You Gotta Be the Book-Ch. 5

As i ended my last blog i was talking about there being other ways of connecting with students, and using artwork was the highest one in my mind. There are many visual thinkers and it is easy for them to connect to things with images and using art as a crutch to understand a story better. I really enjoyed this chapter because it was easy to see from the actions these students took that art and visual stimulation would be most beneficial to them. I also love the idea of SRI's because students can be as creative or as literal as they want, but still create something that will help them personally understand and connect with the text. I also like the fact that Wilhelm also made them illustrate their own books. I think this technique helped the students a lot because it was a different way of getting their point across to the audience and they took pride in their work, where they might not with a written or spoken response (in Kae's experience). A huge aspect of why these students never made the visual connection and being able to "enter the text" i think is becuase they were seldom read to as children and don't remember any picture books. It is these base actions that can set up their entire future and that can be really hard to break. Luckily Wilhelm was able to do that for these kids.