Try replicating the exercise Jane Olson conducted. After your students have written a piece, have them draw an image that represents the main focus of the writing. (If possible, have them use color.) Next, divide the class into groups to discuss the details in their drawings.

          To ensure a productive discussion, you may want to use the following questions, adapted from an article by Probst (1990) in which he formulated questions for discussion based on Rosenblatt's theories of reading and writing. Here the word text is replaced by drawing.

First Reaction

What is your first reaction or response to the drawing? Describe or explain it briefly.

Feelings

What feelings did the drawing awaken in you? What emotions did you feel as you looked at the drawing?

Perceptions

What did you see happening in the drawing? Paraphrase it---retell the major events briefly.

Visual Images

What related images did you picture as you looked at the drawing?

Associations

What memory does the drawing call to mind - of people, places, events, sights, smells, or even of something more ambiguous, perhaps feelings or attitudes?

Thoughts, Ideas

What idea or thought was suggested by the drawing? Explain it briefly.

Selection of Textual Elements

Upon what, in the drawing, did you focus most intently as you looked at it?

Judgments of Importance

What is the most important part of the drawing?

Patterns of Response

How did you respond to the drawing---emotionally or intellectually? Did you feel involved with the drawing, or distant from it?

Literary Associations

Does this drawing call to mind any other artwork or literary work (poem, play, film, or story)? If it does, what is the work and what is the connection you see between the two?

          Finally, have the students revise their writing using ideas for images that arose from the discussion.