Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Constructing Meaning through Visual Spatial Activities: An ALAN Grant

2007; Volume: 34; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.21061/alan.v34i3.a.4

1547-741X

Allison L. Baer,

Spatial Cognition and Navigation

hamatee stood in front of the class, cardboard box in hand, explaining how her model was related to the book, Mick Harte Was Here (Barbara Park, Random House, 1996).It was a re creation of the scene when Phoebe, Mick's sister, was speaking at his funeral.This was the culminating project of a six-week unit using literature circles.The project was minimal with little detail.In fact, if Shamatee had not explained that it was a model of the church, there would have been no way of identifying it.Her accompanying writing, however, told a different story.In it she explained how the book, and this scene in particular, had reminded her of her own brother who died in a motorcycle accident.Shamatee empa thized with Phoebe and could feel her sadness and fear as she spoke at her own brother's funeral.The black, dark walls spoke to her intense emotions when she recalled this event because of reading the book.Shamatee understood Phoebe's pain and loss.Her connections to the book were real; her model was, in fact, a three-dimensional object showing in-depth meaning-making from this book.In general, Shamatee did not have a great track record of completing written assignments as they were usually minimal with little evidence of understanding or depth.But here was a piece of writing, almost two pages in length, discuss ing why she chose to create this scene and what it meant to her.The model was a bridge between her reading of the book and her writing about the book.This experience made me wonder about how students construct meaning from a book.In particular, how do students construct meaning through visual spatial activities such as models and other art forms?This article describes a study in which I sought to answer that question by working with ten sixth-grade struggling readers responding to short stories using visual spatial activities.Research shows that alternate ways of constructing meaning are infrequently used in reading classrooms (Smagorinsky;Smagorinsky & Coppock 1994).The norm in most reading and language arts classes is to encourage students to use the mode of writing to show what they know.How ever, according to Armstrong, "linguistic intelligence is not the only building block for reading competence" (79).I cannot help but wonder what amazing ex amples of constructing meaning we are missing in our classrooms when we limit our students' mode of communication to writing.Let me state that there is nothing wrong with using written expression in the reading classroom; the problem arises when that mode is the only option available. Reader Response TheoryThis study is built upon Rosenblatt's (1978) Reader Response Theory in which she speaks of reading as a transaction, a type of living through text with two different ways of transacting with textaesthetic and efferent."Sensing, feeling, imagining, thinking, synthesizing the states of mind, the reader who adopts the aesthetic attitude feels no compulsion other than to apprehend what goes on during this