Barstow Community College Visual Literacy Discussion INITIAL POST : MAKE SURE AND CITE What is visual literacy how can you determine if children possess i

Barstow Community College Visual Literacy Discussion INITIAL POST : MAKE SURE AND CITE

What is visual literacy how can you determine if children possess it?

Give Examples.

How would you promote it if they do not? Give details!

PLEASE REPLY TO THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE: MAKE SURE AND CITE

MINELLY

Visual literacy is the capacity to formulate visual messages and to “read” the messages within visual communication (pg.151). The ability to explain the meaning of what is seen around the environment. I believe if children/humans are born with eyesight, they possess visual literacy. When a newborn baby can see his mother’s face, he has visual literacy, he can read his mother’s face without saying a word. The book says that the learning of reading is not a mechanism of establishing correspondence between oral language and written language (pg. 210). Children who flip pages on a book to look at the pictures and explain what they see in the pictures is visual literacy. When children can walk down the street and explain to you what the street signs is saying through their images, they are using visual literacy.

I remember when my son was about 3 years old, we used to go for walks around the block, he would look at the vehicles parked on the street and was able to name them. I was shocked. I concluded that he knew the logos of the vehicles by watching TV commercials. For example, he knew what a logo for a Toyota vehicle looks like, a Honda, a Mercedes and so on and that’s how he was able to distinguish them. He had me mesmerize. Art galleries are great way to empower visual literacy. Have children develop a deeper understanding of images or arts can scaffold them to the next level of visual literacy.

ALISON

In our textbook Early Literacy in Preschool and Kindergarten: A Multicultural Perspective, authors Janice Beaty and Linda Pratt define visual literacy as, “the capacity to formulate visual messages and to ‘read’ the messages within visual communication.” This can also be defined as a child’s ability to “read the pictures.” On page 151 of our textbook there is a checklist that can be used to determine if a child possesses visual literacy. It lists the following: draws human as sun-face, draws human with body, draws tree, flowers, or fruits, draws animals or vehicles, names objects in pictures, tell what picture is about, tells what picture is going to be before drawing it, asks to have caption or story written down, reads pictures in picture books, and creates own story with pictures.

An example of a child showing that they possess visual literacy would be if they draw a picture of a sun-face human and say that it is their mom. Another example would be if a child takes a picture book and “reads the pictures”, meaning they are looking at the picture and coming up with their own version of what they mean. If a child does not possess visual literacy, practice with picture books can be very beneficial. I would read a picture book to a child many times while focusing on the words and pictures. Once the child is familiar with the story, I would ask the child to retell the story as I turn the pages. I would also model drawing pictures of objects, animals, or people that the children are familiar with. I would also provide children time to practice drawing pictures to tell a story. It can also be important to find curriculum springboards, which are objects that the children find interesting and exciting (Beaty and Pratt, 2015). I could use these objects to direct the curriculum and support emergent reading and writing.