I.
Scribbling Stage
(2-4 years)
Child is exploring body control. Hand movements are evident in three sequential levels of scribbling.
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1.
Uncontrolled scribbling.
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2.
Controlled scribbling—
horizontal and circular scribbles that can be further analyzed into twenty basic scribbles.
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3.
Naming of scribbling—About
the ages of 3 and 4 shapes or configurations become evident. The shapes appear circular or else cruciform, The child at this time begins to name his scribbles. Rhoda Kellogg would call these configuration design aggregates.
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II.
Pre-Schematic or Pictorial Stage
(4-7 years)
The child is developing his “schema”—visual images that he/she will use to represent people, things, etc. For example, the child will use only those parts of the human body that he/she is actively aware of. The more detail he/she adds is dependent upon his mental growth and the type of stimulation he receives from his environment.
Spatial concepts—the ways a child uses space in his drawing— become significant. Initially things float in a two-dimensional space. When a child proceeds to use a baseline in his drawing and places things on that line, it appears that the child is ready to learn to read. The child has moved into a three-dimensional reality. This is a particularly crucial place in development, since learning to read necessitates being able to move beyond the ego-centric stage toward the outer world beyond the self, which can be called becoming socio-centric. Psychologically, this is the place in development where the child becomes a separate and distinct individual from his parent/s. He/she is then able to grow towards relating to other children and adults in his/her life.
III.
Schematic or the Achievement of a Form Concept Stage
(7-9 years)
The child will further develop his schema—visual images by giving the human figure more details, will show greater action, and will relate to other objects in drawing. The child further develops his/her sense of space by trying to relate three-dimensional objects to a two-dimensional surface (paper). There are three common portrayals of space at this stage:
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1.
X-ray—
Both the inside and the outside of an object is shown.
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2.
Foldover—
If you were to fold the child’s drawing up, both sides of the drawing would look as if they were standing up. The objects are drawn perpendicular to the base line. The child is the center of his/her drawing. He/she will turn the drawing (paper) around or move himself/herself around the paper.
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3.
Conceptualizing—
The child attempts to show two different planes in the same drawing. One plane can be the base line which is horizontal. The other plane is a growing attempt at depth which may portray itself as a curved plane. The child is not able yet to establish a horizontal and vertical frame of reference.
IV. Gang Age
Stage
(9-11 years)
This stage is referred to as the period of
dawning realism
. The child continues to develop the human form with an emphasis on the difference between boys and girls—their clothing, hair styles, etc. The child’s understanding of three-dimensional space will evidence itself through:
overlapping
, discovering planes in space and filling in space between baselines. At this point it will be useful to discuss the child’s use of color, because the reading activities that will follow are dependent upon the understanding that color at this developmental stage is used by the child in an emotional and personal manner. Technical color theories have no application at this level. Color is experienced by the child at this level in a very subjective and intuitive way.
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In summary, the learning stages of art development shown here correlate with Piaget’s stages of development known as the sensorimotor period, the preoperational period, and the concrete operations period. A child’s visual images are closely related to his intellectual growth.
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The image or drawing can be a means of encouraging the growth of reading skills in the child with serious deficiencies as long as we remain aware of the child’s developmental level, which may or may not relate to his chronological age.
Many of the presently published reading materials utilized with children who have serious reading problems are known as the “high interest, low vocabulary” type. The disadvantage of some of this material is that it necessitates a relatively stable emotional maturity in the child and assumes him/her to have a wide variety of experience. The selection of suitable reading material requires stories that seek to develop the child’s personality at his/her emotional level, that integrate the use of the child’s imagination with the growth of his/her intellectual abilities, that recognize the child’s abilities and hopes, and that result in a problem being resolved. Reading materials can and should contain meaning for the child at his/her developmental level by presenting him/her with stories that assure him/her that a child’s circumstances and difficulties are not only understood, but that these problems can be resolved, bringing with it growing confidence and a hope for the future. If the child’s inner life can be developed constructively, his/her ability to deal with the outer world in our complex and often perplexing contemporary society will be accomplished from a more secure foundation.
