Visual literacy
_
What is & why teach
visual literacy?
As the DEST (2005) states, in the learning of English, students engage with and develop the knowledge and understanding about English language and literature through the skills of talking, listening, reading, viewing and writing to effectively achieve their purpose. It is made clear that there is a commonality between reading and viewing and their inherent skills of decoding & interpreting or comprehending especially when navigating texts which rely inherently on the relationship between written text and image (BOS, 1998; Simpson, 2005). Imporant time is spent explicitly teaching students to understand how written texts are constructed but there is also a clear imperative to support students in understanding how to 'read images' (Simpson, 2006).
Equipping your students with the skills & metalanguage of visual grammar:
Kress & van Leeuwen's (1996) highly sophisticated work around the functions of visual design have provided teachers a framework through which to develop a shared language or metalanguage to support students development of visual grammar when learning to read images. In line with Halliday's functional grammar strands the strands of visual grammar support meaning making through the various resources clustered by those defined as representational, interactive and compositional (Simpson, 2006). To ensure these skills & devices are accessible and manageable for students it is important for primary teachers to select a focus set of resources within the visual grammar framework with which to apply and explore images in texts. For example:
As the DEST (2005) states, in the learning of English, students engage with and develop the knowledge and understanding about English language and literature through the skills of talking, listening, reading, viewing and writing to effectively achieve their purpose. It is made clear that there is a commonality between reading and viewing and their inherent skills of decoding & interpreting or comprehending especially when navigating texts which rely inherently on the relationship between written text and image (BOS, 1998; Simpson, 2005). Imporant time is spent explicitly teaching students to understand how written texts are constructed but there is also a clear imperative to support students in understanding how to 'read images' (Simpson, 2006).
Equipping your students with the skills & metalanguage of visual grammar:
Kress & van Leeuwen's (1996) highly sophisticated work around the functions of visual design have provided teachers a framework through which to develop a shared language or metalanguage to support students development of visual grammar when learning to read images. In line with Halliday's functional grammar strands the strands of visual grammar support meaning making through the various resources clustered by those defined as representational, interactive and compositional (Simpson, 2006). To ensure these skills & devices are accessible and manageable for students it is important for primary teachers to select a focus set of resources within the visual grammar framework with which to apply and explore images in texts. For example:
Texts to help teachers:
_- Chapter 10 in Beyond the Reading Wars 'Teaching
Primary School Children how to read images',
Alyson Simpson (2006)
- 'Words & pictures: A multimodal approach to picture books', Helen de Silva Joyce & John Gaudin (2011)
- 'Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum', Len Unsworth (2001)
- Article in Scan Vol 29 No 3 August 2010 'Using visual texts to engage students from low SES backgrounds', Jon Callow
- 'Words & pictures: A multimodal approach to picture books', Helen de Silva Joyce & John Gaudin (2011)
- 'Teaching multiliteracies across the curriculum', Len Unsworth (2001)
- Article in Scan Vol 29 No 3 August 2010 'Using visual texts to engage students from low SES backgrounds', Jon Callow
_Laetitia Cross (K-6 Deputy Principal) and Sue Morton (primary teacher/librarian)