Teaching Visual Literacies

With visual texts, reading is not always a matter of 'getting' the author's meaning; instead, reading is about constructing a sense out of the mass cultural artifacts, tools, signs, and symbols at hand... Thus, teachers as facilitators of visual-text experiences design their learning spaces and activities in order to highlight multiple literacies of the children in our classrooms 
​(New London Group, 2000a)."  (Hassett, 2010, p.91)

Five years ago I was introduced to Frank Serafini's work at the Wisconsin Reading Research Symposium through his latest publication, Reading the Visual. This text was exactly what I needed at the time to jumpstart the design of my multiliteracies unit (now Digital Writes) as it helped me to think about how reading the visual in picturebooks could be an entry into author's craft for digital writing. Since then, my students have explored texts using his framework alongside a similarly focused framework provided by Dawnene Hassett. Recently, I found myself wondering how I might adapt this workshop experience to attend to relevant instructional practices beyond teaching author's craft. Why it took me this long to make the connection...no idea. But, I am so excited about the workshop redesign I cannot wait to put it into action!

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