My initial thoughts about my inquiry project is to focus on Visual Literacy and how it can be effective in the classroom. I feel that visual imagery plays a big role in the classroom as an effective stimuli in attracting a students attention. Sometimes a student can feel lost when reading tons of text, but visual pictures can help break up the monotny, while also adding to the student's comprehension. I plan on concentrating on pictures in general, maps, diagrams, and visual organizers. Pictures in books always attract attention and gather interest, and then lure the reader into reading to find out what the picture is about. I also think that pictures can help clarify what you are reading, by giving a visual representation. Also the book gives great examples about how diagrams and concept maps can help center a students thoughts and lead them to a better understanding of the text that they are reading. They are great about taking one main idea or several ideas and building on that knowledge. The book also talks about using graphic organizers to asses if the student is understanding what they are reading.
I feel that I can contribute my background in art to the inquiry project. Art is a great example about how pictures provide their own form of literacy. So much of art is visual and about learning how to comprehend the visual images presented to you.
As I mentioned in my previous blog alot of art is about learning the vocabulary and pictures are a good way to back up the vocabulary and present a clearer concept of what the words visually means. I feel that reading in my discipline is mainly about history or techniques of art. One is ethier learning about how or why art was created or how one can create art themselves. In art history, one is learning about why this art was created and why it is important to it's time. In learning techniques one must have a visual representation to fully understand the technique.
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Allison,
ReplyDeleteI like your idea! It is clear how your content area of Art will play into this inquiry project. I am interested to see what kind of research you can find on the topic. It seems like students really benefit from seeing their content from a different perspective- i.e. an artistic one. You can even look into how pictures help in any content area. Also, you could look at student learning preferences and intelligences and see if visual students are or are not the only ones who benefit.
When I read your post the first example of your project was the interactive notebook. I think you could use this as an avenue of visual literacy/imagery because it allows students to bring their understandings of the words into pictures. Through the pictures students would be able to show how they see the vocabulary or concept and possibly be able to better find it in a piece of art. I think this is a great idea for your content because in art you don't really think about reading. However, when you look at the history, techniques, genres, and purpose behind art the reading really starts to build up.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right in that big chunks of text intimidates students. An uninterrupted block of text can sometimes be exhausting to look at, especially in textbook/informative reading. A good picture or graph or chart truly is worth a thousand words, and I think it's important for visual literacy not to be downplayed.
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