A celebration of mind.Drawing Improves Learning As a long time teacher of both art and literacy, I have reamed that the eye and the hand have important roles to play in the processing of visual information. In this respect I am influenced by Folkert Haanstra's definition of visual spatial ability as a set of related capacities to process (search, encode, remember, match, transform) visual-spatial information (forms, shapes, positions). It also includes the ability to visualize. Improving Visual Skills Since I have had a checkered career in teaching, I have been given the opportunity to bring out drawing talent in quite a variety of students. My goal in teaching has always been to improve visual spatial skills Spatial skills The ability to locate objects in three dimensional world using sight or touch. Mentioned in: Dyslexia , eye hand coordination, and visual memory. I have encouraged my students to draw whenever appropriate. Over the past ten years or so, I have been saving students' drawings from my naturalistic classroom research with children of all ages, adult amateur artists, new reader adults, teachers, and university students. What I have observed is that freehand See Macromedia FreeHand. drawing can enhance visual spatial ability. I have espoused this concept since the early 1980s when I taught both evening school studio art and daytime basic adult education for the New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. Board of Education. Exploring ways to accelerate the reaming process in drawing, I instructed students to draw with the whole arm in motion. As a result, the drawings proved to be lively, expressive, and with likenesses achieved within minutes. Improving Literacy with Art The results of this "drawing from the shoulder" exercise encouraged me to introduce perceptual training through drawing for new reader adults. Along with their literacy instruction, students did freehand drawing, writing exercises, visual memory exercises, and phonics to improve their reading level. Again, there was marked improvement in their ability to copy configurations and recall the shapes of newly acquired letters in cursive writing. Inspirational Techniques Some of the other drawing techniques I use and have been sharing with educators at workshops are: mapping the page before drawing as a shorthand for developing spatial placement of forms, contrasting figure and ground to aid the reaming disabled student in his or her need for visual acuity visual acuity n. Sharpness of vision, especially as tested with a Snellen chart. Normal visual acuity based on the Snellen chart is 20/20. Visual acuity The ability to distinguish details and shapes of objects. for detail and shapes, developing a controlled form of scribbling scrib·ble v. scrib·bled, scrib·bling, scrib·bles v.tr. 1. To write hurriedly without heed to legibility or style. 2. To cover with scribbles, doodles, or meaningless marks. v. , which helps students tap their unconscious knowledge of the visual world, and synectics synectics a procedure for the stating and solving of problems based upon creative thinking in figurative terms by a small, carefully chosen, and diversely specialized group. See also: Brain , which helps them think creatively through exploratory ideation ideation /ide·a·tion/ (i?de-a´shun) the formation of ideas or images.idea´tional i·de·a·tion n. The formation of ideas or mental images. , and quick doodles Doodles can mean the following:
Resource Folkert Haanstra. Effects of Art Education on Visual-Spatial Ability and Aesthetic Perception: A Quantitative Review. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Thesis Publisher, 1994. Helen Levin is an artist, teacher, and writer living in Staten Island, New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion