I think an effective way to get students started learning, understanding, and practicing the skills discussed in “On Reading Visual and Verbal Texts” would be to begin with advertisements. The bottom line is that every text is advertising, selling, and/or trying to convince its audience of something in some way, so beginning with this concept in mind would be a good way to bring students’ minds alive to this fundamental principle of reading media. A savvy selection could also be an excellent vehicle to engaging students’ interest in learning the skills being taught: their attention will be drawn by a hip, funny, or popular commercial; an ad for a product they like will naturally interest them; and what high school student wouldn’t relish poking a little fun at some of the older ads that seem cheesy or hokey now? As students learn to engage critically with these texts, they’ll very likely find themselves pursuing their critical examination as they constantly encounter ads outside the classroom.
One point in “On Reading” that particularly struck me was how similar the approaches to reading various types of media are. I’d like my students to learn to transfer their skills from one medium to another as they become more conversant with the vocabulary and symbolism of visual media, so I’d like to have them focus on one aspect of visual media across several examples. For instance, a photograph, a painting, and a sculpture which each include a building could be connected to a real-world piece of architecture as students are asked to read each of the structures they encounter in those works. This study of transferring skills from one medium to another could then be carried forward into verbal texts, such as a poem, short story, or political speech. Once students have a solid understanding of how they can use the same vocabulary and conventions to inform their examinations across various media, they can be encouraged to continue to use those skills as they learn new techniques and deepen their critical analyses of the media they encounter.
Since we typically use the words “read” and “reading” to refer strictly to verbal texts, I feel many students would benefit from approaching these texts in a media literacy class (or unit) only after several interactions with visual texts. Once students have developed solid skills and habits in reading visual media and have made the connection between visual and verbal media, they will be better prepared to read verbal media critically (as opposed to the skimming-the-surface say/think-the-words-and-then-forget-them approach students often take to the verbal texts they encounter in school). An interesting and, I think, fruitful way to help students begin reading more critically would be to have them read a film (such as Harry Potter) and then read the book on which that film is based. As students discuss and interpret the similarities and differences between the two versions of the chosen narrative, they should be able to engage more thoughtfully in their reading of each medium.
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I also think it is interesting that “Visual and Verbal Texts” outlines similarities between how we read different texts, or at least that there is a similar vocabulary when reading a text, no matter the medium. But I wonder if I wouldn’t go about familiarizing students with those terms and conventions by starting with what they already know how to read. I think the idea of using advertisements as the entry way for talking about visual literacy but I don’t think I would go straight to visual literacy without a conversation about what they know already when it comes to verbal literacy. I would start there, because they have been learning how to read written/verbal texts (such as novels and even poems) critically for most of their educational careers and especially in their secondary education experience.
So I would ask them how they read a novel for meaning. Maybe I would give them a passage from a novel and put them in groups and ask them to find the message of the text and then list three ways they found that message. I would then have them present their findings to the class and from their lists of how they found the message, we could start a literacy vocabulary list. Then I would bring up the idea that these words (such as syntax, scanning, imagery etc) are also applicable to other texts as well. I think this is when I would introduce the idea that visual images such as paintings, photographs, advertisements, films and performance pieces are also texts. I would do this to set up the connection between what they already know about reading verbal texts to how to read the visual texts they are so familiar with. I think they can handle it at that time and it gives a nice segue to then talking about the advertisement as one of the first examples of how to read a visual image.
Another way to practice visual literacy skills is by making it a sort of daily exercise. At the beginning of each class, have a different form of visual media that the students are asked to read. Maybe they have a question that they’re supposed to answer about the image (such as the meaning or how is line used or where is the subject) and then the reading of that image plays into the lesson for the day. I think connecting this practice into the larger picture for the day is key because if you just do the exercise, students are left to wonder “so what.” These skills need to affect curricular and life practices. One way to connect them is to make the vocabulary of medial literacy part of the classroom conversation. Whenever students perform a scene, watch a video clip, see a photograph/painting or work on designs in class, as a teacher I can use the different media literacy vocabulary as I talk about the projects. Then this expectation can move to the students as well. Conversations about student performances will move from just “I liked it” and “I wonder” (which are very good and meaningful) to answering why they liked it or had questions about it based on what was being communicated visually. It’s all about the so what.
Label: Caitlin Cotten, Reading Response 2
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