Off-The-Page Artwork by Caldecott Winner, David Wiesner

Screen Shot 2020-02-17 at 6.17.43 AM.png — The thought that he was implying violence to a naturalist by drawing glasses lying on the ground near open cages and free crickets made illustrator David Wiesner smile.

“That makes me smile.” David Wiesner explained the effect of critics in a blog, “The Beginning“(Wiesner, 2020).

This account is left right there. That is all Wiesner has to say about it. “That makes me smile”; a four-word phrase that implies quite the opposite of violence…

Unless, the implication was to stimulate a “violence of thought”; Not “violent thoughts”; But, thinking so transformative, so life-altering, so paradigm-shifting as to be jarring–to clash with the cognitive systems already set up, that are comfortable and familiar.

The beauty, the magic of Wiesner’s work is that it raises more questions than answers. Why does the criticism of his very first professional art assignment cause him to smile? Did David Wiesner smile the moment he learned of people’s misgivings about his illustration? This statement is written in the first person present. Is he still smiling? Is this a constant source of laughter? What kind of smile is it? Condescending? Amusement? Bemusement? I can picture Wiesner’s emotions evolving through many smiles.

Why do we smile? We are told to smile. I tell my students to smile. My thinking has been that a reason for smiling will surface once you have begun. If we wait for a reason, it may never arrive. Jumpstart the happiness by raising the corners of your mouth. Smiling can be an act of violence, especially, when you don’t feel like it. You are waging war on your soul.

David Wiesner’s smile is a metaphor for this picture, drawn in 1979 for the table of contents of the September Cricket Magazine of that year. It was his first commissioned artwork. He had all summer to produce it. I bet at the end, after Trina Schart Hyman praised his work, he removed his spectacles, free to smile at his accomplishment. Having just graduated art school the spring before, David didn’t plan to enter the world of children’s literature. Like a cricket, chirping in the corner of the room, it beckoned him.

I first stumbled across David Wiesner when my daughter Scarlet became enamored with frogs. We found the book “Tuesday” (1991) in a used book store. We were drawn to the text by the beautiful cover. This tale of frogs flying through town, managing mayhem and inspiring mystery, was an instant favorite. We “read” it over and over. The word read is in quotes because this is a wordless book.

At first Scarlet and I were attracted to the artwork and frogs, but as we reread it, many more meaningful lessons were uncovered. How do you “read” a wordless book? I spoke to my emergent reader about what was happening in the images. We took turns asking each other questions and pointing out phenomena. We celebrated one another’s surprises: “Did you see this?!” How many “Oh my goodness-es” were uttered?

The “goodness” is that each reading was a goldmine of conversation between a daddy and his daughter. The lack of text makes the illustrations more open to reader-interpretation. The artwork lies somewhere between realistic and animation, just like the story line. Scarlet and I discussed how plausible it was for frogs to fly. The frog faces show expressions. How much do frogs feel or think? They seem to operate a remote control for a television in one picture. Do you think frogs could do that? Would they want to?

I use “Tuesday” in my third grade classroom to introduce the reading strategy, Questioning. It is the second day, and I have students write down questions while I page through the illustrations. We discuss the students’ questions along with how important “questioning” is, as a reading strategy. I am still finding details in the artwork that I hadn’t noticed before.

BIBLIO: Reprint, 2011, Clarion Books, $6.54
REVIEWER: Matt Weimann
FORMAT: Picture Book
ISBN-10: 0395870828
ISBN-13: 978-0395870822

Three_little_pigs_-_the_wolf_lands_in_the_cooking_pot_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_15661.jpg — A 1905 illustration of the pigs doing away with the wolf makes it look like one of the pig’s feet is stepping out of the story.

A book that I use later in the year that David Wiesner also wrote/illustrated is “The Three Pigs” (2001). This one may have text, but the storyline is much more dependent on the artwork, thus awarding it the Caldecott Medal of Honor. The three pigs discover a way to escape the mean wolf through completely exiting their story altogether! They then explore a parallel universe of nursery rhymes where they find a few other lost souls. The three pigs help extricate the characters in peril from their tales.

