Surrounded by Learning
Visual Arts Residencies Support Literacy Learning for Hocking Hills Preschoolers
Tina Kelsey (pictured with her preK class at Hocking Hills Elementary) worked with OAC artist Patty Mitchell to combine photography, quiltmaking and literacy.
Preschoolers need learning environments that encourage listening, communicating and developing an awareness of language and print, according to the Center for Early Literacy Learning, a research-to-practice technical assistance center funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs. For Tina Kelsey, an artist and a pre-K intervention specialist at Hocking Hills Elementary (Logan-Hocking School District), integrating literacy and the visual arts is a key strategy in creating a literacy-rich environment for students.
She has been working with OAC teaching artist Patty Mitchell to expand her repertoire of approaches for integrating arts learning with literacy development. Their collaboration combines photography and quilting with some of the most powerful literacy development activities in a preK teacher's repertoire—encouraging young children to converse, compose their own stories and create their own books.
The project began last year when Mitchell came to Kelsey's classroom to conduct a two-week residency, funded by VSA-Ohio. Their collaboration illustrates how intertwining visual arts projects and other learning experiences can pave the way for reading and writing.
Students transformed photos they took of themselves into bugs and placed them in a magical world that they painted. The results helped engage students in storytelling.
Talk Becomes Art
Mitchell began by allowing the children to photograph each other. They used copies of the portraits to make paper dolls of themselves. Kelsey says the activity promoted development of social skills—a critical factor in school success.
The impetus for what followed was one of Kelsey's everyday early literacy strategies—encouraging children to talk about their world. The conversation was about different types of insects.
The children added wings and other features they had discovered through their conversations about insects to their paper dolls.
"They were brilliant," says Mitchell. "When they saw their photographs on a piece of paper and were allowed to draw into it, they just went wild and did these beautiful drawings that I was able to work from. It was a real call and response in the process."
"That's me," one of Tina Kelsey's students tells OAC artist Patty Mitchell.
The children then painted a background on fabric and incorporated their insect portraits into the scene. The resulting quilts were photographed and became a photo collage.
Art Becomes Story
A new dimension appeared when Mitchell brought out the paper dolls during story time. "The children were on their feet," she says. "So we would just ask questions like 'where is Jamie flying?' and they came up with their own story."
She plans to return this spring to Kelsey's classroom to turn that story into a book.
Writing and illustrating books is a literacy practice that is central in Kelsey's teaching. "My children are not intimidated by writing a book," she says. "They all see themselves as writers and illustrators."
But this book will be different.
The children's images will be enlarged to life size. Mitchell and Kelsey will mount some of them on wood, suspend some from the ceiling and transform some into three-dimensional figures. "We want to make it bigger than life," says Kelsey. "We'll surround ourselves with the book."
Kelsey says working with Mitchell helped her get in touch with the creative possibilities of teaching. "Patty helped me make it easier for the children to explore and take risks," she says. "If you set the environment up correctly, academics are present."
The validity of that appraisal is affirmed by reports about Kelsey's students after they transition to kindergarten. Their teachers say those students seem less intimidated by schoolwork than their peers and more willing to try new things.
This article was published in April 2011
