Day 1: This lesson would focus on a visual image. It introduces "I see--notice--think-- wonder" (SNTW, for See--Notice--Think--Wonder) sheets
(see Appendix A). This lesson would involve color copies of Self--Portrait by Chuck Close
covered with numbered sticky--notes. Students would choose one sticky note from the top or bottom row and fill out one SNTW sheet about the area under the sticky note. Then students would remove an adjacent sticky note and fill out one SNTW sheet about the area under that sticky note, through five or six sticky--notes or until the students begin losing interest. Then they would write a prediction about the overall image and remove the remaining sticky notes. We would discuss the image, nouns, adjectives and sentences, with the idea that the descriptions differed depending on how much of the image had been revealed, i.e., how far zoomed in or zoomed out from it one was. Then students would be asked to write how their ideas of the image changed as more of it was revealed.
Day 2: We would begin by reviewing the previous lesson, and then I would ask the students to think of (and write down) one situation in their own lives in which their understanding or opinion changed as a result of getting to know something or someone better (learned about its context or saw it from a new perspective) -- similarly to the way our understanding of the Chuck Close painting changed as our perspective grew. We would then discuss their examples. One example I could give would be the way we understand individual people better when we have met members of their family -- then we understand what aspects of them are like those of their family, and what aspects reflect their own personalities. We learn about individuals when we get to know the context from which they come. After discussion, students would be asked to write about their change in perspective as a result of getting to know the context of someone or something better.
Day 3: When students first arrive in class, they would be given opportunities to share their writing from yesterday as a way to begin discussing examples of a change in perspective. They would be asked to think of as many stories as they could in which a character's perspective changed because he or she changed size. Students might think of familiar stories they have read in books or seen in movies, such as The Indian in the Cupboard, Ralph S. Mouse, Alice in Wonderland, Stuart Little, King Kong, or Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. As they give examples and tell a little about each character's situation, I would write words on the board that they said that had to do with size, changing size, quantity, or amount of space taken up by something. After a few examples, students would be asked to write down their own examples of words that could be used to tell about something's size, its changing size, or the amount of space covered by it; I would ask them to label each word with its part(s) of speech. After a short time (probably about two minutes), a few students could share their answers if they wanted, and then I would give students a copy of an excerpt from K.C. Cole's essay "A Matter of Scale."
Students would be asked to read the excerpt quietly to themselves; then they would be paired up or asked to find a partner. Each pair of students would be asked to find as many nouns, verbs and adjectives on the page that had to do with size, changing size, quantity, or amount of space. The words that I was able to find in each category are shown in Table 3. In a discussion after the students have found the words dealing with size, the goal would be for the students to notice the large number of words related to the topic that the author used on just one page. The purpose of this assignment is to have the students see the language--rich ways in which even something as simple as size can be described, by noticing the detail and explicitness of Cole's explanations and the many examples she gives to support her points.
Table 3. The nouns, verbs, and adjectives related to size, change in size, quantity or amount of space taken up, all found on the first page of K.C. Cole's essay "A Matter of Scale"
Day 4: We will notice details in the 1931 painting The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Grant Wood.
Tell students, "You are going to be asked to notice details about this painting and to write them down. Let's do a couple together. I notice that the light from these windows shines almost half--way across the path here. [Write this up on poster paper.] Raise your hand if you notice a different detail." Add three to four more examples together, then ask students to write down ten details, things they think others wouldn't notice on their own. Have five or so students share one of their examples; write each one up on the poster paper. [Optional: Have all students write down five more details. Have approximately five more students share their examples until there is a list of about fifteen to twenty details.] Select one as the most interesting detail in the list, while each student selects the most interesting detail in his or her list. Then model adding a claim by stating, for instance, "The fact that the lights are on in these houses but not these houses is important because it shows that the horseman is a messenger," and have students write down their own claims derived from their own list of details. Then cross out all details that do not support that claim, first together and then all students on their own. Other details that might support the sample claim above are that the horse and rider appear to be racing through town, there are no telephone poles so messages probably could not be passed on by phone yet, and people are getting up and coming outside their houses as if they are talking or shouting to other people, even though it is the middle of the night -- all of these could be details that show that the horseman is a messenger.
Day 5: We will notice details in the poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" by H.W. Longfellow (written April 19, 1860). Students would have already been introduced to prepositions of location, so I would begin by having them find as many prepositions of location (and their objects) as possible. Then students will be asked to picture the scene in their minds as we read it out loud. After reading, students would fill out a SNTW sheet for texts (see the bottom half of Appendix A). A discussion leading to the formation of a claim would follow, similar to that planned for the lesson of Day 4. The purpose of this lesson is to extend the strategy used for visual images on Day 4 to use with a written text.
Other lessons could be developed based on the following ideas:
We could focus on the idea that buildings are sometimes designed to fit in their particular settings. Using multiple images of wheat stalks, wheat stacks, and wheat fields (with clear horizon lines), draw students' attention to the similarities between these natural shapes and the architecture Frank Lloyd Wright's houses designed for Midwest environments, such as his Robie House (whose interior and exterior reflect wheat stalks, stacks and fields). The purpose of this lesson would be for students to understand the importance of context: the Robie House without a Midwestern context of wheat fields is not meaningful in the way that it is when it is in its intended context. Extensions to similar examples could be made. One possibility would be to use images of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses Fallingwater, set in a forest near waterfalls, or Taliesin West, designed for the desert/mesa environment of Arizona.
Students could be asked to write about connections between houses and their environments; or images of the houses without their contexts could be shown to the students, who would then be asked to write a response to the following questions, "What information does a person need to know in order to really understand the design of this house? Why? What details give you clues about the land around this house?" In other words, the students would be asked to fill in the setting of the house.
Using scenes from Where's Waldo books,
students could be asked to choose to be one of the people in a scene (who are all only slightly different from each other) and to write a description of themselves that would allow another person to identify them. Then students would trade descriptions and try to identify their partners' chosen characters, as a means of determining whether the students' descriptions were written with sufficient detail for their partners to identify the chosen characters. This exercise would serve the purpose of helping students attend to details and include descriptions of those details in their writing, with the motivation of having another student use the details to find a particular character in the visual image.
Students could be asked to compare multiple images of a particular theme, such as images of parents caring for offspring, e.g., the paintings The Sick Monkey by William Henry Simmons, the painting Freedom from Fear by Norman Rockwell, and the photograph Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange.
These images, along with others such as Prisoners Exercising (Van Gogh), could be used to discuss and write about what is involved in freedom.
A warm--up activity one day could be to use a 'Hidden Pictures' scene in which the students have to find small images hidden within a larger image, such as one showing Casey at the Bat.