I have selected the fairy tale as the reading material, because it includes many of the above qualifications. Fairy tales contain vast sources of satisfaction for children since they develop the child’s personality at their particular stage of development; thus they provide a source of learning about the inner problems of being a child—problems which are always resolved at the story’s end. For centuries the fairy tale has endured and been developed across cultures throughout the world with similar and unifying messages through an oral tradition.
For a long time, the prevailing theories of child development declared fairy tales to be inappropriate for children. Many of the stories, it was felt, contained material—troubles, anxieties and violent fantasies—that a child should be protected from.
In opposition to this view of child-rearing, contemporary psychological thinking holds that our unconscious life is extremely important to the development of our personalities. The unconscious contains the struggles of our feelings, which can at times be negative and angry. The fairy tale can offer an acceptable situation in which to deal with these negative feelings by confronting the child with a problem to be resolved. The realities of life are not all good and pleasant for any of us, especially the child who knows that he/she is not all good. The fairy tale not only presents good and evil, but incorporates other of life’s conflicts such as sibling rivalry, ambivalent feelings towards parents, sexual development, and gaining autonomy from one’s parents. The many changing forms of the contemporary family and community life, and their concomitant feelings of isolation, can be observed in the fairy tale through development of the hero. The hero in the fairy tale endures many tests and troubles before finally gaining success. The reward is always achieved. The hero usually develops an interpersonal relationship which is necessary for achieving autonomy from one’s parents. In the listening to and/or reading of the fairy tales the child will choose his/her own meaning as he/she needs to. The adult does not need to interpret the story for the child, since each child develops his/her own personality depending upon what he/she is ready to accept from the story.
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The fairy tales selected for this plan contain the elements discussed above, with the aim being that the stories will give the child with serious reading deficiencies the opportunity to grow in his/her personal development, utilizing his strengths toward reading improvement through art. The art activities will become part of each reading skill developed for each fairy tale. The drawing of personal images in color will utilize basic art materials that are readily available to the teacher. They are paper, crayons, colored pencils and washable markers. Drawing is the child’s most direct and personal way of presenting his personal images. It is also the child’s most common and familiar method of image-making.
The four tales chosen as the reading material are:
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
1. The Three Feathers
2. The Juniper Tree
3. The Story of One Who Set Out to Study Fear
4. Fitcher’s Feathered Bird
These four tales have been selected since they were favorably accepted by a group of sixth graders with reading problems in a remedial situation. Although chronologically sixth graders, this group of students was functioning in reading at a second/third grade level. Development in their art work ranged from about the level of a four year old to above the level of a twelve year old child.
Less commonly known tales, such as the four chosen here, apply to the previously discussed objectives concerning the value of the fairy tale.
1. The Three Feathers is a tale in which the hero is one of three brothers who is considered to be a hopeless simpleton. In spite of his position, the simpleton is victorious in the end; he is able to complete the tasks that the three brothers are given. Three feathers are thrown into the air by the brothers’ father, who is an old king. Each brother follows the direction of the feather in order to find (1) a carpet, (2) a ring and (3) a beautiful woman. Only the simpleton brother is able to succeed at the tasks and gain the position of king. Because nothing is expected of the hero, he uses his natural abilities, rather than trying to be clever like his brothers. The hero becomes someone for the child to identify with when he becomes superior. Often a child may feel stupid in the real world. If the feeling is reinforced in his life, it may result in his becoming ‘stupid’ because he believes it. In this tale the so-called simpleton becomes a figure for the child to struggle along with until the hero realizes his potential. He is not so stupid after all. His inner wisdom even causes him to be respected by his clever brothers.
