MEETING INDIVIDUAL NEEDS
Words and Pictures
Left: Artwork by Abigail Mancillas, grade eleven. Above: Abel Villegas,
Camran Gordon, Abigail Mancillas, and Loan Nguyen.
Learning to read words and com- prehend new vocabulary can be difficult for students who have intellectual and/or developmental disabilities, but it is critical to the
understanding of academic content.
As the teacher in a high-school life-skills class, I am continually looking
for meaningful ways to present new
material and related content-area
vocabulary. Art, I have found, is one of
the best channels to use, and students
never lack enthusiasm when they see
art materials!
During a recent unit on plants, I
made plans for a watercolor garden
painting and decided it was a perfect
opportunity to incorporate content-area
vocabulary words into students’ artwork. I could also present examples of
modern and contemporary artwork that
contained words.
Ranella Franklin
glued to the interactive
white board as I displayed
photos of and work by
Faith Ringgold, Stuart
After students had completed their
garden paintings, we looked at the
artists and their
artworks again. I
explained that just
as those artists
had added words
to their paintings,
students would
now be adding
some of the new
vocabulary words that they had recently
learned into their own paintings.
in their pictures, and there were some
words pertaining to objects that were
not in everyone’s paintings. This created some additional problem-solving
skills—students determined which
words were needed and which were not.
The results were remarkable!
Students were both proud of their
paintings and proud to show off the
words that they could read. Higher-
level thinking skills were utilized as
students asked
and responded to
many questions
while viewing the
artwork, such as
“Why do you think
the artist put words
on this painting?”
“Why do you think
the artist put the words where he or she
did?” “What do you think the story in
the painting is saying?”
This was such a successful experi-
ence that I am planning to incorporate
more opportunities for students to
enhance content-area vocabulary com-
prehension through art, and I will most
definitely be introducing students to
more “real” artists!
As the teacher in a high
school life-skills class, I
am continually looking for
meaningful ways to present
new material and related
content-area vocabulary.
Words in Fine Art
I intentionally selected artists who
were dissimilar and chose two pieces
of artwork from each. Students were
Adding Words to Pictures
I gave each student a sheet of paper on
which I had typed their vocabulary
words in colors that complemented
their paintings. From these vocabulary
sheets, students took turns reading the
words. They cut them out and glued
them to the appropriate objects in
their paintings. There were multiples
of some words available in case they
had more than one of the same object
Ranella Franklin is a special education
life-skills teacher at Everman Joe C. Bean
High School in Everman, Texas. rfranklin@
eisd.org
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