Mount Saint Mary College’s Collaborative for Equity in Literacy Learning (CELL) hosted a professional development workshop for educators recently, detailing the Picturing Writing literacy technique.
Mount Education professors Janine Bixler and Rebecca Norman taught the workshop over the course of about a week. This year’s workshop focused on time of day, weather, animal poetry, and animal stories.
To a casual observer, it might look like an art class. But Picturing Writing is a dynamic art-and-literature-based approach to writing designed to meet the literacy needs of all students, particularly those with diverse learning styles.
Through the use of hands-on art experiences, the study of quality picture books, and an ongoing artist/writers workshop, Picturing Writing gives students access to multiple modalities for thinking and expressing their ideas. It can be used to address English language arts core standards in a way that reaches a wide range of learners, and is easily integrated into the social studies and science curriculum.
Established in 2012, CELL provides tutoring and out-of-school literacy activities for children pre-school to grade 12 with a focus on reading, conversation, and activities. It explores multicultural books, offers family literacy programs, and more. Each semester, Mount teacher candidates, graduate and undergraduate, help instill a love of reading in local youth as part of their community fieldwork requirement.