Visual literacy, which is the ability to effectively identify, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media, is an important aspect of science literacy. As molecular processes are not directly observable, researchers and educators rely on visual representations (e.g., drawings) to communicate ideas in biology. How learners…

Visual representations are essential for science understanding, but many students have poor diagrammatic reasoning skills. Previous research showed that teaching high school and college students about the conventions of diagrams (COD) can improve diagrammatic reasoning. In this study, middle school science students received COD instruction…

Data visualizations are now commonplace in the public media. The ability to interpret and create such visualizations, as a form of data literacy, is increasingly important for democratic participation. Yet, the cross-disciplinary knowledge and skills needed to produce and use data visualizations and to develop data literacy are not fluidly…

In this article, director of Educational Outreach at the Library of Congress Lee Ann Potter describes a classroom activity that focuses on an 1876 single-page circular published in Salem, Massachusetts about Alexander Melville Bell's Visible Speech. A. M. Bell's son, Alexander Graham Bell described "Visible Speech" as "a…

During a 10-week classroom-based study, 20 fourth grade students participated in a number of interdependent activities that focused on developing their visual meaning-making skills and competencies. As well as reading, responding in writing to and discussing a selection of picturebooks, graphic novels, and magazines, the students created graphic…

Art-viewing experiences are an important part of the knowledge-building process and require careful planning and unique teaching strategies. One teaching strategy involves an activity most young children enjoy--playing games. In this article, the author explains ways to use games and conversations to introduce visual artworks to young children.…

Picturebooks tell stories in both words and pictures. Interacting with the printed word, the technical elements of illustration--color, line, shape and composition--work to establish and enhance the story. Sometimes simply by adding description of characters and setting, and, at times, by challenging the veracity of the text with ironic or…

Discusses teaching visual literacy by teaching students how to decode advertising images, thus enabling them to move away from being passive receivers of messages to active unravelers. Shows how teachers can use concepts from semiotics to deconstruct advertising messages. (SR)

Specific learning activities to increase the visual literacy of elementary students by involving them in the production of their own materials are described. (DE)

Advocates instruction in drawing for journalists to promote functional visual literacy. Argues that journalists comfortable with basic drawing will write more vividly, handle layout problems better, and have better relationships with artists and photographers than journalists not comfortable with basic drawing. Offers instructional objectives and…

This study provides English teachers who teach, or plan to teach, film courses, with an analysis of the unique structural elements of film, suggestions for the teaching of a high school elective course on film, and activities that teach visual literacy skills. The first part of this study analyzes and defines visual literacy. Chapters provide…

The author describes a secondary level course in which students make their own audiovisual productions to illustrate social studies issues. (DE)

Offers eight projects and activities designed to make elementary students wiser television viewers and better thinkers. The activities help students get more out of television, determine what is questionable, and develop visual literacy and thinking skills. Children become active consumers of television and other visual media. (SM)

Presents activities to help teachers address the needs and behaviors of students raised on television; includes resources to help teachers use television productively in the classroom, a send-home reproducible on children and television violence, and notes on an interview with Shari Lewis and television tips for primary students. (SM)

Objective: Students will identify several unique characteristics of verbal vs. visual messages, including the superior ability of language to communicate objective, factual, philosophical content in past, present, and future terms; and the superior ability of visual images to communicate social-emotional meaning and concrete information limited in…