A cricket hat, a conch shell and an orange... Those are the images my students use to understand how to create a visual framework for writing, beginning with the element of theme.

Since I teach in an International school with children from Trinidad, the West Indies and all over the world, I believe it is important to use images in music, art and literature that relate to all students and reflect various cultural experiences including Caribbean culture. I also try to use students’ work when teaching concepts.

We begin with an understanding of how objects become symbolic. The cover of calypsonian David Rudder’s CD Here Comes... The West Indies uses nothing but a hat with a logo to symbolise the West Indies cricket team. Students discuss the impact of this image on a CD cover and then listen to the title track of the CD that begins with a famous cricket fan nicknamed Blue Food blowing his conch shell as he does at all of the cricket games. Students soon realise that Blue Food’s conch shell rallies cricket fans throughout the region and creates an upbeat tone for the song.

After students identify the significance of the conch shell to cricket and West Indian culture, I show them former AP art student Rachel Eckel’s picture of a woman blowing a conch shell. Students observe how the tone and theme change when they see the caption of the picture: “Myrtle harmoniously plays the Star Spangled Banner.� The conch shell changes from a symbol of regionalism to a symbol of colonialism via the vehicle of irony.

When students understand the relationship of objects to theme and how the juxtaposition of verbal and visual images create a mood or tone, they read the essay “Ode to an Orange� by Larry Woiwode in Chapter 1 “Observing the Ordinary�. Students discuss the questions under Seeing at the end of the essay and write an ode to an object as suggested in the Writing section.

Students then read a short story entitled “Love Orange� by Jamaican writer Olive Senior and talk about the contrasting tone created by the orange in the essay by Woiwode vs. the short story by Senior. I have students follow the orange throughout the essay and short story to understand how the authors use the orange to create theme and tone. They then use the orange to create a visual framework for writing a comparative essay.

By the end of this exercise, students are able to take one image, identify its significance, follow the use of that image in a picture, song, essay and short story, apply the concepts of object to theme in their own ode to an object, and write a comparative essay.