The first book focuses on our very youngest mark-makers. It is called Saving Literacy: How marks change minds. Attention, Connection, Literacy. This book is designed for caregivers, teachers and researchers in early childhood development. It will sell for $24.95. Those interested in specific research questions connected with this book, can read them on this site. The next book, Handmade Marks: a child's way into attention, connection and meaning, is a hands-on book designed especially for parents and children (up to age six) working together with the Scribbling/Drawing/Writing program. Price will be announced soon. Research questions connected with this book are also available on this site. The last, a how-to manual for retirees and other older thinkers, should be out by late summer, 2009. This large print book is called Preserving Literacy: how to use drawing and writing to protect our thinking skills as we grow older. Cost, $10.00. These three publications in the Drawing/Writing series cover the developmental spectrum of mark-making, from earliest childhood into old-age, championing what is unique about human visual and verbal thinking: mark-making, or literacy. For information on how to order these books, contact Dr. Sheridan (at susansheri@gmail.com or ssheridan@drawingwriting.com).
Three new books in the series "How Marks Change Minds" will be coming out in the summer of 2009.
Since the late 1980's, my work has followed in Vygotsky's footsteps. What I wrote in 2002 is valid today: "At this point in educational history, no child can be considered apart from its brain. Neurobiology gives us a new way to look at children, including their scribbles. Whether scribbles are pictures of neural activity or motor organizers, they are marks with a destiny. What other biophysical entity generates marks to explain and extend the parabolic burstings in its brain?" "Currently, some modes of parenting and many methods of education prevent the development of most of the marks a child could generate during its mental life. If parents and teachers let children scribble and talk about scribbling, draw and talk about their drawings, write about their own drawings, and talk about their writing, asked only to ready their own drawings and writings, first, before they are asked to read anyone else's, children will move more naturally into writing and reading. Learning delays and disabilities, short attention spans and a host of behavioral problems may clarify themselves as what happens when children are separated from what their brains have evolved to do in the course of the normal, natural developmental unfolding of a marks-based intelligence. "Piaget and Vygotsky shared the understanding that the mind of the child is qualitatively different from the adult mind. Knowledge, intelligence and morality spring from the child's actions, and this 'child-action' is playful and experimental." (From "The Neurological Significance of Children's Drawing: The Scribble Hypothesis" (c) 2002 Susan Rich Sheridan.) Written in 2002, these words hold true in 2009. Now – more than ever - the searching instincts of the child for positive thought and action provide models for adult behavior, worldwide. We all need to search for healthy solutions for our families, our communities, our planet; we all need to take responsibility for healthy entertainment – the kind playful fun that builds relationships and gives pleasure, even wisdom and joy. Marks of meaning point the way.
A Marks-Based Intelligence
Only one thing is certain – that written language of children develops in this fashion, shifting from drawings of things to drawings of words. The entire secret of teaching written language is to prepare and organize this natural transition appropriately…Make believe play, drawing and writing can be viewed as different moments in an essentially unified program of development of written language… Lev Vygotsky, "The Prehistory of Writing," an essay, c. 1930 in The Mind in Society, pp. 115-116, 1978.
How Literacy at home starts with scribbling and drawing - The Drawing/Writing Program: Find out about neurobeneficial parenting: parenting that's good for young, growing brains.
The Thinking Child: A handbook for parents
| "Drawing/Writing and the New Literacy (embodies) insight on science education....demonstrating the value of hands-on,kinesthetic participation by the student of whatever age (and I'm one of them) in addressing the real world. Find out what others know - of course - but then repeat it with your eyes and hands, then add your own observations, and then, finally, own the subject. That's a good prescription for education generally."
--E.O. Wilson, Harvard University, January 8, 1998, correspondance. |
| "Only one thing is certain - that written language of children develops in this fashion, shifting from drawings of things to drawings of words. The entire secret of teaching written language is to prepare and organize this natural transition appropriately...Make believe play, drawing and writing can be viewed as different moments in an essentially unified program of development of written language...The discontinuities and jumps from one mode of activity to the other are too great for the relationship to seem evident."
--Lev Vygotsky, "The Prehistory of Writing," an essay, c. 1930 in The Mind in Society, 1978. |
rawing/Writing is a theory, a practice, a book, and a course of study developed by a writer, artist, teacher, and parent. Drawing/Writing is for anyone - including parents and teachers and all other caregivers who work with children's minds - as well as any reader who is working on personal growth - who is interested in:
|
r. Susan Rich Sheridan is an artist, writer, parent and teacher. She received her undergraduate degree in Classics and English from Harvard College and her MAT and her doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Dr. Sheridan has taught English and Art at the middle school, high school and college levels for the past twenty years. Dr. Sheridan’s theory of education Neuroconstructivism, and her cross-modal practice Drawing/Writing are the result of twenty years of on-going teaching and field research.
|
 |
 To an unprecedented degree, a technological society requires visual literacy skills as well as verbal skills. These requirements place considerable pressures on the classroom, the home, and industry. This book meets this demand for multiple literacy skills by encouraging the natural, evolutionary capabilities of our brains, starting with the universal skill that everyone can do, drawing.
The abilities to write and to read depend upon core skills including the ability to pay attention, to extract information, to communicate ideas and emotions clearly, and to use both words and images. In short, to use the whole brain. These skills can be learned through training in drawing. Drawing is a universal skill. Everyone can draw. No one teaches us how. Drawing is a language instinct.
|
|
|
Additional Marks and Mind material is on Dr. Sheridan's Facebook site - if you are already on Facebook, come join the Marks and Mind group and feel free to ask Susan Sheridan to be your friend! If you are not yet a Facebook member, sign up to access this material. |
Please e-mail your questions or comments for Dr. Sheridan
ssheridan@drawingwriting.com
This site was last updated on March 27, 2009.
Page redesign and maintenance by Jeannine Lawall
Original page design and construction by Plummer's Mines
 |
|
When talking and writing accompany drawing, verbal skills grow and a double literacy develops, both visual and verbal. This “new literacy " is as old as paleolithic cave drawings and as new as computer technology. The New Literacy models integrated brain function . The New Literacy rests on a new theory of multiple literacies. Humans as language-users have one unique characteristic: they make marks of meaning. These marks first take the form of scribbles. Then, children draw. The marks are equipotential: they can become anything: drawing, writing, mathematics, musical notation. The number of systems for meaning-making each of us learns depends upon opportunity, encouragement and instruction. It depends on our parents, our teachers, our environment, and our culture. Ultimately, it depends upon our brains and how we choose to use them.
Drawing/Writing and the new literacy
