Prisca Martens

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Exploring and Experiencing: Sebastian’s Roller Skates

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 →

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Exploring and Experiencing: Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match

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 →

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Exploring & Experiencing the Art in Picturebooks

by Prisca Martens, Towson University

InvisibleFor 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 →

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Connecting Text and Illustrations

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

During September we have explored how learning to read mulitmodally by integrating the pictorial text with the written text in picturebooks relates to young children’s reading development. We’ve examined children’s responses to picturebooks when they learn to read multimodally and also discussed classroom experiences that support that learning/reading.
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Learning to Read the Written and the Pictorial

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

This week I’ll provide an example of the kinds of curricular experiences my co-researchers and I designed for the first graders to help them learn to read the pictorial text in picturebooks. As I shared last week, at the end of the school year most of the children were making sophisticated observations and reading meanings in the illustrations, in addition to the written text, which enhanced their understandings.
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Reading Multimodally

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

In last week’s blog we reflected on the various modes or semiotic systems through which our culture communicates meaning. These include visual (i.e., art, moving images), linguistic (i.e., language), auditory (i.e., sound, music), gestural (i.e., movement, dance), and spatial (i.e., layout, design). Picturebooks are multimodal, drawing on the linguistic, visual, spatial, and gestural systems. Schools and society, though, tend to emphasize the written text for constructing meaning at the expense of the others.

My colleagues and I are in the second year of a three year study exploring how, in picturebooks, learning to read meanings through a variety of modes relates to beginning readers’ reading development. We worked with 37 first graders in two classrooms last year. At the beginning and end of the year we asked the children to read a picturebook and retell it and then respond to questions about the illustrations without the book in front of them.
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Words Aren’t Everything

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

In our ever changing world it is not surprising that the concepts of literacy and what it means to be literate continue to evolve. The traditional definition that associates reading and writing with print on paper no longer encompasses the range of texts literate persons encounter on a daily basis. These texts can be printed on paper or transmitted electronically, sometimes even in real time. They come in a range of representational forms. Today’s communication systems can be multimodal, linear or nonlinear, and even depart from the traditional left to right or top to bottom orientation.

Semiotic systems are systems of signs through which societies or cultures share meaning. These sign systems may be language based, visual (i.e., art, moving images), auditory (i.e., sound, music), gestural (i.e., movement, dance), or spatial (i.e., layout, design). Each sign system conveys understanding in unique ways and offers its own exclusive perspective on a particular cultural meaning. Texts are one way of communicating meaning in a social context. Multimodal texts employ more than one semiotic system, with each system contributing in a different way to how the text is comprehended.
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