Arts LINC was born out of the work on visual art and writing, a part of Project RAISE (Reading and arts integrated for Student Excellence). The project uncovered a consistent theme of vocabulary development with students who were involved in active VIEW (Visual Integration to Enhance Writing) classrooms. As the project evolved we observed the change in oral language for all students. At the same time research literature about vocabulary development has reached a point of maturity. Research has pointed to increasing vocabulary as a key to narrowing the achievement gap. Arts LINC seeks to build on the work of VIEW that helped children communicate through art and writing and add the dimension of focused vocabulary development. It is the conviction of this project that the arts add for the student the dimension of meaning and emotion to literacy acquisition.
Our approach
We have chosen to integrate vocabulary strategies found in leading edge research by Graves, Beck, Nagy, & Hiebert to our VIEW critical elements.
- Art first—connecting language and writing with image.
- Oral rehearsal—allowing students time to orally rehearse the ideas developed during the image making or viewing process.
- Writing process—editing and conferencing.
- Publishing—the writing and art are done with a sense of audience.
Students will listen to a story or look at a famous painting and then participate in creative production. The teacher and students will make connections between the artistic process and vocabulary both general and task specific academic vocabulary. Then students will verbalize about their experience, process, and performance/product. During this time they will make further connections of understanding. Students will then participate in some written form (including dictation) of communicating their ideas—again reinforcing the language connections. Finally they will share their final performance/artwork so they can a sense of real purpose to the work.
Arts LINC modifies VIEW critical elements by adding a more focused approach to vocabulary; however, the emphasis on the intertwining of both linguistic and artistic forms of communication remains the same. In this manual, we are beginning with sample lessons that use those critical elements and suggested strategies from vocabulary research and overtime will move to unit development.
We believe that every lesson should begin with a stimulus often a piece of literature or a work of art. Then the teacher can move into art production and use the child’s artwork as part of the vocabulary instruction and then conclude with an opportunity to use the new vocabulary. Or conversely the teacher might begin with literature, then move to vocabulary instruction, then to art production and still conclude with oral and/or written expression.
Word consciousness—and especially understanding the power of word choice—is essential for sustained vocabulary growth. Words are the currency of written language. Learning new words is an investment, and students will make the required investment to the extent that they believe that the investment is worthwhile.
Judith Scott and William Nagy, Vocabulary Scholars (quoted in Graves, p. 119)
The connection of the arts to vocabulary instruction helps build that word consciousness, the meaning and emotion connected to a child’s work of art provides the motivation for the investment in the effort in word choice and the image itself helps the student make the needed cognitive connections to make the new words a part of the student’s expressive vocabulary.
Vygotsky (1978) proposed that make-believe play, drawing, and writing are different movements in a essentially unified development of written language. In his work, Language and Thought, he breaks down language into its simplest form- its atom, the word. We would conjecture that most basic words –nouns, verbs and adjectives have an image attached. When you learned the word cat it was associated with a picture or a live animal. Thus as the need for specificity about that cat continues, more specific words added deeper meaning, thus the cat in your mind could be described as fat or sleek, fluffy or hairless cat. Similarly children’s drawings start very elemental and then become more complex.
Dyson in her work in the 80’s began to look at the writing of small children. She studied composing events (1984). She noticed that children would use image and text interchangeably as if intertwined symbol systems in one composing event (1986, 87). She found that children using this multiple symbol system were able to create more complex and coherent writing. This mixing of symbols systems allowed them greater freedom to express their ideas because they weren’t limited by what words they could spell or write. She hypothesized that if the classroom teacher would encourage this use of both symbol systems it would enhance the writing process. She further noticed that children also used drawing not only to record things but also time and space (1987, 88). Thus the art itself had a narrative quality. By tapping into that image (both viewing and creating), we can help children unlock these ideas to make connections to new words and concepts.
We found in our work with VIEW that children were willing to make the investment of effort to find the right words for their own picture. Copies of well-used thesauruses were evident in VIEW classrooms. We want to build upon that learning environment by adding the work of Graves, Hiebert, Nagy, Scott and other scholars of vocabulary development.
Michael Graves describes in The Vocabulary Book...Learning and Instruction, a four part program to vocabulary development; 1) Providing Rich and Varied Language Experiences; 2) Teaching Individual Words; 3) Teaching Word-learning Strategies; and 4) Promoting Word Consciousness. Arts LINC will particularly focus on 1 and 4. We will tie the arts experiences to encounters with children’s literature using various approaches from literacy experts such as Graves, Beck, Hiebert, and others. While we believe that writing about the art experience is one the best ways to help children make these new words part of their expressive vocabularies, young primary students are often limited by their emerging literacy skills. So we also encourage enriched classroom discussion and dictation as avenues to build expressive vocabularies.
Why research?
Arts LINC is a research and dissemination project based on the work of many researchers in the field. Finding ways to help children acquire and make sense of language is an important avenue of investigation.
Arts LINC has received funding from U.S. Department of Education to investigate the linkages between the arts and literacy.
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