful when casting a show, again so as to prevent bias (you can cast a show entirely based on rubric scores). Guiding questions are the difference between a lecture and a conversation. Personally I feel that teaching should be done as a conversation, because when students discover meaning on their own they are more likely to remember it. I have forgotten more math equations and historical facts because they were learned behind a desk with a test score in mind. However, the things that I learned in art, home economics, and things like that have always stuck with me. It is about students searching out learning on their own. I want my students to love to learn more then anything else.
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