English and Sustainable Development

CASE STUDY:
How words and images interact to persuade and inform

Jane Brooks and her year 3/4 class were working on information texts with Catherine Phillips, a student teacher. As preparation for a later project on the environment, the class learned how to draft and plan leaflets. Jane writes:

We scanned a range of local visitor attractions leaflets into the computer and inserted them into interactive whiteboard software so that we could annotate the texts during shared reading. These showed different balances of visual and written text to help the children compare and contrast. With the children we identified the elements of the leaflets which were word- or image-based and discussed why the designer might have chosen to use words or images for each element. We also talked about choices of colour and typography.

In discussion pairs the children annotated the leaflets (see Fig. 6.1). They drew round the areas they had identified as word- or image-based on the interactive white board. Annotating texts like this helped discussion about how the text layout balanced the placement of words and images across the A4 page. The children came up with the following points. Their own language is shown in italics:

• the layout was split into, sections or paragraphs
• a logo was used to identify who might have composed the leaflet
  
• emboldened words or phrases tell the reader to go to the attraction
• persuasive phrases may or may not be true
• blocks of text give information to readers
• pictures provide extra details to the readers
• pictures hook the reader in and act as bait
• large photographs or images on the front page with little writing imply that the attraction is not boring.

Figure 6.1: Annotating leaflets about the environment

These comments show how the children are critically aware of the way in which the written and visual texts worked together to convey meaning…

Figure 6.2: Information from images: noting opinions

… Having discussed leaflets as a whole class, the children worked in pairs to examine other leaflets and identify what information was provided by the images. We gave the children different attraction leaflets and sticky notes for them to record their opinions (See Figure 6.2). Where there were differences of opinion, we encouraged the children to share their ideas as a positive affirmation of the different reading pathways and responses to texts available for a reader. The children were clear that their findings would later support design decisions for when they made their own leaflets.
(Brooks in Bearne and Wolstencroft, 2007: 80-81)

CASE STUDY:
Urban images

Figures 6.3–6.8: Urban images

Ben Reave wanted his Year 6 class in a north London school, to have some experience of performing poetry but was aware of the need for sensitivity:

My class weren’t particularly backward at coming forward but could become very self conscious when asked to read their own work aloud to others. I have always tried to encourage them to write for different audiences, but in poetry this has meant making printed anthologies or word processing poetry for display in the public areas of the school. They had never had experience of presenting their poetry. We had been using visual stimuli for writing for some time and the class were used to drawing ideas from film and picturebooks but I hadn’t thought of using digital photographs as a stimulus. The potential of presentational software and the advent of the IWB meant that I was able to do this, and I found that using images can be a very rewarding class experience, giving the chance to share ideas before the children write individually.

As ‘post SATs work’ which we always make as ‘secondary-like’ as we can, I planned a unit of work based on Robert Swindells’ novel Stone Cold – a challenging book but one that I felt the class could cope with. I linked my planning to PSHE work and wanted the class to have a chance to write imaginatively. There is a waste patch near the school where the local ‘environmental decorators’ had sprayed graffiti. I took a series of digital photographs from which I chose six for this activity. Before starting on reading the novel, I introduced the topic of homelessness by showing the images and talking with the children about how it might feel to be homeless. I explained to the class that we would be writing poetry and using presentational software to capture them reading their own poems associated with the images. Using this method we could share some of their poems in the leavers’ assembly which is attended by parents.

I had no problems with getting this work going as the class had plenty to say about the topic of homelessness and made some very sensitive comments. We gathered ideas from the whole class but then the children worked individually, with the support of their response partners, to write their own poems. I asked them to match their words to each of the six images in any order that they chose. As they wrote and redrafted their poems, we began reading the novel and they were hooked into it by the realisation that their own ideas were very close to the situation of the central character. Corinne’s ‘Nowhere to Go’ is just one of the very moving poems the class wrote and, although she is quite reticent, she read it aloud to great acclaim – and tears - as a presentation for the leavers’ evening.

