Literacy in the Art Classroom

How could I use journals, zines, blogs, and comics in my art room to improve literacy in the classroom?
Art and literacy are related in a plethora of ways. Just as in the art room we practice, practice, practice to become better artists, reading and writing skills develop in much the same way. Children need opportunities for their literary skills to flourish in a nonthreatening atmosphere. The art room is a perfect place for children to use writing to reflect their ideas and to read the thoughts of other people. If a child has a distaste for reading and writing, they tend to avoid them altogether. In art class there is typically less stress on proper grammar and spelling, which relieves the anxiety many kids have towards writing.  To give them the chance to use reading and writing in ways that do not emphasize mechanics or grades is to permit them to foster a personal appreciation for literacy. In time, my students may just realize how much fun reading and writing can be!

I will use journals, zines, blogs, and comics to give students the chance to develop their literacy skills. The best way to use them would be for reflection, research, personal exploration, and collaborative projects. I could use journals as sketchbooks, reflection tools, and note-taking devices. Zines could be used to publish mini-excerpts about artists, art movements in history, careers in art, social activism, and more. Blogs can be used to integrate technology, make out-of-classroom assignments more interesting, share artwork images, and otherwise collaboratively publish reflections and ideas between the entire class. They are a useful tool for portfolios and class discussions. Comics are also important to integrate to express thoughts and ideas in a less threatening way. Students can easily relate to comics when comparing them to cartoons and other media. All video media typically begins with some sort of drawing board of frames and text similar to comics. There are some great computer programs out there for making comics nowadays.

Reading and writing are necessary skills to be work-ready and productive in today's society. By encouraging the growth of these essentials in my classroom, I am helping them in more ways than skill-building. I am making my students more influential and effective communicators, as well as more employable citizens.

Which one am I most likely to use?
The tool I am mostly regularly going to use will be journals and/or blogs. They are simple and can carry over from one lesson to the next. Both can be integrated into every lesson regardless of what the students are doing. If I had to choose between the two, I would likely pick journals because they are low-tech and would not require computers. Using computers regularly is not always an option in every school, and in addition opens the doors to technological malfunction or error that bring stress to all involved. Not to mention, you can draw in journals as well. A downfall of using journals instead of blogs would be that it eliminates the ease of sharing things with peers. The quality of their writing skills would also be effected because they would not feel the pressure to work as hard at their writing if it is not going to be read by their classmates. However, they would be able to share private thoughts and feelings more easily in a journal than a published webpage.

Which one seems the most challenging and why?
I would have to say all of these forms have their challenges. Journals are expensive to buy outright, take time to make handmade, and require space for storage. Zines take time to cut and fold if many are made and are at the mercy of the copy machine used to mass-produce them. They are difficult to produce with the right level of contrast to make them reproduce legibly. There also comes the issue of where to distribute them. Not everywhere is appropriate for every zine. Blogs, as mentioned before can become a hassle if there are not enough computers to go around or the class must move to another location in the building to use them. This can waste valuable class time to be transitioning a lot. Computers also require maintenance and have a high margin of error the older they get. Comics can be challenging to teach, especially with my lack of knowledge of the field. Due to the level of specificity, i.e. commonly accepted conventions of comics, they may not be of interest to some of my students. All of these factors prove challenging, but what is life without some obstacles? They will only lead to divergent problem-solving on my part and reflection to strengthen their ties with art and literacy. Every problem has a solution!