by Prisca Martens, Towson University
This month we’ve been looking closely at how the art and written text in picturebooks work together to convey meaning and exploring how to help children experience the full richness in picturebooks by reading both. This week we’ll examine how Jenna Loomis read My Name Is Sangoel, written by Karen Lynn Williams (2009) and Khandra Mohammed and illustrated by Catherine Stock, with her first graders.
Continue reading
by Prisca Martens, Towson University
This month in WOW Currents we’re exploring how to help children read the art and written texts in picturebooks, Picturebooks are “a unique art object, a combination of image and idea that allows the reader to come away with more than the sum of the parts” (Kiefer, 1995, p. 6). In our work we’re helping children read the art and think like artists to support them in experiencing the full richness and meanings in picturebooks (Martens, 2012). This week we’ll explore how Laura Fuhrman helped her first graders read and experience the art and written text in Sebastian’s Roller Skates, Continue reading
by Prisca Martens, Towson University
Picturebooks are “text, illustrations, total design; …As an art form [they hinge] on the interdependence of pictures and words, on the simultaneous display of two facing pages, and on the drama of the turning of the page” (Bader, 1976, p. 1). This week we continue our exploration of helping children read the art and written texts in picturebooks by seeing how Michelle Doyle shares the richness in Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match, written by Monica Brown (2011) and illustrated by Sara Palacios, with her first graders. In the story, Marisol, as others see her, is a mismatch of things that don’t make sense. Continue reading
by Prisca Martens, Towson University
For the past several years I’ve been in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade classrooms exploring how helping children learn and experience the concepts and language of art that artists use to create illustrations in picturebooks relate to the children’s own reading, writing, and art. My co-researchers are Ray Martens and a number of classroom teachers who graciously invite us into their classrooms to learn and explore with them and their students. We are working together on this because of our mutual passion for picturebooks and our understanding that for children to experience the full richness the books offer, they need to read the art as well as the written text. Continue reading
by Michelle Grace-Williams & Julia López-Robertson, with Genitha Jackson, Tirisha Robinson, Janese Utley, University of South Carolina
I, too, sing America/I am the darker brother/They send me to eat in the kitchen/When company comes/But I laugh, /And eat well /And grow strong/Tomorrow…/They’ll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed—I, too, am America.
Langston Hughes
The poem above, I Too, Am America, is an example of a culturally relevant poem that could be used by teachers as a vehicle to engage [all] students in discussions about social injustices and issues that may be relevant to them and their lives. Culturally relevant poetry may also be used as a critique to systems of oppression that are present in our society-in this case, specifically race and language. Continue reading
by Michelle Grace-Williams and Julia López-Robertson , University of South Carolina
Culturally relevant teaching refers to the use of “ cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them” (Gay, 2010, p.31). A culturally relevant approach to teaching includes careful book selection to avoid stereotypes that might distort the historical experiences of African Americans [we specify African American because of our blog content but recognize that all books must be carefully analyzed for misinterpretation and misinformation]. Continue reading
by Michelle Grace Williams and Julia López-Robertson, University of South Carolina
.
.
The most educators can do is to create structures that would enable submerged voices to emerge. It is not a gift. Voice is a human right. It is a democratic right. (Macedo, 2006.p. 4)
.
.
In our first blog last week, we explained that the goal for all of our blogs is to discuss texts that could be used in the classroom to validate the experiences of Black children; children of the African Diaspora, children of African ancestry located in America, Continue reading
Africa is my home. I long to be there. Although I am in America, yet my heart is there. The people I love and the country I admire…
-From a December 18, 1847 letter by Sarah while she was at Oberlin
by Michelle Grace-Williams and Julia López-Robertson, University of South Carolina
One essential strategy for eliciting meaningful engagement with children’s literature featuring Blacks is simply to share the literature (Harris, 1997, p. 49).
Over the next few weeks we aim to critically discuss texts that could be used in the classroom to validate the experiences of children of the African Diaspora; Black children of African ancestry located in the United States of America, the Americas and other parts of the world.
By T. Gail Pritchard, Ph.D., University of Arizona College of Medicine
In this last blog for the month, I want to share some books that deal with other kinds of epidemics, notably: bullying, obesity, substance abuse and suicide. These books are not pretty in nature, they do not necessarily have “happy” endings, and they are often connected to each other. They offer a glimpse into contemporary behaviors occurring in epidemic proportions among our youth. Continue reading