How do you explain “Out-of-the-box thinking” to youths? Share with them this “Out-of-the-book story” by David Wiesner. Practice the art of thinking this way by “rescuing” a character from a different book. Students could draw comics to illustrate what could happen if a character stepped out of their story to explore the outer world.

Another use of this thinking is to teach the uses of literary parameters. An author sets up “givens” that help readers interpret actions in a story. Readers won’t be happy if halfway through a story, the historical fiction narrative completely changes to science fiction, with aliens visiting from outer space. Even with our three little fugitive pigs, the illustrations and ideas are consistent throughout the book. They can visit other stories, but they don’t become microscopic and fall through the atoms of matter. In order for there to be “Out-of-the-box thinking” there must actually be a box.

Information about other texts by award-winning author/illustrator, David Wiesner can be found on the “Bookshelf” page of his website.

“I Got It!” (2018)
“Fish Girl” (2017)
“Spot” (2015)
“Mr. Wuffles!” (2013)
“Art & Max” (2010)
“Flotsam” (2006)
“Sector 7” (1999)
“June 29, 1999” (1992)
“Hurricane” (1990)
“Night of the Gargoyles” written by Eve Bunting, illustrated by David Wiesner (1994)
“Free Fall” (1988)
“The Loathsome Dragon” retold by David Wiesner and Kim Kahng (1987)

Screen Shot 2020-02-17 at 6.20.34 AM.png — Take off the artificial lenses and see the world through cricket eyes.

I leave you with this thought: The more mature a writer becomes, the less drawing fills his/her pages. A five-year-old only draws. Teachers instruct youths to add text. We get children to provide words to describe the settings they see in their minds. Develop character traits through actions. What word choice will perfectly convey the mood and theme of your story? Are we capturing and boxing up these young minds by teaching away the artwork? Perhaps the cages from David Wiesner’s illustrations at the start of this blog were setting the crickets free. Artwork is the music for text penned and sung. Let’s help our crickets sing their song.

Sources

Wiesner, D. (2020). Bookshelf. Retrieved February 17, 2020, from https://www.hmhbooks.com/wiesner/bookshelf.html

Wiesner, D. (2020). The Beginning. Retrieved February 17, 2020, from http://www.davidwiesner.com/work/the-beginning/

“Sympathy for Creativity” A GarageBand Project

Creativity is one of those things that everyone understands, but has a hard time defining. I think art, and especially music emulates the essence of creativity the best. Musical artists seem to tap heaven when coming up with completely new melodies.

Henriksen, Mishra, & Fisser (2016) use three concepts to build a definition of creativity: novelty, effectiveness, and appropriateness. This is perfectly fine, if we are using creativity solely to solve specific problems within the context of an educational environment. In my opinion, the last two concepts flatten creativity into a two-dimensional word that can be explained away in a paper.

I think that you can stop after “novel”. The authors of “Infusing Creativity and Technology in 21st Century Education: A Systemic View for Change” (2016) take the magic of Willy Wonka and stick it into Henry Ford’s assembly line when they push productivity onto creative people. They, like many, seem to be looking for ways to harness creativity in order to power old machinery. Sticking art in the regular-ed classroom won’t transform it. We need to break down the walls!

Applying the limiting definition of Henriksen, Mishra, & Fisser (2016) to a problem like making Internet connections faster would make wires carry more and more information, faster and faster. Perhaps there brand of creativity could even think up Wifi. The most creative person might harness the Earth’s Mantle to transport information from one side to the other instantaneously without using energy. This is all super helpful, would benefit society, make money for companies, save money for others, create jobs, foster new research, etc. But, what about the kid who thinks about changing the information from the Internet in general. We praise the kid who builds the most amazing structure with Legos and punish the one who uses the Legos to form a picture. That is not how Legos work. You did not build anything. Another kid makes the Legos dance and sing. They put on a play. Still another builds with the Lego people a structure that the blocks live in. Whoa, that kid is reeeeeaaaally wrong!

