Vocabulary and Concept
Development:
1.1. identify and use the literal
and figurative meanings of words, and understand word derivation
1.2. distinguish between the
denotative and connotative meanings of words, and interpret the connotative
power of words
STANDARD for Visual Literacy
Students will create and explain
conceptual graphic representations of characters, symbols, and ideas in
literary works as they visualize and articulate their own symbolic understandings
of texts.
Elaboration
A graphic, is a visual construct
using lines, words, and color in a symbolic way to create a coherent conceptual
design. It presents a unifying symbol or related set of symbols arising
from piece of literature. The graphic symbol may be drawn from the
text itself (the pig's head in Lord of the Flies, the urn in "Ode on a
Grecian Urn) or it may evolve from metaphor-making (a bat to represent
Teiresias, signifying the outward blindness but inward seeing). In
some graphics, the design may point to symbols rather than depict them
overtly, as in lines suggesting spider webs or geometric demarcations suggesting
beehive cells.
The graphic uses color or lack
of color with intent. Color may be used symbolically or it may be
used to organize aspects of the graphic. Black and white graphics
may be used in the Japanese sense of Notan (echoed in Escher) to convey
positive and negative space or emotion.
Literary graphics as study
aids frequently incorporate quotations from the text. For those graphics
intended to be used as maps for writing papers, it is important for the
graphic artist to include the textual reference for the quotation.
Quotations are often used artistically to support the visual construct.
Through the production of graphics,
students experience four critical learning functionsóobserving, analyzing,
imaging, and feelingóas they interact with the texts they are reading and
the essays, articles, stories, and poems they are writing.
They learn to develop their
ways of learning in three significant ways:
They learn
1) to activate the powers
of imagery, detail, symbol, and design as they
read
and write
2) to incorporate close
observation, personal association, analysis and
metaphor in reading
and writing
3) to stimulate the
long-term memory through the integration of both visual
and verbal approaches
Graphic strategies address
the needs of the full range of students,
including:
1) Students who
are new to this country and just learning its language as
well as its customs
2) Students who
are labeled "learning disabled" in our primarily
verbal/analytical schools;
such students may be among those whose dominant
learning mode is visual-spatial
3) Students labeled
culturally "deprived" when they are unfamiliar with the
dominant culture of
the schoolroom, but rich in their own ethnic cultures
4) The academically
gifted, who either drop out from boredom or learn to
play the competitive,
limiting "game" of school
This page appears in
A Measure of Success: from Assignment to Assessment in
English Language Arts,
Claggett, Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 1996.
Introduction
