Picturebooks, By Suzette Youngs And Frank Serafini

Picturebooks are a new trend in elementary and intermediate schools this year. Teachers must be able to accurately identify the meaning themselves, and understand the complexity, in order to effectively teach students the process. The article, “Comprehension Strategies for Reading Historical Fiction Picturebooks,” by Suzette Youngs and Frank Serafini introduces an effective process and various strategies to understand the artistic and imaginative pieces that include both, fact and fiction, in the pieces. Historical Picturebooks are difficult for elementary and intermediate students because they are multimodal. This means they include several types of systems to create meaning. These systems include the visual image, design elements, and the

The strategies used to increase critical analysis is Motif. This is analyzing repeated images or symbols throughout the story and identifying various changes and the meaning behind it. The second is visual symbols, which identifies historical symbols to make connections. Some questions a teacher could ask while his/her class analyzes various symbols include, “Why is this symbol here?” or, “What context is this symbol originally used in?” The last strategy discussed is called placement of characters. This analyzes where characters are placed in an image. For example, characters at the top are the ideal image of what a person should look like (happy, high social class, etc.). While characters at the bottom of the image is the real image of what a person looks like and has a low social class. Some questions a teacher could ask while implementing this strategy include, “Who or what character/objects are privileged in this image?” and, “What systems of power are

This is because teachers need to be able to analyze the systems before they can teach students to do the same. This means they must have a complex understanding of this subject and higher order thinking skills, in order to be able to successfully teach students the process and strategies. Also, this will help students prepare for history class in the future because they will retain the information they are learning because they are creating meaning and not memorizing the information. When students do learn to successfully analyze a historical picturebook, they are learning critical thinking skills, which will help them succeed I various other aspects of their lives. For example, in math class students will be able to solve a difficult math problem by attempting several processes in order to reach the correct solution. Lastly, looking past the initial impression and analyzing a situation is a beneficial skill to have in a myriad of professions, therefore, this process is not helping students in one subject, it is preparing them for their future. I fully plan to use this process when looking at a historical picturebook in third and fourth grade, possibly second grade as well. I will use these strategies while learning about a topic that could be easily misinterpreted. I will also engage students to read the story a second time, and not get bored, by showing my enthusiasm to learn more about the time period and elements we will be