At the beginning of the chapter on observation, we were given the task of watching television. Now that is a homework assignment I can get on board with! Had the task been given from another source I might have just watched The Mentalist and gotten back to the book. However, being in a course called Creativity in Teaching and Learning and reading a book titled Sparks of Genius leads me to believe that simply watching a show is not what I was meant to do. Being on my guard, I was mindful of some of the physical aspects of the set itself and of the sounds it made. Even so I had not observed many of the things mentioned at the end of the chapter.
In school we read poetry to students and ask them to write poems of their own. I do not recall, however, being asked to observe poetry. We discuss what the author might have meant by his or her words and what their intention may have been for writing it. Observing poetry might show us more than that. Perhaps the way the words are broken up or the unconventional use of punctuation can tell us something. Perhaps words are in bold or italics to send a message.
Much like observing, imaging is often associated with the visual. When I think of images I usually think of photographs, paintings, and other things that I can take in with my eyes. I don’t think that I am alone in the fact that I had not considered aural imagery, despite the fact that I was raised in what I would consider a musical household. It makes sense to me now that I have given it some thought. My kids are always impressed when we listen to a cd in the car because when a song ends I hum or sing the first notes of the next song in the correct key and pitch. They usually ask “how did you do that?” I suppose that is part of aural imagery. When you have listened to a cd a number of times, you know not only how each song will sound, but how the whole cd will sound… or maybe that’s just me!
In regards to poetry, how a poem is read and even who is reading it will have an effect on what the listener will take away from it. Changing the punctuation or how a poem is broken up can have a profound effect on its meaning. The poetry of Emily Dickenson is a great example of this. Emily Dickenson wrote her poetry using pen and paper of course. That allowed her to do things that you could not do on a keyboard. In place of periods or commas she often used dashes. The dashes even tended to tilt up or down, presumably to indicate something to the reader or at least to the author. She also used capitalization in a seemingly random fashion, but certainly this was not by accident. It affects the way the words are read. Sometimes her poems are printed with changes to her original markings, perhaps because a printer is unable to replicate them. When you view the poem as written next to the poem as it was modified, you will notice that it changes the way the poem will sound when read aloud.
Observing and imaging are tools that students may be using without our knowledge. Being aware of that can help us to ask better questions of them. Students are known for offering responses like “I just knew the answer.” They may have “seen” it or “heard” it in a way that they cannot put into words.
I really like how you touched on the fact that observing and imaging can help to make more sense of the world and help us to put ideas and knowledge into words better. I think the more, we ourselves and our students, observe and imagine things, the easier it becomes to make sense of things around us. Without the knowledge, it becomes more and more difficult to explain. Just like you mentioned before, it's the same with poetry-we all think about it differently and the way it is read can have an impact on our interpretation. It all goes back to observing and putting those observations into an image, in order to make more sense of it.
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