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What Do I See? What Do I Think? What Do I Wonder? (STW): A Visual Literacy Strategy to Help Emergent Readers Focus on Storybook Illustrations

2003; Wiley; Volume: 56; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

1936-2714

Janet C. Richards, Nancy A. Anderson,

Art Education and Development

????Il Storybook are essen lllll tial to stories. Illustrations depict characters' actions, expressions, and emotions. They create and capture moods such as humor, poignancy, or sadness. Illustrations also establish set tings?both time and place?convey story plots, and help readers determine whether a story is realistic or fantasy (Anderson, 2002; Huck, 2001; Raines & Isbell, 1994; Templeton, 1995). In fact, as visual experiences that spark emotional, aesthetic responses, story book illustrations are as important as?or more important than?the text in conveying a message (Anderson, 2002, p. 11). In our work with young children, we noted that many emergent readers don't naturally and automatically focus their attention on subtle aspects of illustra tions?paintings, woodcuts, linoleum block printing, cut-paper collages, photographs, and drawings that are inte gral to understanding and appreciating a story (Anderson, 2002; Raines & Isbell, 1994). We found this is especially true if the visual motif or composition de picts fanciful representations of familiar objects, such as a peach with beautiful brown eyes and a soft smile in Peach and Blue (Kilborne, 1994), eggs with pert faces in The Talking Eggs (San Souci, 1989), and chairs with bulging eyes in The Frog Prince Continued (Scieszka, 1991). In addition, many emergent readers failed to discern slight changes in story characters' facial ex pressions that convey characters' thoughts, such as Maria's furtive glance at the doorway as she tries on her moth er's ring to wear just for a moment in Too Many Tamales (Soto, 1993). We also observed that some emer gent readers have a tendency to become preoccupied with details or parts of il lustrations at the expense of the whole (Goldsmith, 1984). For example, as some of our emergent readers studied the in the storybook, June 29, 1999 (Wiesner, 1992), they became absorbed with the people, bridges, ani mals, cars, and buildings, and they over looked the gigantic, colorful turnips, broccoli, lima beans, and artichokes that were essential to the plot. We developed the visual literacy strategy What do I See? What do I Think? What do I Wonder? (STW) to develop emergent readers' visual liter acy skills by prompting them to careful ly examine storybook illustrations. Coupled with reading, writing, listen ing, and speaking, visual literacy (i.e., the ability to interpret meaning through graphie stimuli) provides an alternative way of knowing and promotes higher order thinking and problem solving abilities (Anderson, 2002; Begoray, in press; Flood, Lapp, & Wood, 1998; Kieffer, 1995). The STW strategy also stimulates emergent readers' imagina tions, interest, and curiosity and pro vides opportunities for them to offer and hear other opinions. In addition, the STW strategy helps emergent readers make predictions about characters' goals, actions, and personal traits. We have found that the strategy is equally helpful with small or large groups and with students who need individual as sistance.