Challenges with Visual Literacy

Children learn to read pictures before they read words. Unfortunately, once children can read words fluently, visual literacy usually takes a back seat in the child’s lives. Now a days, it's important to continue to help people interpret the visual world around them. From books and television to billboards and animation, students are bombarded with visuals on a daily basis and I think visual literacy is a critical life skill everyone should have.
 

Just as we learn how to read text, we need to learn how to read pictures. It’s so important that students have skills and strategies for reading, interpreting, using, applying and creating visuals.

When reading visuals, we look for clues in the parts and the whole of the picture. I try to identify the subject, plot, and setting so tell what the photo is saying. You and I both know that visual comprehension goes beyond description. It involves explanation and understanding.

After we become confident in reading visuals, we have to start interpreting the visuals and applying them. This could involve retelling, identifying, describing, explaining, and critiquing different visuals.

Let’s think about something for a second, if we are faced with a vocabulary word, don’t you think providing visuals to assist us in remembering the words and definitions will be helpful?? A visual definition can help provide a mental picture for us and help us retain more information.