The art of looking is a museum and art gallery teaching tool at the core of the Visual Thinking Strategies, a Harvard School of Education pedagogy initiated as an educational experiment for schools across the United States almost two decades ago. Today, a large number of schools implement this teaching method to increase student engagement in a…

To serve children with language impairments (LI), speech language pathologists and other educators need approaches supported by evidence (Hoffman et al., 2013). In evidence-based practice (EBP), educators integrate children's needs, strengths, interests, and preferences with research and expertise (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association,…

Imaginative and attractive, cutting edge in its conception, this text explicates a model for the integration of language arts and literacy education based on the notion of framing. The act of framing--not frames in themselves--provides a creative and critical approach to English as a subject. "Re-framing Literacy" breaks new ground in the language…

This essay demonstrates how visual works of art may operate rhetorically to articulate public knowledge, to illustrate the moral challenges facing citizens, and to shape commemorative practices, through an analysis of Norman Rockwell's civil rights paintings of the 1960s. By examining the rhetorical aspects of these paintings, including their form…

Highlights the role of the visual arts as a potential to respond to literature aesthetically. Studies the explorations of seventh-grade students as they worked in literature response groups. Notes that the students moved beyond the "who, what, when" of a story by reframing their understanding of literary texts through visual…

This brief survey of successful visual literacy programs designed for students at the elementary and secondary level outlines projects to teach visual communication skills in Ohio, Indiana (Project Visual Understanding in Education/VUE), Virginia, Iowa (Media NOW), California, Canada, England, and Australia (Visual Education Curriculum Project).…

The goal of an introductory graphics course is fundamental visual literacy, which includes learning to appreciate the power of visuals in communication and to express ideas visually. Traditional principles of design--the focus of the course--are based on more fundamental gestalt theory, which relates to human pattern-seeking behavior, particularly…

The arts program in the Attleboro, Massachusetts, public schools is an interdisciplinary attempt to communicate the basic knowledge structures used in most subjects through nonverbal visual means. An evaluative study showed Attleboro seventh graders' gains in visual concepts as significantly higher than those of traditionally taught students. (JM)

Deals with differences between drawing in art class and in other subjects. Points out that the latter are considered serious learning while learning promoted by art class is often dismissed. Advocates both rational analysis of art and the imaginative extension of such rational art as maps and diagrams to promote visual literacy. (KO)

Works of art can be a valuable tool for teaching reading skills, such as visual discrimination, language experience, word recognition, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and other language arts skills. Classroom activities based on art work are described. Sources of art reproductions are noted. (PP)

Provides a rationale and lesson plan for incorporating geography and art at the K-4 level. The lesson plan features a landscape painting by George Innes, a simplified chronology of his life, as well as a template of questions about the artist and the spatial significance of the painting. (MJP)

This document gives anecdotal stories of child art making along with philosophical interpretations for art teaching application. Art making is seen as experimental. It progresses from action to intentional mark making, naming, symbolic representation, and finally to "presence", an aesthetic creation experience that combines seeing and…