Reflection #11

In her article “It Was Always the Pictures…” Paula Kluth describes several different ways to use art as a part of curriculum make literacy and learning more relevant for students with disabilities in the classroom. Kluth mentions graphic organizers, picture books, fascination focused materials, graphic notes, and story kits as a few different ways to engage all students including visual learners and students with disabilities.  Graphic organizers are useful to help students find the main ideas and concepts within a text, and can be modified with movable pictures for students who struggle with fine motor skills. Picture books also help students follow and understand material, and can be used even in the higher grades as a jumping off point to more in-depth projects by students. Fascination focused material can be particularly helpful with students with autism, who often fixate on one particular topic of interest. If this topic is incorporated into the lesson, these students have the opportunity to be fully engaged in curriculum, rather than distracted by other interests. Graphic note taking can allow visual learners to have an alternative way of writing down important material, and the can create their own system of symbols to make the content relevant and recognizable. Story kits, containing various objects relating to material can be another great way to engage students who are blind or who struggle with fine motor skills. Although many of these strategies are beneficial to visual learners or students with disabilities, they are often helpful in making content relevant to all students in the classroom.

Greek Pentathlon

Farming Unit

Farming

Making Maple Syrup

Learning About Music

In elementary school, pictures and picture books were often used in the classroom, however, graphic organizers, story kits, fascination focused materials, and graphic notes were not used. One reason for some of this, I think, is that we did not take notes in my elementary school. We created artistic main lesson books which related to content being taught and composed stories to put in these mail lesson books. Sometimes we also performed skits, poems, dances, plays, or songs which related to the curriculum. I suppose some of the materials used in these performances could be considered a part of a story kit, but it was next called that explicitly. I always found these activities to be helpful in making material more relevant and interesting, and enjoyed being more actively involved in learning. How can we incorporate both artistic and active ways for students to participate in learning? Although I do think these visual strategies could be helpful, I don’t think that taking notes should be the only way for students to learn curriculum. I think they should be able to participate through a variety of different ways, including visual and artistic strategies. These strategies, to me, also seem like they might need to be taught explicitly to students. In order to make them useful in the classroom, I think the teacher would have to model to and instruct students so that they would be use visual strategies in a meaningful way.