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2. The Juniper Tree is a story that deals violently with a family situation. A husband and wife have a son after many years of marriage.—Before the wife dies she asks to be buried under the juniper tree in front of their house. Sometime later the husband remarries and with his new wife has a daughter. The stepmother torments the boy until she tricks him into being decapitated by the lid of a chest full of apples. The stepmother sits the dead boy in a chair with a cloth holding his head in place, with an apple in his lap. The daughter enters the house and is told by her mother to talk to the boy. If he doesn’t answer, the girl is to punch him in his head. Thus his head is knocked off and the girl feels she is to blame for this horrible act. With the girl in tears the stepmother proceeds to make a stew for supper _ from the boy’s body. Father comes home to supper to be told by the stepmother that the boy has left home. As was the custom long ago, the bones were thrown under the table. The girl gathers up the bones in her best scarf and proceeds to bury the bones of her stepbrother under the juniper tree. Magically the spirit of her brother takes the form of a beautiful bird which/who will see that justice is done. The hero boy in the form of a bird sings a song repeated numerous times, which tells what harm was done to him. The bird sings for three people in requesting three gifts: (1) a golden chain, (2) a pair of red shoes and (3) a millstone, and returns to his home. Dramatically the story ends with father receiving the golden chain, stepsister getting the pair of red shoes and stepmother getting her due by being crushed with the millstone. To resolve the tale, brother returns to his human form and life proceeds happily. Beneath the violent occurrences in this tale are found two psychological conflicts to be resolved, i.e. the ambivalent feelings toward the parent and the Oedipal conflict. So typical of the fairy tale is the appearance of two mothers, the good mother who dies and the stepmother who represents evil. The presence of these two mothers permits the child to be angry at the stepmother without guilt. This means that the child can be angry with his own mother and at the same time protect himself from his feelings of abandonment. Thus he/she can safely handle any ambivalent feelings toward the person who is of prime importance to the child.
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The Oedipal conflict is also apparent when the girl is used by her mother, who attempts to make the girl feel guilty for her stepbrother’s death. From the boy’s point of view, he was abused and killed by his stepmother, but becomes victorious in life after destroying the evil stepmother. The stepmother’s lack of control brought about her own destruction.
3. The Story of One Who Set Out to Study Fear relates the task of feeling and overcoming fear. A father has two sons, The elder is successful and approved of; the younger son is unsuccessful. The younger son is sent into the world to learn how to become something with his most important goal—to be able to feel fear. The boy stays with a sexton and his wife and is given the job of ringing the bell in the church tower at night. The sexton, unknown to the boy, disguises himself as a ghost in order to scare the boy. The boy, being unable to express fear, shoves the disguised sexton down the stairs, breaking his leg. The sexton’s wife is very upset and throws the boy out. The boy continues and meets a man who promises to show him fear. The boy must sit all night under a gallows from which are swinging seven dead people. The night is cold, so the boy builds a fire to keep warm. He brings down the seven bodies from the gallows to keep them warm. The boy claims they are stupid; they won’t talk, and they let their clothes catch fire. He proceeds to hang the dead people back up on the gallows. Along comes another man to challenge the boy’s inability to feel fear. The boy is told that if he can watch for three nights in an enchanted castle, which is guarded by evil spirits, he will get to marry the king’s beautiful daughter. The boy chooses three things to bring with him: a fire, a lathe, and a bench with a vise and a whittling knife. During the three nights that pass, the boy is challenged by ferocious cats and dogs, a bed that rides throughout the castle, dead men divided in half, and a bowling set of skulls and bones. On the third night he is presented with a dead body in a coffin. A giant old man with a long white beard appears and dares the boy to a test of strength. The boy fools the man by catching his beard in the anvil with his ax. His reward is a chest of gold. The following morning the king keeps his promise by giving his daughter in marriage to the boy. Still he can not feel fear. The boy’s wife resolves the problem by pouring a bucket full of cold water and minnows on him. Finally, he feels fear. This tale emphasizes the need to gain independence from one’s parents and the repression of sexual feelings. The child hearing the story may deal with his sexual fears or not. Rather he/she may deal with fear as the worries or anxieties of a child.
