My Book of Heroes and Heroines: Multi-Media Foam Core Accordian Books

First Grade
Teacher Partner: Mrs. Stern & Mr. Granger
Teaching Artist: Amy Herzel

	First-grade students paint their accordion books.

Reading is an experience in symbol recognition enriched by context, sound and imaginative visualizations. In this project, students translated music and words into a visual, pictorial experience of color and expression. By focusing on rhythm, emotion and movement, students created images and patterns that reflected their experience of the international music played for them. Students also concentrated on composition and harmony as they cut and collaged the prints of leaves and painted letters they had created earlier. Finally, with the goal of creating a visual road map of letters and shapes, the students wrote the titles of stories and the names of the characters they had learned about during the program. By focusing on the sensual and aesthetic elements of images and sound, words become more than a vehicle for information; they become an experience.