Day 4: Furtraders Narrative

Cindy 's writing with art lesson

Today Cindy presented our lesson centered around narrative writing and I took the debriefer/observer role. It's always fun to watch Cindy teach because she has a great rapport with her students and she's very expressive. She began my reminding the students of the mini-lessons they had worked on for planning a narrative. To mark how the narrative writing is different she asked the kids what kind of writing we had done last time (foursquare! response, informational). She wrote informational and narrative on the board and made sure the kids understood the distinction. She emphasized that when we write we want to make the reader interested and involved, and even entertained.

We passed out sketchbooks and pencils. Cindy passed out booksets about the artist Van Gogh. She said "Pretend these pictures are illustrations in a book, and we have to figure out the problem/solutions of the story". She asked if they knew what an illustration is. She asked the kids to glance through the book, but we weren't reading it today, just looking at the pictures. Some kids recognized Starry, Starry Night from art class. Cindy thought we should have our main idea umbrellas for our elements of art to help us talk, so I quickly drew them on the board.

elements of art main idea umbrellas

First we looked at a self-portrait of Van Gogh. "Does he look happy? Why not?" One boy, Justin, came up with a problem- he must have asked his girlfriend to marry him but she turned him down and now he was sad. This made us adults laugh thinking about poor jilted Van Gogh!!



looking at Van Gogh for problem/solution

 The next page contained a series of black and white reproductions of prints and drawings. "Ooh, these are in black and white..." (They're SKETCHES! was called out). As the kid looked at each image Cindy encouraged them to start off saying "I see..." to describe the scene and then asked them to imagine a problem and solution. She tried to give each student a chance and tried to pull out the quieter kids by calling on them directly. Many creative responses were supplied by the students and they seemed quite excited thinking up new stories from the pictures.

After a few rounds, Cindy asked "Do we all imagine the same story from the same picture?" (response: Nooooo, we all have different stories). "So when we go to a museum do we just walk by each painting and top for a few seconds, uhhuh... whatever...ok... passing by each one? What should you do?" (response: you should stop and make up a story). Some kids had a hard time getting started, and Cindy said "Well, tell me about it... first tell me what you SEE". And when a kid kept continuing with more problems and no solutions she said, "When a reader reads a problem and there's no solution, the reader gets sad or confused, but if you give a solution..." (response: Then the reader really GETS it!).

We came upon a very dark blue image, and Cindy said "What time of day is this? How do you know? Sometimes colors can give us a MOOD". She wasn't sure if she should bring this part of art elements up, but it was a very natural time to do so. I think Cindy knows a lot more about art then she thinks she does, and she led the discussion about the paintings very naturally, using the art vocabulary we had previously covered with the kids. The kids had so much fun making up problems and solutions that what was originally expected to be a preliminary exercise, became the main activity.
It was clear that the students had the concept, so we moved on to the image of the Furtraders on the Missouri. We passed out a new foursquare and copy of the painting for the kids to glue in their sketchbooks. Cindy demonstrated how to glue a page into the book since some had difficulty.
Cindy reviewed which information the kids should put in the boxes:
"First thing is..." (Look at the painting!)
" and then get the"... (information! the Setting! the characters!)... "and maybe the mood"
"then you'll invent a problem and solution"
She said, "Remember what Ms Elcin told us about looking at a painting- find the colors, shapes, foreground, and background. Like, what do you notice about this boat?" (response: Symmetry! It's straight.)
"What kind of a boat is it?" (Canoe) "Would you want to ride in that boat? How does the water look?"
"Let's imagine who these characters are.. friends, enemies, brothers, criminals?"


filling in a new foursquare

 At this point the kids started writing and Cindy and I roamed the room, offering tips, helping kids work out their ideas, and passing out final draft paper. We ran a little short on time, but Cindy said she'd allow them to finish their stories after lunchtime.


writing the good copy

 Before we finished, I wanted to inform them of our next activity, so I showed them a map screenprint I'd done on fabric, and said we were going to start talking about rivers, which was why we chose a river picture to write about today.

I think we have a good energy and cooperation going. The students seem very engaged and I'm hearing a lot of our art vocabulary from them. I'm currently thinking about what I can do about our river background collaborative piece that might connect to Cindy's geology unit somehow. Do you talk about strata?