Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Every Picture Tells A Story

I started field testing my new residency "Every Picture Tells A Story" at Longfellow Elementary School in Howard County with a 2nd grade class. My residency was developed in a five-day seminar designed by the Teaching Artist Institute (TAI) in Baltimore. My teacher partner and art teacher at Longfellow, Sandra Alger will collaborate with me in her classroom.

During this first session I talked about how pictures convey visual information about people, places and events. I shared my picture book Grandma's Purple Flowers and the class helped to identify characters, setting and events in the story. Towards the end of the session I asked the students to identify a special relative that was significant to them. Sandra and I passed out a worksheet that we developed. Students wrote the relatives name and information about activities they did together on the sheet. The students then drew 3 simple thumbnail sketches on a second sheet that will be used later to develop their visual narratives.