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!

1. Reading the Visual to Scaffold Digital Writing through Author's Craft: As the original concept, this one still holds strong and has been an eye-opening experience in my methods' courses. The goal is to draw attention to interactive and multimodal elements of print text (in the form of picturebooks) that can help writers to think strategically about how they might engage those elements in their digital writing projects (infographics, podcasts, digital stories). 

​2. Designing Reading Experiences to Foster Visual Literacy: Making meaning from images plays an important role in early reading and writing instruction. So shared reading or interactive reading experiences provide a natural way to illuminate and extend attention to visual literacies. In these cases, teachers can draw attention to the ways images complement, enhance, and contradict the text, ranging from practice with visual cues for younger grades to discussing humor and meaning in intermediate grades. It is important to remember to begin with a clear goal before seeking out books as opportunities to explore those dimensions. ​Click here for a refresher on crafting shared reading experiences. 

3. Analyzing Picturebooks from an Ideological Perspective: In his book, Reading the Visual, Serafini (2014) illustrates how to analyze picturebooks to account for multimodality but also goes one step further to offer a framework for analysis from an ideological perspective. For all readers, but especially adolescents, this type of activity could be a wonderful entrance into engaging critical literacies, particularly moving from the more concrete representations within picturebooks to more abstract representations within chapter books). These conversations can help students to identify and confront beliefs about their worlds, an ever more pressing need in today's current climate. 

Workshop experiences and resources are available on the Digital Writes site.