Bright Ideas: part 1

The first session I attended at the Bright Ideas Conference this weekend, was  Using Art as an Assessment presented by Professor Anna J. Roseboro from GVSU.  While I’ve read about using art as an assessment in Jeff Whilhelm’s You Gotta Be the Book, Ihad never really thought any further on the subject – While it might seem unrealistic to use art as an assessment in the classroom, I was very impressed with Professor Roseboro’s ideas. 

The most obvious connection that was made between art and literature, was the use of metaphor – particulary the way metaphor easily lends itself to visual representation.  It makes sense that, since we are always telling our readers to ‘visualize’ the scene or setting as they read, to visualize it literally, as part of an assessment.  Professor Roseboro definitely had my attention at that point.  What an excellent way to help get students into the reading, by literally visualizing the text.  She described two projects, Weaving Strips and  Geometric Representation (for now I’ll only discuss Geometric Representation.)

The students were asked to pick three main characters from (whatever they were reading in class) and choose a shape that represents each of them, choose colors for the shapes and then arrange them in a way that deomnstrates the characters relationships, or the plot of the book.  While this sounds simple, it goes a little further.  The students had to justify each of their choices of shape, color and positioning, with a one page essay, explaining their Geometric Representation.  The instructor would ask: Why is the character represented by this shape?  Why this color?  Why are they arranged in this manner?  What does that arrangement mean?  This form of assessment really gets the students to think deeper into the text, as I found myself when I tried to so a Graphic Representation for The House on Mango Street.  I had to ask myself: what geometric shape would Esperanza be? Why? What does that indicate about her personality?  What color(s) best suits her character?  What colors does the author use to describe her?  Where should her shape be on the page, and why?  Some of the questions I couldn’t answer without going back to the book and re-reading, digging deeper- exactly what we want our students to do with the Literature we read in class.