Created by English Language Arts students enrolled in courses taught by Mrs. Julie Terry, art decorates the walls in the junior high wing at Chinook High School. This art represents literary responses to students' reading.

Mrs. Terry's students are required to read one outside novel a quarter and to complete a project/report. The one-pagers on display are book reports, some reflect a more traditional approach while others lean more towards the nontraditional.

According to Terry, considerable research supports how creating art can be motivating. It can take the emphasis off of accuracy and put it onto fluency and the ability to clearly and concisely express thoughts and ideas. Aesthetic responses are also important for students whose progress in speaking or writing are hindered by a fear of making mistakes. Artistic expression further allows students to convey feelings and ideas while extending human understanding and investigating the meaning of a story as it relates to their own life experiences.

The blackout poems are pages of text from novels the class is reading, such as Lord of the Flies by William Golding and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. In creating their aesthetic responses, students were required to consider what visual imagery might support the author's theme and to create a unique poem from the words on the page. Next, they would black out/color out all of the other words. This coloring process creates art, leaving behind key words that not only share the reader's comprehension of the author's theme but enable them to make connections between their world and the literary world.

The blackout poems are a form of found poetry. A literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is a created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them. Students choose language that is particularly meaningful or interesting to them and organize the language around a theme or message.

The page Terry chose for students to create their response to Lord of the Flies was the scene where Golding juxtaposes the beauty of nature with the first attempted killing of a pig. Some students focused on the pastoral beauty of the mountain and flowers. Others zeroed in on the knife and the attempted kill. Although some of the outcomes were dark, Terry said, "Considering that the text pages were from Lord of the Flies, I wouldn't expect anything different."

Overall, Terry expressed pleasure with how art encourages her students to explore the layers of meaning in a story and to build personal connections with it.