Friday, August 21, 2015

Applying Background Knowledge to Visual Texts: August 21, 2015

Focus: How can we activate background knowledge to improve as readers?


Note: If you handwrote your common assessment, please make sure I have it.

1. Warming up: Happy Monday journaling and celebrating a few A+ blogs!

The first thing that caught my eye in the painting was the large ship leaving the land. Even after I scanned the page, I kept refocusing out of that same ship. It was significant in one way and I had to find out why. If I saw the artist, I would ask him what the time period was because the farmer's clothes suggests that it was not recent but I am completely unfamililiar with that style.
This painting represents the advancements of technology and civilization. The large ship leaving the land represents the newer and more advanced life moving quickly and the farmer stayed behind. Because the farmer's body language suggests that he is either sad or uninterested, we can assume that he did not want a new or more advanced life like the majority of society.

1) I see the women with the red shirt in the front of the picture first. This is because the eyes are drawn to the brightest thing on the page, which in this case is the only orange thing in the painting.
2) One question I have about this painting is why are there so many different biomes (Rocky Mountain, Ocean, Ice tundra in back) because it gives the person seeing the painting a hard time to guess where it is.
3) This painting, in my perspective, shows the evolution of man. The agricultural era is in the front of the painting, there is what looks to be a half sunken castle (showing that time period as over,) the ships represent the colonization and movement of man, and there is a glorious city in the background showing modern day.

1. I immediately noticed the ships deporting from the bay. It looks like the man lives in a very prosperous town because of the background and the ships also look very expensive, clean, and well kept.
2. The thing that rose the most questions for me is the bottom right corner. I can't tell exactly what they are but they look like a pair of legs flailing in the water. I have no idea what that is.
3. I agree with Jack that the painting is trying to tell the story of a farmer living on the outskirts of a very rich city. There is a farmer guiding a mule and a shepherd leading sheep. The shepherd looks extremely tired because agriculture is a very demanding work especially when located on the outskirts of a large city. And what are the legs?

2. Recapping Friday's reading strategy and trying out background knowledge with some tougher paintings

3. Reading the myth of Daedalus and Icarus (which you can access by clicking HERE)

Making sense of the myth with your reading chart; if you prefer to type, please click HERE for an online version of the chart.

Please use an entire side of paper to analyze this story by doing the following:
  • Isolating the significant little pieces of the story (just as you did with the paintings on Friday).
  • Drawing inferences/larger conclusions from those pieces.
  • Don't worry about the third column yet.
4. Returning to last night's painting armed with background knowledge

5. Composing your "exit ticket": Go back to the painting you analyzed over the weekend.  Employing at least one of the reading strategies we've talked about so far, add something to your original comment that you didn't understand or notice the first time around.

HW: 
1. Bring a HARD COPY of meaningful and appropriate song lyrics to class Monday (in other words, there needs to be something of substance in there to analyze; avoid lyrics that may offend others).

2. Bring in the song itself and headphones.


3. You need your independent reading book, proposal, and blue permission slip one week from today.

1 comment:

  1. The painting, "The Fall of Icarus" shows a complex piece of art with a lot of things going on. Now that I know the title, I see that the legs shown in the bottom right are Icarus' as he fell into the sea. His wings melted as he flew over the sea and he fell in and drowned. I think the artist is trying to show that Icarus' death wasn't a big deal and there are still many things happening around him that don't seem to care. He shows this by having many different things that take up most of the painting while making Icarus' legs a very small part in the bottom corner.

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