So why don’t we use picture sources to greater effect in the classroom? Photographs, fine art pictures, cartoons, sketches, diagrams, as well as television, internet sources and DVD can contribute visual images for children to experience, explore and explain. It is often difficult to maintain a clear image in one’s head while seeking to share this image in words appropriate to the audience. Equally, if a visual image is available for children to explore, they have an opportunity to establish the backgrounds to concepts of which they may have limited experience.
Do all children come to school having had experience of the broader world around them? How many have been to a variety of seashores, woodlands, meadow or chalk grassland, climbed trees, paddled or swum in river or sea?
And yet, we expect relatively young children to attempt to write coherent stories and reports with a broad and varied vocabulary which engage the reader, using a mixture of complex and compound sentences, all to good literary effect. They face the blank sheet, seek the parameters of their whole story and then put pencil to paper. How many come unstuck after the first sentence or two, having lost the thread of the story while trying to balance the different demands from the teacher? Picture reminders, in the form of storyboards, would support them as they tackled each separate element of the story or report, allowing them to pull away and reflect before attempting the next part.
Adults have developed their visual images over a longer timescale and their own breadth of experience. There will still be missing areas, which would be limiting factors in their own ability to write. How many could write convincingly about climbing, diving, potholing, skydiving without having had a go?
The technology is available to enhance the opportunities for classroom talk and the development of at least second hand experience to support the visualisation processes that are essential for successful writing.
It is as simple as finding the right pictures. See also the two page approach to writing.
