Scribbling and drawing optimize natural, neural pathways into the more complex tasks of writing and reading words and other marks, or symbols.
Books
Susan Rich Sheridan, Ed. D. is the author of three books designed to help students of all ages grow as writers and readers.
Drawing/Writing is an easy-to-use set of drawing lessons and writing prompts for homeschooling parents and language educators K-12 as well as at the college level and for adult literacy programs as a natural and exciting way to teach writing and reading. Becoming skillful at drawing within a week of lessons is an extra, extraordinarily empowering benefit of this program.
Whether your interest is homeschooling, ESL or TOFL education, early education, middle or high school education, college English or studio arts, prison literacy programs, LD and ADD, TAG or multicultural education, arts-based learning, lifelong learning, senior education and/or enrichment, this tightly organized drawing and writing practice provides invaluable teaching and learning tools. Because these tools combine a visual approach with a verbal approach, Drawing/Writing is not only an interdisciplinary procedure, but, by being so "brain-like," this program is integrative and creative. The student's own drawings quickly become more powerful through this instructional five-step - while still remaining personal. and highly individual. No one in a Drawing/Writing class draws like anyone else. And they certainly do not draw like the teacher, who is drawing and writing along with them.
It is through these personal, powerful drawings that the student progresses into complex symbolic thought, including writing, reading, geometry, algebra — even into fractal mathematics. Uniquely, humans learn to represent thoughts outside their brains, and, then, to share them, using marks of meaning, and, of course, through spoken words, or speech.
Marks and Mind is the name of a new brain-based field of study concerning human literacy. What makes human brains different is not speech, but marks of meaning- that is, drawings, the written word, mathematical symbols, and musical notation. What makes human children fascinating as language users is that they make marks spontaneously. Given something to draw with, human children scribble and draw without anyone teaching them. On the other hand, although children babble (a scribble-like approach to speech), they need to learn how to speak. Someone teaches them spoken words and how to string them together to make sense. And, of course, children need to be taught how to write words, mathematical symbols, and musical notes. But they draw on their own. Their brains are organized to make marks of meaning, which they recognize as such. They can talk to you about what their drawings mean.
The theory supporting this field, Marks and Mind, is called Neurocontructivism. Neuroconstructivism is a term describing neurological construction, or brain-building. This new, educational field Marks and Mind- as well as the term "Neuroconstructivism" - were invented by auhor to describe a lifetime of teaching art and English to students K-12, as well as at the college level. By combining drawing (a right-brain activity) with writing (a left-brain activity), teachers and students experience a densely integrated and deeply exciting approach to writing and reading, or literacy. Because drawing is a natural mark-making system for children, they embark upon the adventure of marks-based communication in a natural way, with ease and enthusiasm, as well as with increasing confidence based on their powerful drawing skills. Drawing comes "for free" in the human brain. Speech, and reading and writing must to be learned.
This educational approach Drawing/Writing, is described in the book Drawing/Writing and the New Literacy. The five-step program is also carefully laid out, step by step, in Sheridan's book Handmade Marks written specifically for parents and grandparents and early education teachers, and Saving Literacy written especially for educators and for graduate students, doing educational research. This program can be taught directly by anyone for the first time by following the steps, doing the work with the students. A teacher new to Drawing/Writing simply works through the exercises with the students, using a script, which is fully illustrated with instructioanal drawings, including children’s drawings.
For more information on Neurocontructivism as well as on the practice called Scribbling/Drawing/Writing, see Sheridan’s papers, “The Scribble Hypothesis,” and “A Theory of Marks and Mind.” Click on the titles to download these papers for free.
The New Literacy describes an extended range of drawing, writing and reading skills, including computer literacy.
We can learn all to move beyond scribbles to powerful drawing skills and also to stronger writing skills and reading skills. In a sense, these expanded mark-making skills are our birthright, just as scribbling and drawing are birthrights. We are born being able to scribble and draw. These natural abilities may, with training, become other expressions of meaningful marks, both concrete and abstract: words, mathematical symbols, musical notation. Even so-called ‘learning disabled’ students can acquire writing and reading skills much more easily through drawing. Drawing is usually easy for these students. To start with the easy skill is simply a smart way to build more difficult skills.
To an unprecedented degree, a technological society requires communication skills. The ability to produce image as well as text is standard in this information-rich world. Dr. Sheridan calls these complex skills "the new literacy." Children's natural drawing skills are often marginalized or misunderstood - even more so, their scribbling. Technology's requirements for a comprehensive visual/verbal literacy (including computer language skills) forces us to take a deeper look at children's spontaneous mark-making, including very young children's scribbling and drawing. Scribbling is the place where literacy - in all its variety and scope - begins. Dr. Sheridan's books provide a deeper look at children's mark-making, recognizing it as the place where writing and reading begin, including computer literacy.
Being able to write and read depend upon core skills - including the ability to pay attention, and to communicate ideas, and to express emotions. These skills can be learned easily through training in drawing. Drawing is a universal skill. Everyone can draw. No one teaches us how. Drawing is a language instinct. Drawing can, however, be taught in such a way that it becomes more powerful, more expressive, more communicative. Learning to draw powerfully and personally gives children - and adults - more confidence, and a stronger ability to focus, in turn, increasing brain-power, or intelligence.
When talking and writing accompany drawing, verbal skills grow. A two-fold literacy develops, both visual and verbal. This “new literacy " is as old as paleolithic cave drawings and as new as computer technology. As language-users, humans have two unique characteristics: speech, and marks of meaning. Speech begins with babbling. Literacy begins with scribbling. Scribbles are equipotential: they can become anything: drawing, writing, mathematics, musical notation, computer programming.
The number of symbol systems any of us can learn depends upon opportunity, encouragement and instruction - thus, on our parents, our teachers, our environment, and our culture. Ultimately, it depends upon our brains and how we use them. It depends on simple tools, like pencil and paper.
Neurologically speaking, literacy is visual/verbal; it is both. The corpus callosum, a nerve-rich band of tissue bissecting the brain, connects the right and left hemispheres. This connective tissue creates a complex, cooperative unity; it is visual/verbal. Drawing/Writing (the method of delivery for the new literacy) models integrated brain function. It works like the corpus callosum by intentionally combining drawing with writing.
The more mark-making systems we use, the more powerfully we think. Multiple literacies should be our goal. A brain full of symbol systems is our birthright.
