Representing

Representing is creating, constructing, and communicating meaning through a variety of media and forms including drawings, sounds, pictures, movements, illustrations, charts, graphs, posters, murals, photographs, dioramas, puppets, sculptures, models, dramas, videos, sounds, and electronic text/graphics. Representations allow students to demonstrate their learning and understanding in a variety of ways.

When developing students' representing skills and strategies, consider the following guidelines.

1. Provide opportunities for students to represent daily.

Students need opportunities to communicate their ideas in a variety of forms and to explore various media and forms. Help students recognize representing as an important way of communicating ideas, exploring their thinking, and demonstrating their understanding. Point out how pictures, sounds, photographs, movement, illustrations, sculptures, graphs, charts, diagrams, and other representations are found in texts as well as in the world around us.

Give students opportunities to respond, record, and report at different times during the learning process using different media to demonstrate what they are thinking or have learned. Students can represent ideas, information, and events in oral, print, and other media texts and forms. Depending upon the students' purposes, they will choose one or more ways to represent their ideas, information, and events. Students can create original texts using a range of forms. Some examples follow.

Form	Examples
Maps, Webs	concept map, story map, character map, word map, concept web
Charts, Frames	summary chart, matrix, comparison/contrast grid, paragraph organizer frame, structured overview
Diagrams	labeled diagram, Venn diagram, tree diagram
Chains, Wheels, Timelines, Flowcharts	sequence chain, word chain, cycle wheel, word wheel, historical timeline, event flowchart, rebus
Graphs	object graph, pictograph, bar graph
Illustrations	poster, painting, photograph, mural, slide show, collage, comic strip, storyboard, story quilt
Three-dimensional, Multimedia	display, model, diorama, sculpture, skit, mime, tableau, role play, drama, puppet play, mobile, video, multimedia presentation

Many representations will employ multimedia strategies and techniques (e.g., using audiovisual aids such as sound effects, visuals, graphics, and video to communicate information.) Teachers should balance the expectations for the products or representations that students create in relation to the intended objective(s) and to student's previous experiences with the media used.. Teachers should also help students attend to the elements, techniques, and conventions of the different media so that students can develop effective representations related to their particular audience(s) and purpose(s).

2. Give students guidance and explicit instruction to develop effective representing skills and strategies.

As with all communication, students need to plan and then prepare the final product. Teachers need to discuss and model the before, during (problem solving), and after phases of the representing process as carefully and consciously as they do with the other language processes.

Narrative representations rely on depicting setting and character, while informational representations require clear charts, diagrams, tables, and models. Most dramatizing, illustrating, and developing models of ideas and events will involve design elements such as balance, order, and harmony among shapes, forms, and colours. Informational representations can integrate oral, print, and other media text as students title and label their work, and can rely on organizational frames (e.g., timeline, graph). Other information representations can integrate oral text with movement, sounds, and colour, and can rely on models (e.g., props, scenery). Teachers will need to help students identify and depict main ideas and key supporting details in a form that suits the purpose and stated audience. Teachers will also need to model, discuss, and display examples of manuscript print, cursive writing, and other fonts and styles for labeling and displaying phrases, words, and letters.

Creating representations requires students to use their imaginations to depict key ideas and events. Some useful strategies include:

Talk, Act, Draw, Write: Talking, acting, drawing, and writing provide ways to express thoughts. Students talk, act, draw and write to represent what they are hearing, seeing, viewing, understanding, feeling, or thinking about a story, topic, or experience. They can use talking, acting, drawing, and writing to retell a text, to represent their response, or to share their impressions with others. Students are encouraged to share their representations with others and then to add further details or ideas to their representations. Students can talk about, act, draw, or write scenes or sequences of events from texts they have heard, read, or viewed. Students can share and discuss the scenes (Whitin, 1996). Another activity that students enjoy is representing a scene from different perspectives such as a bird's eye view or an ant's eye view (Moline, 1995). Students can also talk, act, draw, and write about a field trip experience or a guest speaker's visit.

Sketch to Stretch: In small groups or as a class, students view, read, or listen to a text. Before they begin, encourage students to think about how one can "represent" or "draw" the author's intended meaning. During and after viewing, reading, or listening to a text, students sketch their observations about the text and share them with a partner. "Speech balloons" and "thinking bubbles" can be incorporated into the sketches to indicate what characters said or were thinking (Harste, Short, & Burke, 1988). Alternatively, students can represent their observations through acting, designing a diorama, and other activities.

Illustrator Strategies: Students can explore different techniques and media to represent their ideas, capture a story line, illustrate a character or setting, and capture or create moods and feelings. Students can represent their understanding of word meanings through collages, paintings, and mobiles. Students can create comic strips of the key events and elements of a story, create murals, or design posters.

Wordless Picture Books: Teachers can model how wordless picture books tell a story or convey information. Students can tell a story or present information using this technique.

Story Maps: Story maps help students develop a "sense of story". Students can use a simple story map to retell the beginning, middle, and end of a story or create a graphic organizer that captures the problem-solution relationship found in a story. A sample story map follows.

Note: All stories do not necessarily present a problem and solution. Story maps will differ depending upon the story.

Story Quilts: Students can create story quilts to show the setting, time, place, and sequence of story events. The design of the quilt squares should reflect the theme of the story (Tompkins, 1997).

