By Prisca Martens, Ph.D., Towson University
When children read in Storying Studio, they learn that readers not only read written text, they read art. They consider how/why artists make particular decisions about color, shape, etc., similar to how/why authors make particular decisions about word choice, sentence structure, etc., when writing written text. We create text sets around particular themes, topics, or art concepts on which the teachers want to focus in the minilessons.
READ in Storying Studio involves teacher read alouds, children’s responses, literature discussions, etc. Children read independently or in small groups, and teachers provide minilessons using the read aloud as a mentor text. Minilessons can focus on authors’ crafts, including story beginnings, character development, and story structure. Minilessons also focus on aspects of art, such as artists’ materials, techniques, or the Elements of Art and Principles of Design that artists use to compose (Piro, 2002; Pumphrey, 1996). The Elements of Art correspond to letters and words in written language. They are the graphic cues and include dot, line, value, shape, color, space, form, and texture. The Principles of Design correspond to the grammar or syntax of written language. Just as words are organized to make sense, the Principles of Design meaningfully organize the Elements of Art. The Principles of Design are balance, emphasis, pattern, rhythm, movement, variety, harmony, contrast, and unity.
The art principle contrast is an example of a focus teachers use for minilessons. Teachers may discuss authors’ use of contrast in the personalities of characters, features of the setting, etc. In art, they might look at how the artist contrasts, for example, colors or lines. In the book The Man With the Violin (Kathy Stinson, 2013), artist Dusan Petricic uses contrast by representing the sounds of a violin with flowing wavy lines and the sounds of people talking with jagged zigzag lines. Children come to understand ways of symbolically representing sounds on paper. Other picturebooks we use to highlight contrast while children read in Storying Studio include Guji Guji (Chin, 2004), The Invisible Boy (Ludwig, 2013), The Day Leo Said I Hate You! (Harris, 2008), A Child’s Garden (Foreman, 2009), and Mr. Tiger Goes Wild (Brown, 2013). Next week, I’ll explain how children explore what they learn in minilessons.
References
Brown, P. (2013). Mr. Tiger goes wild. New York: Little Brown.
Chen, C. (2004). Guji Guji. La Jolla, CA: Kane/Miller.
Foreman, M. (2009). A child’s garden: A story of hope. Somerville, MA: Candlewick.
Harris, R. (2008). The day Leo said I hate you! (Illus. M. Bang). New York: Little Brown.
Ludwig, T. (2013). The invisible boy. (Illus. by P. Barton). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Stinson, K. (2013). The man with the violin (Illus. by D. Petricic). Toronto, Canada: Annick
Press
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