Art all around us: reading and scanning
Read the text on page 59 of your book (about art as a world of imagination). We also read an everyday text and learn to scan. Scanning means moving your eyes quickly over a text to find a key word, a number or a name, without reading every word. First decide what you are looking for, then move down the text, and stop when you see it. Our new words: an artwork is any object that an artist or craftsperson creates; a sculpture is a shape made from stone, clay, wood or metal; special means better or different in a good way; valuable means worth a lot; original means the first of its kind, not a copy; and imagination is the power to think of new things in your mind. Art is not only for museums. It can be a pattern on a carpet, a painted wall or a drawing by a child.
| Reading skill | What to do |
|---|---|
| Scanning | Decide the key word. Move your eyes quickly. Stop when you find it. |
| Reading for detail | Read the sentence around the key word slowly. |
| Guessing a word | Use the words around it. |
Art is all around us. A child’s drawing on a fridge, a carpet with patterns and a painted wall in a village are all art. Artists use imagination to make something new from simple materials such as paper, wood, cloth and paint. Some artworks are displayed in a gallery, where visitors walk slowly and look closely. Others are sold in markets or made at home. An artwork may be valuable because it is very old or because it is original, which means nobody else made exactly the same one. Art can also carry a message: a painting of a river can say, “Please keep the water clean.”
Art hunt. Walk around your home or school with a grown-up and find six things made by an artist or a craftsperson (a carpet, a poster, a lamp, a bowl). Name the material, say if it is original or a copy, and tell one thing that makes it special.