Play for play sake. Be creative just to be creative. Come up with new ideas, just cuz.

This past summer I decided this would be the year that I explore a program that has evaded me for a while now: GarageBand. I watched a tutorial video that lit a fire in me to make my own music for the videos that I create. (I produce a lot of movies that I post on Youtube.)

The Rolling Stones — The Stones 1968, the year “Sympathy for the Devil” was recorded

I had a cool idea for how to use GarageBand: My class will take a song and change the lyrics, making a classroom song. I chose “Sympathy for the Devil” by The Rolling Stones. I’m sure that you think this is a crazy choice for a 3rd grade classroom. It is, but let me explain with some A, B, Cs… and a D;)

A

A is for A+. I love the song. The music is catchy, singable, memorable, rhythmic, and fun. Also, it uses tons of different instruments. This would be great for my class, because everyone could have a “part” in its construction. If we were to perform the music live, literally every single kid could be playing a totally different instrument!

Mr. Peters shows Ss some different instruments available.

B

B is for Beginning. The song is sort of a riddle, asking listeners to “Guess my name”. At the beginning of the year (when I had thought about working on this) we are all getting to know one another. I had my students make “Who Am I Riddle Poems” to share things about themselves that are unique from others. We would take this concept and use it “whole group” to distinguish our class from other classes.

C

C is for simple, yet complex. The song is made up of 4 verses with a repeating chorus. The chord progression is E, D, A, E, with the change on the first beat of each of four measures. Dylan Peters (@DylanPetersedu), the brand new Technology Innovator Specialist hired to East Penn School District this past summer (2018) worked with me from the get go to teach my students (and me) how to use GarageBand. We used the “Autoplay” feature to have the instruments play simple rhythms. After guiding groups through creating the same set of four instruments playing the same four measures of music, we showed them how they could change the instruments, altering percussion styles, and fooling with some really funky disc jockey features.

Thank you, Mr. Peters for all of your help with this project!

D

And, D. is for “dynamic”. [Dynamic was the theme of a recent #livechat I participated in from #masterychat, @teachbetterteam. I looked up the word, and found that it means “change”.] The original song by The Rolling Stones changes throughout, progressively increasing the tempo, number of sounds, and musical involvement. This is not only fun, but would allow for my entire class to be hooting and howling by the end! (Give the song a listen, and you’ll see.)

So far, the groups have been working on changing the instruments within GarageBand to customize their four measures before we piece them all together. The aim is for four totally different styles of the same music to be joined just like the students of my third grade class came from different 2nd grade teachers, possessing very different styles of teaching, personalities, and methods.

This past week I began teaching poetry, in preparation for the class to write the lyrics that will accompany our music. Dylan Peters plans to bring in a professional-style microphone to record the class’s singing once our composition is complete. Check back with me to see and hear the final product.

I mention this GarageBand project not just to share a pretty creative idea, but because of a question my wife posed: What are the learning outcomes for this? At first, I thought about justifying the time, energy, thought, and work by suggesting ELA, Art, or Math standards. Then I thought about explaining to her the camaraderie-constructing merit of the project. I settled on “We are just doing it for fun.” Why does this seem so wrong in today’s educational climate?

Sources:

Henriksen, D., Mishra, P., & Fisser, P. (2016). Infusing Creativity and Technology in 21st Century Education: A Systemic View for Change. Educational Technology & Society, 19 (3), 27–37.

[Sanjay C]. (2018, January 20). GarageBand on your iPad Quick -START TO FINISH! . Retrieved from https://youtu.be/ykGRexBtcXQ

Weimann, M. (2018, September 23). Critical Thinking is Classy. Retrieved October 20, 2018, from https://thecaptainofclass.com/2018/09/23/critical-thinking-is-classy/ [This is the first time that I have ever cited my own work.]

