Exercise 5.6: Stages of Reading Development. Part IV (Second illustration & development)
Bears discovering a new frontier
Drawing
A3 Gouache
I used gouache again and similar colours to give some sense of consistency between the two drawings.
I used pictures of divers to create these illustrations. The first drawing was a man and I realise that the animals were a supporting character at best so I decided to make an animal the explorer.
Inspiration
While I was researching for the other illustration I came across with an illustration if a diver so I like it, and the see is the ultimate earth frontier of discovery so.
Illustration
I wanted to do like a sequence of moments for this bear but I do not think this is close enough to give the sense of a story but I like the box in the middle. Perhaps I should have made the box bigger. I did not want to change much because I was using a picture as a reference and I did not know much about drawing this to move too much away from the reference...
Exercise 5.6: Stages of Reading Development. Part II
Illustration and reading development
Looking for illustrations for a sample on reading age is very complicated. There is no clear patters of the different on age, number of words and complexity. I tried to find studies but there aren't studies that connect images and reading abilities.
So I made the groups based on an intuitive idea of how the images should be for each group but this is very circular. You cannot look for common variables in a group that were created by you so I think I will be looking more into the differences for each group if I want to work with children.
Background: A simpler background help to understand what the main character is doing... so I think the younger the child the clean and simple should be the background. In other hands, a more complex story requires a more subtle and complex background to push the storyline forward.
Character: I am not sure about the type of character but I think that the number of character increase with the reading ability, this is part of making the story simpler or more complex to much the child reading ability.
Mood: It seems that happiness is more related to small children’s stories. Even stories with a more darker tone seem to be clear up or added some good mood
Plot: The writing is the beginning of the drawing. the early stages of reading have a more linear story, with not so many twists.
Exercise 5.6: Stages of Reading Development. Part I.
Research and personal learning
Theory
There are different theories about the stages but I was interested in how illustration can help with the association of words and meaning. I work with children with disabilities and I struggle finding good books for them, so I did more extensive reading about reading development.
Stage 1: The Emergent Pre-reader (typically between 6 months to 6 years old)
On the guide, this is divided into two different groups pre-reader (between 6 months and 3 years) and pre-school (3 to 5 years).
“samples and learns from a full range of multiple sounds, words, concepts, images, stories, exposure to print, literacy materials, and just plain talk during the first five years of life” but "t we conclude from this research is that the many efforts to teach a child to read before four or five years of age are biologically precipitate and potentially counterproductive for many children.” (Wolf, 2008, p 94 - 96)
This is very interesting and I am pretty sure a long list of other studies that shows a different result but it seems obvious that between three and 6 are the most appropriate age to teach children to read. At the end of this stage, the children pretend to read and can understand hundreds of words but only can read a few of them. The child will need the assistant of an adult. (Wolf, 2008) This lead to an interesting point that a children book is also for the adult who read it.
“Any instruction (phonics, vocabulary) should be linked to the book reading, and such books should include rhyme, alliteration, and repetitive phrases. In one’s environment, adults should verbally label objects with which children are involved and encourage children to ask questions and elaborate on observations (Westberg, et al., 2006) “
At this point, it is important to connect the words with the pictures so children can associate. Also, it is important to create certain names big so they can associate the sound with a picture.
Stage 2: The Novice Reader (typically between 6 to 7 years old)
At this stage, children can read high-frequency words and can sound out words that are less frequent.
“A useful method for helping novice readers with phoneme awareness and blending involves ‘phonological recording.’ This may seem to be just a pretentious term for reading aloud, but ‘reading aloud’ would be too simple a term for what is really a two-part dynamic process. Reading aloud underscores for children the relationship between their oral language and their written one. It provides novice readers with their own form of self teaching.” (Wolf, pp 118)
Illustrative books can help parents with this process because drawings can catch the attention of the child in a concept, and help the parent and direct the attention to the letters and the sound of the word.
This shows that in stage 2, children can learn as much concentrated that unconsecrated in a basic or intermediate reading material. So, it is important to help the child to focus on the book but it can learn even when he is interested in another aspect of the book.
“orthographic development for novice readers requires multiple exposures to print” (Wolf, pp 120 - 121) This is also interesting because in different reading books for this stage I have found that the print is too small or sentences that have too many words (at least with the children that I work this type of reading material does not work best)
Stage 3: The Decoding Reader (typically between 7 - 9 years old)
“ In this stage, the child is reading simple, familiar stories and selections with increasing fluency. This is done by consolidating the basic decoding elements, sight vocabulary, and meaning in the reading of familiar stories and selections.” (Brace, 2018)
This definition can help to build the association with more complex meaning, like scenes in a story,
Brace, E. (2018). Five Stages of Reading Development. Retrieved 13 July, 2018, from https://www.theliteracybug.com/stages/