Nowhere to go

Look at this

Bare

Dirty.

This is no place to be.

Among the metal

Plastic

Rubbish.

Is anybody there?

I can sit here

Think

Cry.

Nowhere else to go.

Someone’s been here before

ASBO

Outcast.

Just like me.

Who are they, this crew

Bozar

Kerm

And Shak?

Where are they now?

 

This is where I’ll sleep

Cold

Hungry

What else can I do?

CASE STUDY:
Our environment

The images in the montage above were taken by pupils in a special school after school council discussions which led to the governors allocating funds for improving the school environment. The pupils used these as part of a presentation to parents and governors which celebrated their school and its provision. The next aim of the school council was to develop a school-wide policy on maintaining the environment. This led to much discussion about being responsible and caring for their leisure facilities.

Pictures were also used by the school council from another school as the basis for considering what they would see as priorities for facilities in their own school. They took photographs of their school environment, made a display and asked for comments from the children in the school about which kinds of facilities they thought were most important. Using this information, the representatives from each class began discussions to decide on one aspect of the school due for improvement. With the agreement of the headteacher, governors and Friends of the School, they developed their ideas to a full action plan.

CASE STUDY:
Cross-curricular writing

The first idea was a letter to an environmental agency requesting information about the rainforest. We discussed the key questions that the children had made up in one of their geography lessons, and these formed the basis of our letters. Most children already knew how to set out a letter, but they didn’t really understand the concept of a formal letter contacting someone they didn’t know. They used a writing frame to give them a starting point for their ideas and a model to help them to write in the language and style of a formal letter.

Daniel’s letter to Greenpeace

The children were very enthusiastic about writing the letters and they waited impatiently for the replies. This reinforced the concept of writing as a means of communication and has encouraged them to write letters since, saying thank you for a trip and entering various competitions.

Next I was inspired by a music INSET session to introduce more music into the classroom. I wanted the related piece of writing to be more creative and to reinforce our Literacy Objectives, which were to use more adjectives and powerful verbs in writing. We listened to a piece of music written by some musicians from Brazil, and imagined that we were in the Rainforest. Then the children described to a partner what they could see and they noted their ideas on whiteboards. We discussed their ideas as a group and I modelled a description of the Rainforest, making sure that I used the key geographical words, which I aimed to keep reinforcing throughout the topic. When the children had written their individual descriptions, they shared them with the rest of the class and attempted to critically evaluate their writing. This helped the children to see that they could improve each other’s writing whilst also supporting each other as writers.

The next big event for our class was a trip to Birmingham Botanical Gardens (more letters of thanks to write!) and then a corridor display showing sketches and paintings of the flowers which we had seen there. The drawing and painting took up several art lessons and the children became absorbed in the various colours, shapes and textures of the flowers and plants they were creating. The writing lesson was a continuation of the flower theme, and involved using sketches and other photographs and pictures to create an imaginary ‘super – flower’. We talked about the various parts of a flower (as preparation for Term 3 when we study growth in science!) and the children produced a small illustration of their imaginary flower. As a class we then made a list of metaphors and similes to describe an imaginary flower and the children used these, along with their small drawings, to help them with their own creations.

In following Geography lessons we studied the weather of the rainforest, looking at temperature and rainfall. In our writing lesson we watched a video clip of a weather bulletin, and the children made up their own weather reports. The less fluent writers worked from a writing frame developed by one of my colleagues and the class imagined that they were weather presenters. They used their geographical knowledge of the climate in the rainforest to produce some accurate and interesting writing, and without realising it, learned how to write a factual report.

Shazia’s weather forecast

The writing has reinforced the children's knowledge about the rainforest and has increased their interest in the topic. It has encouraged them to have their own ideas and opinions and enabled them to write about their own feelings.

(Hornsby in Bearne, 2002: 42-25)