[zwwlg]. (2016, March 12). Ken Robinson – Do schools kill creativity/TED Talks. . Retrieved from https://youtu.be/tQzC7ubJriE

Classy Appearances

I’m not one to put too much weight in appearances; I’d say I am even opposed to “Lookism”; however, caring about the way others perceive you is classy. I wrote a blog about “Standing Out” in a crowd through modeling classy behavior. This focused on several specific ways to appear classy. This time I want to dig deeper. Where does the behavior come from?

Lunch Count — **More than behavior management, I attempt “Behavior Inspiration”.**

We, as parents and educators, care about our kids’ futures, but most kids are living in the here and now. It is difficult to get a nine-year-old to care about what an employer will think about him or her ten or twenty years from now. Then there is the whole, “We have no idea what 2030 will bring and what the world/job market will even be like” (thanks, Tom Murray/Eric Sheninger! 😉

People, want to be respected. They want to be taken “seriously”. A child expects to be able to speak to an adult and have the grown up believe him/her. Here is a concept to help kids, and we mature humans must model and explain it to them: The classier a person appears, the more believable he or she seems. I am not advocating that kids not be kids. By all means, be silly, have fun, act out, even, but have dignity doing it.

[I wrote and rewrote the previous paragraph ten times. It was very difficult to say what I wanted to communicate. It feels wrong to teach confidence and self-assurance on the one hand, and then put weight in paying attention to what others think of you, on the other. We want our kids to “be themselves” and not worry about how others may judge them. There should be a balance. I’ve said before, “Out of the box thinking requires a box.” Poetry is a good example. A poet will finegal words, mixing the order, reinventing phrases, dice up spellings, and disobey the laws of grammar. In order to appreciate what the poet has accomplished, one must actually know the laws that were broken. Modern artists have gotten a bad rap by producing works of art that layfolk interpret with the phrase, “Even I could do that!” But, these artists have studied the Masters, the laws, the intricacies of color, line, texture, feeling, mood, etc. What they provide is an idea outside of the box of classical art. A person who splashes paint onto canvas and calls it “Modern Art” without understanding these aforementioned attributes, is “sitting on the box that true artists are thinking outside”. Although kids should “be their own persons”, they should, at the very least, be mindful of the “box” of respectable behavior and not stray too far. A bunch of letters scattered all over the floor isn’t a poem anymore than it is art. It’s just a mess, unless an artist or poet can show “the box” that the scattered letters “came from”.]

Back to Elementary Education: More than behavior management, I attempt “Behavior Inspiration”. I am not seeking to control my class. I want to lead it. In the same way that a good teacher facilitates learning, rather than shoveling information down students’ throats, teachers can positively reinforce the behaviors that model dignity, self-respect, confidence… class.

One silly example I have for this is the way students hold their coats. It is that time of year when kids need coats for recess. The thing is, kids get warm when they run around, and they will take their coats off. Upon entering the school building, they have not cooled down completely, so they don’t want to put their coats back on. What many are inclined to do is place the hood of their coat on their head and let the rest hang behind them. They see peers doing this; Maybe they feel like it is a cape. Kids love doing this. It isn’t that I think that there is anything inherently “wrong” with wearing a coat this way. However, what I do each year is show my students the contrast of draping a coat over the arm and carrying it like a butler’s towel up to the room. It seems to me that students who walk with their coat draped over their arm stand more strait with their chins higher. They do not shuffle into the building. They parade with purpose. I told you that this was a silly example. It is simply an appearance thing, but it really works!