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4. Fitcher’s Feathered B _ is a story that deals with female sexual growth. A sorcerer, disguised as a poor man, takes three daughters, one by one, to his home in the forest. Each daughter is given two tests to accomplish while he is gone away. The girls may go anywhere in the house except one forbidden room. The sorcerer gives each girl the key to the forbidden room along with an egg which they must carefully guard. The two eldest girls fail the test. Curiosity overcomes them to open the forbidden room. Inside are the bloody bodies of dead people who have been hacked with an ax. The egg which the first two girls carry rolls into the room to become covered with blood that can not be removed. Only the youngest daughter is able to outsmart the sorcerer. She puts her egg in a safe place, goes to the forbidden room and reassembles the pieces of her sisters’ bodies who have been killed by the sorcerer for disobeying his orders. The sisters come back to life and are hidden in another room. The sorcerer comes home and believes that the youngest daughter has been faithful to his wishes. She will be his bride. Continuing to fool the sorcerer,the youngest daughter tells him that he must bring a basket full of gold to her parents. The two elder sisters are hidden in the basket, and proceed to force the sorcerer to exhaust himself by not resting along the way with his heavy load. Meanwhile the youngest daughter has glued feathers all over her body to make the sorcerer believe she is a bird. So that the sorcerer and his friends will come into the house, the feathered sister places a flower- decorated skull in the window. With perfect timing the girls’ family arrives, locks the doors with the sorcerer and his friends inside, and burns the house and all inside. During the time in which a child’s sexuality is awakening into its more overt adolescent stages, this tale can be appropriate, since beneath the gore are ideas about sexual curiosity, temptation and sexual roles.
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Aside from the sexual nature of the story, which some children might find difficult to deal with, is the more approachable theme of the good and evil ways of handling curiosity; the evil sorcerer exploits curiosity to destroy has victims, while the inherently good sisters use their curiosity to seek fulfillment and destroy the destroyer.
The four Grimm’s Fairy Tales discussed above would be read aloud by the teacher as an oral introduction to each story. This method would reaffirm the oral tradition of the fairy tale along with giving the child the pleasure of using his imagination to listen to and picture the events of the story. A suggested oral discussion would follow) guaranteeing the adult’s active involvement in telling the story and affirming the need for a shared experience with the teacher. No pictures or illustrations would accompany the oral presentation of the stories since they may divert the child’s attention and interfere with the images that flow in the mind as the story is being told.
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A list of ten to twenty words selected by the students and/or the teacher would be incorporated into a spelling lesson. These words would be of a high emotional impact and would adapt themselves to a suitable reading objective for the level of the students, which in my situation would be the second/third grade reading level. Some suggested examples of words from Fitcher’s Feathered Bird would be: sorcerer, forbid, hacked, horrified, hugged, gleaming, ax and disguised. The use of art through color and drawing will be utilized. Since color has such a highly personal and emotional meaning—for each of us, the students would be asked to write or draw each word in color using markers, pencils or crayons. The color(s)—or lack of them—should be freely chosen. The purpose of emphasizing the use of color is derived from the evidence related in the Luscher Color Test, which utilizes color(s) to determine an individual’s personality or emotional condition. There appears to evidence that color(s) have a direct effect on body chemistry, with the result that specific color(s) can assess an individual’s anxieties.
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From observation in a remedial situation this past year in the use of color in spelling, students who participated did make progress in their spelling abilities. Color seemed to cause an emotional release. Some students resisted the use of color when applied to the practice writing of words. Others who became involved in using color in their practice writing of words had greater success in spelling words correctly. This use of color as an emotional release in the learning process would suggest further research. The research sources available in this area of color psychology applied to learning are limited.
Each word in the spelling list, being one that possesses high emotional impact, can be portrayed in a visual image through drawing. An example would be the word sorcerer from Fitcher’s Feathered Bird. We can think of the many “pictures” that would come to mind. Each child’s drawing of his/her image would be accepted at his/her developmental level without imposing adult values. Then we can proceed to develop a sentence in writing that describes or explains each drawing. Praise and encouragement should be given for all efforts. As confidence increases the demand for more complex sentence formations can be made. Story context and dictionary usage can be helpful when a child has difficulty with definition or sentence formation. At times a word may need to be utilized in an oral sentence to assist in forming a visual image.
