Greg Cantwell

OWP June 2001

Book Report #1

Drawing Your Own Conclusions by Fran Claggett with Joan Brown

"It is critical for us as teachers to address the need for all students to be able to communicate both visually and verbally, integrating one into the other, so that they can participate in the symbolic experiences that make us most wholly human."(p.12) This quote is typical of the thinking found in this book. Many times, I have read and heard about the importance of addressing multiple intelligences to reach different students who work and think in different ways. The approach to teaching writing presented in this book uses drawing and visually laying out ideas to help students make connections in their writing.

One specific lesson used to help students use drawing and language to understand themselves, literature, and writing involves making mandalas. Many different methods and subjects for these are presented, with one of the major goals of them being to teach students to think metaphorically. The authors assert that "through the use of graphics, students move along the road toward Aristotle's ideal: 'The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.'"(p.5) For students, this can mean that they learn to talk about themselves in terms of animals or plants that have traits that they associate with aspects of their own personalities. Once they learn how to use metaphor in this way, they can use metaphors in their own writing.

The use of drawing is presented as a tool to increase student self-confidence. Students often feel "the deep-seated fear of not having anything to say, of sounding foolish, particularly in front of others." In the art classes I teach, I often find students that feel this same way about their drawing abilities. This may present problems for reluctant drawers just like reading does for reluctant readers. Drawing is often unexpected in the language arts classroom, so this can work to the teacher's advantage. In my classroom, I require students to draw in their journals every time that they write in them. A minimum response of half a page is combined with a drawing to answer a journal-writing prompt. For the students who are completely reluctant to draw, they must at least draw a face showing the emotion or state of mind that they are experiencing that day. This is effective for most students, and most do much more elaborate drawings. The drawing does not get in the way of the writing, however, because it is done to supplement the written response.

The authors of this book and I agree on the value of drawing. Students are able to express themselves and learn about themselves by trying a new approach to self-expression. This then works well in conjunction with writing to help students become more skillful writers and more self-assured people.