A recent community wide reading program offers a valuable opportunity for students and teachers to respond to literature by attending community wide events, creating art, and developing relationships with community members.

Asserts that teachers of contemporary literature should enjoy the advantages of poetry written in response to, or interpreting, paintings or other works of art. Illustrates the advantages of such poetry with two examples. (PRA)

To encourage creative thinking, high school teacher Kelly Courtney-Smith asked her students for creative responses to Hesse's novel, using a technique she learned from coauthor Michael Angelotti. Students painted or wrote poems interpreting their reading, then responded to the creations of their classmates. The students found that these…

Suggests ways to improve students' visual literacy through the study of paintings and photographs. (DD)

Discusses the benefits of integrating the teaching of literature and painting. Describes the benefits to students in the understanding of both forms. Asserts that using visual arts improves students' motivation as well as their overall understanding of modernism. (PRA)

Offers 17 exercises combining writing and painting, each with its own theme and goal, and all designed to show that close observation is fundamental to the effectiveness of both visual and verbal expression. (SR)

Explains how Sir Joshua Reynolds' paintings and William Blake's etchings enriched the study of Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" in a seventh-grade class. (JL)

Shows how a teacher used paintings as a basis for writing exercises designed to teach students about the subjectivity of interpretation and the importance of visual imagery. Describes a number of specific writing assignments and classroom activities involving description, interpretation, drawing, poetry, and research papers. (TB)

Describes how a middle school English/language arts teacher had students paint in watercolors their responses to the novel the class was reading. Describes how this approach signficantly improved the rate and quality of student participation, and brought out new voices and fresh readings of the text. (SR)

Establishes a link between the themes of Golding's fiction and the paintings of the Brueghel. Traces their use of the grotesque to impress a message on the mind of the reader or viewer. (CRH)