VISUAL LITERACY

There are visuals everywhere, at home, in the community, and even in the classrooms. As teachers, do we effectively make use of available visuals to instruct our lessons? We must introduce and teach visual literacy to our students and teach them to be effective consumers to meet the needs of 21st-century literacy. Fisher & Frey (2014) define visual literacy as the complex act of making meaning from still and moving images. Research shows that visuals are an old form of literacy that dates back to 17,000 years ago, including Egyptian funerary art. Technology has put a new dimension to visual literacy, making it mobile and digital. Whether cave walls, marble, fabric, or digital video, telling a story is timeless. It's only the platform that changes (Fisher & Frey 2014). The maps, charts, and powerpoints that we use in class enhance teaching and learning, and students should be taught to make meaning of them. When visuals are used in the classroom at any level, it sparks each student's creativity, curiosity and helps students activate background knowledge and create and organize their thought. The students in the early grades may not read words, but they can read visuals and make sense of it. Visual is a form of literacy that reaches almost every student in the classroom. . In my kindergarten classroom, during reading, I encourage my students to make predictions using pictures. We also use pictures as springboards for discussion and writing.