Kayla Wilson

Response to Ch. 3 Teaching Literacy through the Arts

This chapter helped me to realize how important it is for visual arts teachers to include
literacy in their classrooms. Reading all those teachers accounts of how useful it is for the
students and how easy it is to incorporate into arts lessons really made me think. While I was
reading the chapter I realized that I have already seen and learned how to effectively incorporate
literacy into an art lesson.
One of the ways I have learned in my art criticism class is to include poetry into a lesson.
This can be done in two ways. The first way is to read the students a poem and then have them
draw a piece of art based on the poem. The students then share their work with the class and
describe it based on the descriptive words that were used in the poem. Another way to do this
lesson is showing the students a famous piece of art and having them write a poem based on
what they see in the art. Both of these lessons are really good for literacy at any grade level. As
the grade level goes up, so would the poems difficulty in both situations. In the first lesson the
teacher would read a more difficult poem and in the second lesson the students would be
required to write a more in depth poem or have special style requirements.
I have also been lucky enough to have experienced literacy being taught in an art
classroom through my practicum. The teacher that I work with through my practicum often reads
to her students either before or after they finish a project. This is a proven way to help raise
literacy in students. She will also do art vocabulary activates and sometimes she has them write
in their sketchbooks. Being able to see literacy in an art classroom in action is very beneficial for
me as an aspiring teacher.