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© 2002, 2010 Susan Rich Sheridan |
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Home |
© 2002, 2010 Susan Rich Sheridan |
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Drawing/Writing and the new literacy: where verbal meets visual is a
textbook/handbook for teachers and for schools of education. It is also a parents’ guide to a home literacy program. The book provides classroom support for teachers across grade and discipline who are interested in a broader approach to literacy, or who have already been trained in Drawing/Writing through workshops or through school of education courses or via self-instruction. the book provides the same kind of support for parents. The 500-page book is illustrated with student work across grade and field grades K-12, as well as at the college level, and at the Elderhostel level.
The book is divided into four parts. The first part, "The Reasons Why," provides the rationale for a new theory of education called neuroconstructivism * (Sheridan, 1990) and a new literacy strategy across content areas called Drawing/Writing. The rationale is from a combination of sources: art history, psychology, children’s drawings, the history of writing, and, most compellingly, neurobiology. The second part of the book, "How to Do It," lays out the five-step Drawing/Writing program step by step while providing supplementary information, especially in connection with geometry, or the study of shapes in space. An ethics component is included in connection with abstract drawing using two new concepts: Acceptable Differences and Right Relationships. The third part of the book -“Hitchhikers’ Guide to Brain Science” - offers information on brain structure and function, including 13 tips for teachers and parents and students on how to encourage and enhance brain development. This section includes a heightened-experience approach to school-based drug education programs. The fourth part of the book outlines a generally applicable cross-modal approach to curricula called “The Thinking Child: A Thumbnail Sketch for Teachers and Educators.” This section includes detailed, illustrated cross-modal English and Fine Arts curricula appropriate K-12 as well as at the college level.
For more information on the book or courses and presentations on Drawing/Writing, consult this site. If you have further questions or requests, contact the author/instructor/consultant directly at:
or write
Susan Rich Sheridan
68 Maplewood Drive
Amherst, MA 01002
Since the late 1980's, my work has followed in Vygotsky's footsteps. What I wrote in 2002 is valid today: "At this point in educational history, no child can be considered apart from its brain. Neurobiology gives us a new way to look at children, including their scribbles. Whether scribbles are pictures of neural activity or motor organizers, they are marks with a destiny. What other biophysical entity generates marks to explain and extend the parabolic burstings in its brain?" "Currently, some modes of parenting and many methods of education prevent the development of most of the marks a child could generate during its mental life. If parents and teachers let children scribble and talk about scribbling, draw and talk about their drawings, write about their own drawings, and talk about their writing, asked only to ready their own drawings and writings, first, before they are asked to read anyone else's, children will move more naturally into writing and reading. Learning delays and disabilities, short attention spans and a host of behavioral problems may clarify themselves as what happens when children are separated from what their brains have evolved to do in the course of the normal, natural developmental unfolding of a marks-based intelligence. "Piaget and Vygotsky shared the understanding that the mind of the child is qualitatively different from the adult mind. Knowledge, intelligence and morality spring from the child's actions, and this 'child-action' is playful and experimental." (From "The Neurological Significance of Children's Drawing: The Scribble Hypothesis" (c) 2002 Susan Rich Sheridan.) Written in 2002, these words hold true in 2009. Now – more than ever - the searching instincts of the child for positive thought and action provide models for adult behavior, worldwide. We all need to search for healthy solutions for our families, our communities, our planet; we all need to take responsibility for healthy entertainment – the kind playful fun that builds relationships and gives pleasure, even wisdom and joy. Marks of meaning point the way.
A Marks-Based Intelligence
Only one thing is certain – that written language of children develops in this fashion, shifting from drawings of things to drawings of words. The entire secret of teaching written language is to prepare and organize this natural transition appropriately…Make believe play, drawing and writing can be viewed as different moments in an essentially unified program of development of written language… Lev Vygotsky, "The Prehistory of Writing," an essay, c. 1930 in The Mind in Society, pp. 115-116, 1978.
--E.O. Wilson, Harvard University, January 8, 1998, correspondance.
"Drawing/Writing and the New Literacy (embodies) insight on science education....demonstrating the value of hands-on,kinesthetic participation by the student of whatever age (and I'm one of them) in addressing the real world. Find out what others know - of course - but then repeat it with your eyes and hands, then add your own observations, and then, finally, own the subject. That's a good prescription for education generally."
--Lev Vygotsky, "The Prehistory of Writing," an essay, c. 1930 in The Mind in Society, 1978.
"Only one thing is certain - that written language of children develops in this fashion, shifting from drawings of things to drawings of words. The entire secret of teaching written language is to prepare and organize this natural transition appropriately...Make believe play, drawing and writing can be viewed as different moments in an essentially unified program of development of written language...The discontinuities and jumps from one mode of activity to the other are too great for the relationship to seem evident."
rawing/Writing is a theory, a practice, a book, and a course of study developed by a writer, artist, teacher, and parent. Drawing/Writing is for anyone - including parents and teachers and all other caregivers who work with children's minds - as well as any reader who is working on personal growth - who is interested in:
| Excerpts from Drawing/Writing and the new literacy |
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Please e-mail your questions or comments for Dr. Sheridan at susan.sheridan9@gmail.com |
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