Picture Books In The Art Curriculum

Genre/organizational demands: Picture books are books that contain many illustrations, especially for children. The illustrations are as important (or, in some cases, even more important than) the words in the story. My students will need to understand that pictures usually add to the text of the story. They will also need to understand that text represents spoken words. Thus, my students need to be able to interpret pictures and be able to recognize one-to-one correspondence between a written word and a spoken word.

During my time as volunteer at Somerset Dade Academy, I was able to work closely with the elementary and middle school teacher. During each visit, I was able to follow Ms. Lee’s daily routine. In the morning, we had 30 minutes to plan and get her cart ready with supplies she needed for the day. Also, we would both create various model artworks to inspire her students to create something more original and imaginative. She wheeled her cart through certain elementary classes depending on her schedule. Depending on the grade level she was assign to that day, we were able to teach her students the fundamental concepts of arts and major art movements, all in 30 minutes. Every three weeks, she would focus on a concept, artist, or art movement. Additionally, she would assign vocabulary words, which her students would copy and also had access to them online on Quizlet. At the end, she would administer a summative test on everything they learned for the past three weeks. On the other hand, Ms. Lee’s middle school classes were different, more one-on-one, and it was a one-hour period. Her students were able to recreate impressionist and expressionist artworks, such as Monet’s Water Lilies, Van Gogh Starry Night and The Bedroom on wall-sized canvases.

Picture books are a big part of a child’s life. They make the reading experience fun and a time to look forward too. They help children explore the world with their imagination and connect with characters and events. They also provide joy and comfort. Picture books show their meaning in a very unique way. They use verbal and visual text to relate to the world. Both verbal and visual text work together in synchrony to narrate the story. Meaning represented in this way invites the reader to attend to both in order to make sense of the story. Revisiting and old picture book is like revisiting an old friend.

A good picture book becomes a joy to the children forever and something that catches the, eye, the ear, and the understanding of children. From having a good relationship between reading and yourself at a young age, it encourages further reading and forms the basis for becoming a literate adult, one who decodes words accurately but also reads for enjoyment and takes time out to do so. It is true that the best picture books are warm and humorous however, they do not have to be both at the same time. A picture book is at its best when it at least has some sense of warm or humorous elements.

Additionally, the author has been able to show the pictures hand in hand with the story, keeping the wordings short and to the point. Besides, the book is not merely telling a story, as the kid reads, he or she can be able to get a message

I chose to read and comment on Barbara Kiefer’s “Envisioning Experience: The Potential of Picture Books.” Kiefer’s main point in writing this essay was to get the message across that children enjoy picture books that allow them to identify and make connections with the characters or the plots, and that while reading and analyzing the pictures, they gain a better sense of aesthetics and how to interpret them.

Public education that is provided throughout the country gives students the ability to learn fine arts, math, science, language arts, and other classes that educate people in different areas. Many people might have opinionated their reasoning on why they think fine arts in a public education is beneficial or not. Different perspectives may lead you to think one is better than the other. Having extracurricular classes like music and art benefits from long-life advantages and helps critical thinking and verbal skills to express yourself freely. Fine arts in public education should continue in public schools because it increases motivation, boosts confidence, and improves teamwork skills.

Picture books can have a very important role in a classroom, from elementary school through middle and even high school. They offer a valuable literary experience by combining the visual and the text. Maurice Sendak’s Caldecott Award winning book, Where the Wild Things Are, is a wonderful blend of detailed illustrations and text in which a young boy, Max, lets his angry emotions create a fantasy world.

So you see, pictures, even in books help minds to develop each time you take a glance at them. You gain that freedom in your mind and can grow and expand to photography, galleries, museums, and even creations of your own personal art... the possibilities seem endless. I would conclude that picture books are helpful to people of all ages, especially the minds of children. Will you ever look at books the same

WILKS, J. j., CUTCHER, A. l., & WILKS, S. s. (2012). Digital Technology in the Visual Arts

The topic I selected for this paper is visual literacy specifically when dealing with picture books and young students. Visual literacy can be defined as “the ability to interpret, recognize, appreciate and understand information presented through visible actions, objects and symbols, natural or man-made” (Common Core in Action). The Common Core State Standards specifically address visual literacy in the following two standards: "integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos or maps) with other information in print and digital texts" and "integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words” (Common Core

Words and pictures complement each other in picture books making the book more clear and complete. In “The relationships of pictures and words” Perry Nodelman, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Winnepeg, explores ways in which both verbal and visual aspects in picture books express more than either one by itself. He states

To begin, the aspect that is of at most importance in pictures books are clearly the type of illustrations. Effective illustrations set the tone for the type of book that it will be. To not get misunderstood, the text is essential as well. However when it comes to young readers, the pictures are what are going to the most impactful. In Abstract Alphabet, each page provides a colorful visual of the lower and upper case version of each letter. The letters on each page are also fairly large so it can be easily seen. This is important because this book for children attempting to actually learn the alphabet. It

Pictures in books help me out with understanding the context, and being able to visualize what is going on in the book. “Victorian England” contains lots of pictures and maps, and every picture has captions to explain what exactly is happening.

This literature review is concerned with the effective and engaging way to deliver visual art lesson to students. This is a significant educational topic because research suggests that students’ engagement in the classroom has been distinguished as the important indicator for students’ academic success (Harbour, Evanovich, Sweigart, & Hughes, 2015). Errey and Wood (2011) also suggest that the higher the level of students’ engagement will result in a better learning outcome. However, many students have fallen in the category of disengage during their classroom practice, which also includes art classroom. The existing literature on visual art education proven that many students in art classroom claimed that they were bored and showed resistance in their art classes (Pennisi, 2013), they were also not as enthusiastic about their art project as the teacher (Andrews, 2010). So, the purpose of this literature review is to discuss several approaches for teachers to effectively deliver art education in the classroom.