They Want to Learn How to Think: Using Art to Enhance Comprehension

This article describes an original way to integrate the visual arts with classroom literacy practices. Artists have a well developed repertoire of ways to observe the world around them through fresh eyes, and classroom teachers can use many of these same techniques to help young readers focus on subtle clues to meaning in stories. We describe these observational tools in detail, explain the method we used to introduce them to a group of third graders, and document the specific ways this approach to comprehension instruction encouraged students’ interpretations and judgments about The Gardner, a children’s book by Sarah Stewart.