Visual Literacy in the Classroom

While taking the Digital and Media Literacy course, teacher candidates have been introduced to all sorts of interesting concepts, most of which have been brand new to majority of students. These concepts are essential for teaching in today’s world as students have all sorts of forms of media right at their fingertips. A concept fairly new to me that I have had the pleasure of learning about has been visual literacy.

What is a Visual Literacy?

Visual literacy is the concept of being able to read, write and create visual images. While a visual image usually does not include any text and at the basic level not any audio, images can be used as a tool of communication. Visual literacy is an important aspect of the digital world as it allows users to communicate and exchange ideas, integral in understanding the highly influential world around us.

                       

PICTURE BOOKS, PRINT AND TV ADVERTISEMENTS, FILM ARE ALL FORMS OF VISUAL LITERACIES/TEXTS    

Why is Visual Literacy important?

 Visual literacy in the classroom is extremely important as students are constantly exposed to different forms of visual media. The concept of interpreting images is not new to the classroom, however students are receiving more and more information through a complex combination of both images and text.

As teachers, it is essential that we educate our students to become visually literate, in order to navigate through a space that involves communication through text and images. For the purposes of teaching, understanding visual literacy is essential in order to be used properly in our classrooms.

Visual Literacy in the Classroom

I am very excited to introduce the concept of visual literacy to students in my future classroom as I feel it will be extremely beneficial in making connections across the curriculum. There is a great deal of discussion regarding teaching visual literacy in the classroom, as a form of critical thinking.

Visual Literacy Activities

The internet is a plethora for activities teaching visual literacy, as today’s educators recognize the concept’s importance for students. Blogs such as Literacy Ideas and Visual Literacy Today are all useful tools for educators to connect with one another and share ideas on visual literacy.

Activity – Caption a Photograph

Literacy Ideas offers educators new to the concept of visual literacy simple ways to incorporate visual literacy in the classroom, and to encourage student’s thinking around the topic.

“Caption a Photograph” has students use a familiar form of media, a photograph, and create their own caption to accompany it.

Students will be all randomly given a single picture from a selection of a few photographs, and after closely examining the picture, come up with their own unique caption, or add a quote relevant to the image. The context can be of any emotion they please (ie. happy, sad, hopeful, etc.), or in the form of a meme. Students will then be expected to write a reflection as to why and how they came up with their caption. They can discuss personal emotions and use clues from the image to support their answer.

Before coming up with the caption, teachers can have students consider the following questions,

• Who/what are the objects in this image? What is happening in this image?
• Are there any clues to where it was taken? Are there any clues to why it was taken or who took it?
• Is it a posed photograph? A natural scene? A documentary photograph? A selfie?

This is a great way to introduce students to the topic of visual literacy and have them consider it in the future.

Further Information on Visual Literacy 

Another One to Consider…