Violent Red, Ogre Green, and Delicious White: Expanding Meaning Potential through Media

This article reports on the meaning potential of daily access to drawing/writing media for widening and deepening meaning construction. In a yearlong study in a second grade classroom, the author worked with a second-year teacher to see what would happen when art and language were encouraged ways of knowing in which children could construct meaning. The power of media was an unexpected finding in the study. This paper explores and examines how different drawing/writing media – marker, crayon, pencil, color pencil, pen, pastel, and paint - influences what children think about and how they construct meaning through pictures and words as a result. Analysis of students' drawn and written responses, audio taped talk in four different structures, and interview data suggest that children were able to use media in meaningful ways.