If you read my last Wednesday post (before vacation week), you know that I’m concerned by the negative attitude many middle school students seem to have about the research process.
Why do they think it’s boring? Probably because their initial experiences with research haven’t been authentic. After all, it’s difficult to create active, self-driven research experiences for early elementary students.
weeks, I’ll be sharing a series of activities that will allow
early elementary students to develop research skills, such as visual literacy and
information literacy, without actually doing research. As a result, they’ll be
ready to start
doing authentic research in third grade.
started, I recommend modeling visual thinking with read alouds that:
—encourage
observation
—help
students understand story sequence
—show
how pictures and words can work together to tell a story or share information
—show
how pictures can enhance a story or make information relevant to children’s
experiences by going beyond the words.
This
scaffolded way of introducing visual literacy is especially helpful for English
language learners and children who haven’t grown up reading bedtime stories
with their parents.
simple books that encourage observation.
Where’s
Walrus?
by Steve Savage is a playful game-like wordless picture book that invites
readers to look for a walrus that has escaped from the zoo. Children will
giggle at the silly situations in which they spot the star of the story.
Rabbit!
by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Litchenheld delights students with simple
language and cleverly crafted images that can be viewed in two different ways.
Which way is “right”? Readers must decide.
picture books and guide students in telling the story by making meaning of the
pictures.
good example of a book that uses a series of pictures to show a natural process
and convey a human experience.
In The
Girl and the Bicycle by Mark Peet, the pictures allow children to “read”
the main character’s emotions and predict her behaviors.
how story panels can isolate moments in time and work together to tell a story.
to move on, introduce graphic picture books with simple text.
Possibilities include Blackout by John Rocco and One Day, The End by Rebecca Kai Dotlich. While these books are a blend of words and pictures, the
images contribute a great deal to the storytelling.
poems provide clues about camouflaged creatures hidden in the pictures. By
extracting key information from the text, children can identify the mystery
animals.
books in which the pictures go beyond the words, taking the story in delightful
new directions.
includes illustrations that add humor to the story by contradicting the text.
Redwoods by Jason Chin features straightforward
expository nonfiction text, but the illustrations show the imaginative thoughts
of a boy who appears to be reading the same book. This technique allows readers
to feel as if they’re experiencing the unique and unfamiliar redwood forest ecosystem
right along with the child in the story.
Chances are that you already do some of the things I’ve described above. But did you ever looked at then through the visual literacy lens and did you realize that you were laying the groundwork for helping students develop research skills? You were, and that will become clearer as we continue with this series if blog posts.
What’s the nest step in getting ready for
research? Next
week we’ll take a look at ways to help children think critically about the
images they see in picture books.
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One Response
observation! that's a critical research tool, and so many people forget about it. Great list of titles for kids, thanks.