Reading comprehension, being the ability to understand and communicate the levels of meaning in written material, is a necessary skill for the child, both as a thinker and a future contributing member of society. Comprehension skills require the following abilities:
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1. The ability to decode the written word. 2 The ability to concentrate.
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3. The ability to know word meaning(s).
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4. The ability to relate experience(s) to the material.
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5. The ability to think at his developmental level.
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6. The ability to have the belief (self-image) that one is capable of understanding.
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Comprehension tasks will be developed through art connecting writing and the drawing of personal images. The cognitive skills of selecting details, finding main ideas, ordering the sequence of events, and drawing conclusions as cause and effect will be presented in a combined writing and drawing format. Specifically this will include questions that will allow for visual depiction of concepts, and sentence formation. At the factual level the student will initially select details by making lists classifying the characters, places and objects found in each fairy tale. List examples from Fitcher’s Feathered Bird with questions that ask who?, what?, and where? This would bring responses such as: sorcerer, three daughters, house in the forest and forbidden room. Drawings of these details would be made with labels in the form of sentences that describe each detail. In order to arrive at the factual main idea of each fairy tale the previously developed lists of details would assist the student in answering the question: What is this story about? The goal here is to incorporate the lists of details in writing sentences that describe the main idea of each story. These two concepts: main idea and details can have an interchangeable order. That is based upon the understanding that individual children may have the strength of thinking analytically or synthetically. They may work best thinking from parts toward the whole and/or thinking of the whole and further separating it into its parts. Flexibility in being aware of individual differences in students is of great importance since developing confidence and the feelings of success are qualities that the child with serious reading deficiencies urgently needs.
The factual skill of ordering the sequence of events in the fairy tale through imagery and sentence formation will then be developed. Sequential ordering lends itself appropriately to the visual image in drawing. From observation, children with serious reading problems have great difficulty in ordering events in the sequence of their happening. This might have some developmental connection to a child’s concept of time. Initially, students would select one event or situation of their own choice from the fairy tale to illustrate. Upon the group’s completion, the individual drawings would be organized into sequential order as each event occurred in the story. Sentences would then be written, both as a group and individually. To further enhance sequential development each student would be given a piece of three-”frame” drawing paper- or what is known as a “T.V. story pad”. Students would be asked to select three events from the fairy tale that would portray the beginning, middle and end of the story. Each of the three drawings would be given a descriptive sentence that explains each picture. Students with the understanding of beginning, middle and end may proceed to a five-frame “T.V. story pad” in which they are asked to order events as first, second, third, fourth and fifth.
The interpretive comprehension skill of drawing conclusions (cause and effect) will be the next objective. Interpretive ability requires the student to go beyond the factual information of the fairy tale. The student must manipulate the factual information he/she has gained from his/her previous tasks in selecting details, finding the main idea and ordering the sequence. The child has to be able to arrive at interpretations that are not clearly stated in the fairy tale. The goal is to give meaning by asking questions such as: What caused _______?, How do we know that __________?, and Why did ________?
As a culminating activity the students would write their own fairy tale that would aim to solve a problem or achieve a goal selected by the child. The tale would include drawings as personal images and sentence writing that would communicate how the character(s) solved their problem or achieved the stated goal. The purpose is to assist severely deficient readers to organize their perceptions and experiences through visual imagery toward a more successful representation of their thoughts.
A child’s drawing is a pictorial device that can represent reality vicariously and economically, and thus reflect his thinking. The child with inadequate language is deprived of many opportunities to represent his experience. Without language he lacks our major device for constructing models of reality. This alone could account for cognitive deficiency. But if his visuospatial capacities are intact he may be able to construct visual models of reality, and represent his experiences nonverbally by drawing images of them.
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