One more simple example is when students are working on classroom projects. Our school recently had a fundraiser where parents pledged money for laps that kids ran around a loop. In order to get students motivated, the company hosting the fundraiser, Boosterthon, issued classroom flags for kids to decorate. I always enjoy having my students draw and color the flags, but inevitably there will be some kids who are inclined to just scribble or throw color all over it. While I want the flag to be colorful, it is important to me that our classroom flag be something that we are proud of. (They get hung up in the gym in the end.) Coloring the flag is more than just an experience. It is producing a work of art. I want the students to care about what it looks like. This attitude can be applied to all classroom projects.

Last example: A person shuffles up to you. The individual’s appearance is disheveled. The eyes are shifty and not making contact. How likely are you to trust this person? In contrast, a student with coat draped across his arm, walking straight with good posture and an ere of determination, approaches you and makes eye contact. Aren’t you more likely to take the message of this last individual more seriously.

I, by no means, am advocating that teachers show less respect to students who wear their coats on their head. In fact, I allow it. I simply teach and model the better way to present yourself. If you want to be respected, command it; Look like a commander, act like a commander, speak like a commander, feel like a commander… a Commander of Class.

“7 Powerful Ways Classy People ‘Stand Out’”

“From ‘Control’ to Classy”

“Out-of-the-Box Thinking Requires a Box“

Critical Thinking is Classy

To be able to critique something, one must have background knowledge. Unfortunately, some teachers focus solely on pouring information into their pupils (Watanabe-Crockett, 2015).

What Does Critical Thinking Look Like?

I tried something new this year to get kids to introduce themselves to each other. The class visited the art room outside of their typical art time. Kids were told that they were going to make a self portrait. The catch was that they could only use scrap paper and glue; no drawing utensils, no scissors, only their hands and glue. They had a blast tearing the paper and sticking it together. Making shapes round was tricky. Some students made their art three-dimensional. Some used nonconventional colors.

Polite Pirates of Room 207 Make Self Portraits

After making the self portraits, students composed “Who Am I” riddle poems. They had to write down a list of sentences telling information about themselves that makes them unique from others in the class. They wrote their names on the back of the papers. I attached them to the self portraits. The kids got to read each other’s poems, guessing who fit the characteristics listed. The portraits were little more than clues, since they were not very realistic.

The project was not only presented several facets of critical thinking, but it also dressed up my room for Meet The Teacher Night! Parents loved trying to figure out which portrait/poem combination was their offspring:)

How to Foster Critical Thinking: Don’t Settle

When I have students figure out a math problem, I tell them to solve it multiple ways. This forces them to rethink the math. They are required to analyze the problem. My students are asked to not only “show their work”, but also explain how they arrived at their answers. When they share the process with a partner the two of them evaluate each other’s work. Having to find other ways to solve a math problem causes students to be creative, looking for novel ways to think about the numbers.

Come up with several ways to figure out how many spaces there are on a chess board.

A way to inspire critical thinking during a writing assignment is through allowing students to view their peers’ written responses within Google Forms. When I administer an assessment through giving a quiz from Google classroom, I instruct my students to click on “See Previous Responses” upon submitting their quizzes. They are to read their classmates’ writing, evaluating the responses and comparing them with what they wrote. They may go back and add information to their own writing, then, adapting new ideas to the answer.

One More Thing: Call it what it is.

Watanabe-Crockett (2016) suggests actually using the term critical thinking. “How to Develop A Critical Thinking Mindset in Elementary Students” supplies a graphic aid from Andrew Churches that shows Bloom’s Taxonomy applied to technology. It has long lists of verbs under each thinking skill. It isn’t a bad idea to make a poster of this and put it on the wall.

In order to critique something, one must create an opinion. With this end in mind, educators can work to teach students how to think critically in order to complete the task.

Sources:

Watanabe-Crockett, L. (2015, July 24). The Importance of Teaching Critical Thinking. Retrieved September 22, 2018, from https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/the-importance-of-teaching-critical-thinking

Watanabe-Crockett, L. (2016, May 28). How to Develop A Critical Thinking Mindset in Elementary Students. Retrieved September 22, 2018, from https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/critical-thinking-mindset-elementary-students