A PLACE for PICTURE WALKS in the SECONDARY CLASSROOM With novels, poems, and short stories - not picture books - the privileged form of literature in the secondary English classroom, picture walks become a "comprehension within text" strategy that most middle and high school teachers assume can no longer be utilized. However, illustrations crop up in secondary reading materials more often - and in more creative and nontraditional ways - than teachers think. So awareness of those potential alternative resources - ones that lend that visual "comprehension within text" aid to students - is valuable. It provides teachers the opportunity to chose them over their perhaps standardized print-only forms. We have highlighted two main ways that secondary teachers can continue the elementary tradition of picture walks as "comprehension within text" strategies in their middle and high school classrooms. Also, a list of additional illustrated version of high school texts is also provided.
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1. Short story units are curriculum staples in, at least, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th grade. And they provide opportunities for that dense literature textbook to come in handy. Look into textbook versions of short stories. Make photocopies of them to distribute rather than just "copy and pasting" the stories into a Microsort Word document from online. Textbooks, especially Prentice Hall Literature textbooks, often insert pictures into the included short stories, enabling picture walks.
2. Canonical poetry is an increasing target of contemporary artists, Many have complemented the timeless words with visuals. For example:
Blog: Zen Pencils Australian cartoonist Gavin Aung Than adapts "inspirational quotes into comics." Already in his short career with his blog, Zen Pencils, he has adapted many famous poems. Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Robert Frost, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman all make the list.Some are metaphoric interpretations of the poems, but there are ones that are direct pictorial complements of the literal meaning.
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Gertrude Steins' "Tender Buttons: Objects" Poetry Collection Illustrated by Lisa Congdon
With the challenging and obscure syntax of Getrude Stein's poetry, Congdon's illustrations make her poetry more friendly and more accessible. The genre already has a stigma in high school classrooms, so the introduction of a complex poet threatens to worsen student preconceptions of poetry. Complementary illustrations would probably be welcomed and embraced by students.
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