Using Visual Literacy to Aid in Writing Instruction The Art of Writing Using Visual Literacy to Aid in Writing Instruction

Take a minute, think of three sentences that describe who you were as a child and write them down. Give them 1 minute exactly, on egg timer, then stop

Now, turn to your partner and take 30 seconds each to describe yourself as a child.  Give exactly 1minute, stop, then ask if this was hard in the time frame Ok, so, I'm going to explain myself as a child,taking the same amount of time but I am going to add visuals.

I was a strange child surrounded by too much testosterone.

I was always trying to follow in my stepfather's footsteps.

I went through an awkward from  12- about 16. And I'll leave this picture up for a bit,  just to let my humiliation sink in.  Now, I had 30 seconds, just like you, actually less. And granted, I may have had some time before to prepare, but regardless, how many of you have a better understanding of who I was as a child than your partner?   In this instance, I used pictures to enhance the meaning of my words. This is one way that visual literacy can be used in the classroom. We learn to see before we learn to speak, we learn to draw before we learn to write. Our visual literacies are often vastly more sophisticated than our written literacies. We instinctively understand the difference between a smile and a frown, between a busy street and a calm one, yet is difficult to fully express the same differences in writing. This is something which is true too of our students who, quite literally, have the world in a two-inch screen in their pockets. All of the research shows that treating visuals as a form of literacy and integrating them into the classroom can help struggling writers and ESL students to gain confidence and increase their capabilities with the written word. Here are some concrete ways you can integrate visual literacy into your classroom:

As a prewriting excersise... Photo Essays (Wiener) Been around since the 70s. Allows students to discover through own exploration that visual expression is subjective Lends itself well to narrative writing       

After watching this photoessay, take 10 minutes and write a quick narration of what is happening between these two characters. Who are they? What is their relationship? What is happenng? What should happen?   Give time for sharing.

As a mini-lesson... Use clips of film for meaningful purposes transcription of dialogue from video then translated into formal style to provide context for vocabulary

As a way to interpret literature... "Poetry Fusion" (Schwartz) students take classic poems and create movie representations students end with a greater understanding of the poem, yet are also able to create new meanings students are producers of media, not just consumers or victims (George) Let's be honest, how many of you have played the movie version of Romeo and Juliet or Othello or The Simpsons "The Raven"?   Was it just to kill time, or to aid in comprehension? If showing a premade movie can aid in comprehension, how much more could your students learn by creating their own versions, by moving from understanding into synthesis?

As an expression in and of itself... Digital Stories Incorporates multiple forms of media to create a cohesive whole Forces students to revise expectations and storyline based on available resources Allows students to investigate subjects of their choosing  

Materials Derived from... George, Dana. "From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of." College Composition and Communication 54 (2002): 11-39. National Council of Teachers of. Web. 07 June 2010. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1512100.   Wiener, Harvey S. “Media Compositions: Preludes to Writing.” College English. Vol.35, No. 5.    (1974). 566-574. 6 July 2010.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/375501  Swartz, Jeffrey. "Poetry Fusion: Integrating Video, Verbal, and Audio Texts. "Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21st-Century Classroom. Frey, Nancy, and Douglas Fisher. Teaching Visual Literacy: Using Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Anime, Cartoons, and More to Develop Comprehension and Thinking Skills. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2008. Print.