Homepage --> Room with a View: Graphic Strategies

Graphic Strategies
These strategies and activities involve the use of drawing or other forms of visual representation to help students see the connections between texts and ideas. These strategies allow students to think differently about ideas as the assignments ask them to use different ways of thinking.

Graphic Strategies
Example

Click to enlarge

 Thinking in Outlines: Most students need lots of work that focuses on developing organizational structures within their thinking. I use outlines as a tool not a restricting assignment. In the picture to the left you see a typical example of how I use them in my Reading Workshop: a blank transparency projected onto the whiteboard where we generate ideas prior to reading and/or writing and/or discussing. We use the outline as a generative structure that helps us get started. "What are the categories we should be sure to consider when thinking about this subject?" Click here to download a blank generic outline to use in this way.

Click to enlarge

 Synthesizing Texts: Students read an essay, poem, or story that comments on a larger work or theme they are studying. They interpret it (in writing) after reading and discussing it in a small group. Then they represent the relationship between the text (in this case a poem about Lord of the Flies) using colors, symbols, images, and words. Then they explain what they tried to say through these images in a carefully written page. The assignment culminates with each group presenting what they did to the class and using their poster as a tool for discussion.

Click here to see another example, done differently

Click to enlarge

 Draw the Action: Students sometimes need help visualizing what they read, especially if the story is complicated. Having them make a map of the action or find some other way to "draw the action" will challenge them to read more closely to find the details necessary to draw the story. Here Rachel, Tamryn, Jessica, and Claire draw the action in the first eight books of the Odyssey to better understand the shifts in time and place as they follow Odysseus and Telemachus through the story. The emphasis on such assignments is not on the art, but rather on their ability to explain the action and explain/defend (through a presentation to the class) their thinking to the class.

Note: Though this example comes from my freshman honors class, this strategy is entirely appropriate (especially so, in fact) for readers of all abilities and texts of all types.

Click to enlarge

 Visual Thinking: How Texts Work

The assignment had several objectives:

  • prepare them to read the forthcoming chapters in Homer's Odyssey which are often a source of confusion (Books 9-12)
  • help them learn how to examine the narrative design by looking at how the text "works." All four examples here provide insight into relationships between the past/present/future, between the way things are and should be, between places and people throughout the story. The example in the top right shows, for example, that Telemachus and Odysseus accomplish nothing on their own throughout the first eight chapters, but are helped by gods, friends, strangers.
  • improve their understanding of not only how the text is designed but what happens in the story
  • focus on public speaking and critical thinking skills since each group must present their work and explain why they approached the assignment as they did (e.g., why a pie chart, why different colors.)

I must confess I did not give them very specific directions as I did not want to direct their thinking too much. As you see to the examples to the left, each group solved the problem of analysis and representation by a different means but all did exemplary work that helped them read the book better.

Click to enlarge

 Represent a Process/Stages Using a Linear Array: Students in the picture to the left use the linear array graphic organizer to explain how characters in Lord of the Flies change from the beginning to the end of the novel. I left this assignment intentionally open ended to see what they came up with. Some looked at how the group dynamics altered throughout the course of the book; others looked at the changing idea of faith; the source of power; or the characters' sense of identity changed by the story's end. Click here to see a second image that shows a group approaching the assignment differently.

Click to enlarge

 Un-Magnetic Words: Not all graphic strategies require drawing or images. Here you see students manipulating the sentences of a paragraph about Tobias Wolff's short story "Powder." I had been emphasizing paragraph organization. After having students in my Reading Workshop write a draft of a paragraph, I organized them into groups. Each group received an envelope that contained a paragraph I had written about the story. The paragraph's sentences had been cut into strips; then in groups they worked to assemble the paragraph. This makes their work with writing more interactive but also makes the work more visual, a technique that really helped them to see the structure of the paragraph.