Storyboards: Using a panel of blocks that represent the story events sequentially, students can sketch the key scenes and then suggest the audio (words) that might accompany each. Some sample storyboards follow.

Sample Storyboard 1
Introduce Characters and Setting	Beginning Events	Middle Events	Ending
How film begins	The problem	Solving the problem	How the problem is solved

Sample Storyboard 2
Introduce Characters and Setting	Beginning Events	Middle Events	Ending
How film begins	Interesting idea	Supporting or conflicting factor	Surprise event

Sample Storyboard Card for a Video

Title: _________________________________

Shot Number: ______ Location: __________

(Picture: What the camera will show.)

(Sound: Music, dialogues, sound effects.)

Notes: (e.g., setting, lighting, movement, camera direction)

Cartoons: Cartoonists use one or more panels to tell their story or present their ideas. Comic strips combine both illustrations and thought or speech bubbles to tell stories and communicate information. Have students bring examples of their favourite comic strips and discuss the qualities that they enjoy. Students may want to create a comic strip modeled after their favourite cartoonist. Discuss and model the preparation and techniques that are important to comic strips. Older students can examine simple political cartoons.

Rebus Flowcharts: Using rebus symbols, the teacher and students can recall, record, and represent (e.g., sketch, draw, or paint) the key information they have gathered. This also can be accomplished on a computer using software that enables students to draw or import symbols.

Graphic Organizers: Information and ideas can be displayed in a number of ways including graphic organizers (e.g., mind maps, Venn diagrams, timelines, life cycles). Using the chalkboard or overhead projector, the teacher can show students how to present information in formats that are different from the original text. As and after students view, read, or listen to an information text, they can analyze and represent the key ideas, events, sequence, or procedure using different organizers. Students can also use these organizers to plan additional representations.

Charting, Graphing, Mapping, and Labeling: Model how to chart, graph, map, and label responses and findings for a variety of topics (e.g., favourite hobbies).

Photographs and Slides: Whether students bring their favourite photos or slides from home or take pictures of their activities at school, photos can be used to represent and share understanding. Pictures taken during a field trip, a science experiment, or a special event can be arranged and reviewed. Students can create a photo essay to describe new experiences and ideas. Captioned pictures can describe or explain an event. Students can sequence photos and use them for presentations, study, and review. Photo representations can be used to highlight special celebrations and personal accomplishments. Photos can be scanned for use in multimedia presentations or a digital camera may be available.

Posters: Creating posters to promote a favourite text or to inform others about an idea or experience develops not only students' representing skills but also their conceptual and organizational (e.g., who, what, where, when) abilities.

Murals and Collages: Students can represent narrative stories or informational text by creating murals and collages. Students can use their own illustrations and labeling or they can use pictures from magazines or personal photographs related to the theme or topic.

Recomposing Text: Students can work in groups to represent a piece or passage of text in different ways (e.g., skits, tableaux, models). Each group may choose one way to present the same information and share with the class (Moline, 1995).

Dramas, Puppet Plays, Tableaux, and Role Plays: Drama is important in developing students' language skills, concepts, visualization abilities, problem-solving abilities, decision-making strategies, co-operative learning skills, and aesthetic appreciation. Drama is an important way of fostering the development and learning of students (Siks, 1983). Students can form small groups to represent their understanding of a story, a poem, a situation, or a concept. Whole class contextual dramas can also be facilitated by the teacher.

Displays: Displays can be used to retell, relate, and respond to field trips, stories, poems, plays, presenters, and information texts.

Mobiles: Students can create mobiles that highlight a story, their experiences, what they have learned, and what they wonder about. Mobiles can be prepared using cut out shapes and photos, drawings, pictures from magazines, and found objects. All sides of the mobile can be decorated.

Models: Using play dough, plasticine, clay, or other materials, students can make three-dimensional models relating to their favourite texts or communicating ideas about what they have learned. Models are excellent ways of explaining how something was created or how something works. Students can develop new vocabulary and create directions, labels, or sound effects as they plan to present their models to others.

Audiovisual Aids: Whenever students are sharing narratives, informational text, poetry, or dramas, they can develop audiovisual aids to enhance their delivery. These aids might include flannel boards, puppets, props, charts, graphs, timelines, models, posters, murals, sound effects, and background music. Students need modeling to help them use these aids effectively.

Videos: Students can use home video cameras to produce the representations. Students can produce a "silent movie" or "wordless film" (accompanied by music). If time and equipment permit, they can plan, shoot, and edit a full production of a story, news program, informational text, or other video program.

Commercials: Students can write and present television or radio commercials for favourite books, movies, hobbies, toys, cereals, or activities. These can be planned using a storyboard format, rehearsed, acted out, audiotaped, or videotaped. Students can create images that appeal to the five senses, and brand names, jingles, and slogans to accompany their presentations (Barchers, 1993).

Multimedia: In addition to combining oral, print, and visual texts, students can explore a number of electronic texts including on-line magazines, videos, television, and computers. Students can develop representations using images, graphics, sound, QuickTime movies, print, digital photography, scanned images, computer-generated cartoons, etc. Encourage students to mix various media when representing. Magazine production, for example, encourages students to mix print, photography, graphics, cartoons, and other forms of representing.