Give students the opportunity to practice looking through the use of wordless books. One study conducted by Christiana Silvi and Leslie Degnan-Ross, emergent reading instructors found that many classrooms didn't have a large selection of wordless picture books. Their goal was to give preschool teachers a different perspective about the use of wordless books and how they can be beneficial to beginning readers, primarily preschoolers. Yet this theory can be applied to students across grade levels because it gives children the opportunity to make meaning of what they see. At first, preschool teachers Naomi and Diane, participants of the study conducted by Silvi and Degnan- Ross, were a little skeptical and reluctant, but after utilizing the wordless books, they realized that these picture books do support learning and increase language and writing skills:
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Naomi said, "It's often difficult to spend one-on-one time with children in a busy classroom, but it's important to try…especially with the quieter children." She was pleased to see that this wordless book encouraged one of her less talkative children to open up and use her own language to describe the events in this exciting picture story about a girl who tries to fly. The wordless, black-and-white picture panels allowed Becca to freely interpret the actions of the girl character. The teacher was able to engage in a rare, one-on-one conversation full of thinking, imagining and predicting.
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This preschool teacher realized how well these books evoke a response from children. Students make their own meaning and aren't forced to think critically within the constraint of printed text. While reading printed text, the story happens just as it is written. Wordless books allow children to write their own story, as well as raise and answer higher level thinking questions. Now students are forced to ask or answer questions such as, "why does the character feel this way?" or express what they wonder. Not only did the wordless book help Becca to make meaning; most importantly she began to use oral language skills and have a positive interaction or conversation with her teacher. Utilizing wordless or picture books is appropriate to emergent stages of being a visual thinker. Novice readers are able to process what they see as well as what they read. Students must first realize their innate talent as Hoffman suggest. He states, "You are a visual virtuoso. Perhaps, though, you are unaware of or flatly disbelieve in your innate talent." Many of us don't realize the amount of brainpower we use to simply look at something.
Students should be taught the practice of looking. The science behind looking proves that it is truly a process requiring great intellect and can be used to help them determine meaning. In order for students to realize that, they must practice intentional looking. In the second chapter of
Practices of Looking
, Sturken and Cartwright explain that all images have a meaning, but the meaning of the image isn't necessarily what the producer intended because the audience makes meaning of what they see based on their own experiences and in the context in which they see it. Students should be granted the opportunity to practice looking and drawing meaning from their own perspective as Sturken and Cartwright have clearly stated:
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Images generate meanings. Yet, the meanings of a work of art or media image do not, strictly speaking, lie in the work itself where they were placed by the producer waiting for viewers to uncover them. Rather, meanings are produced through a complex social relationship that involves at least two elements besides the image itself and its producer: (1) how viewers interpret or experience the image and (2) the context in which an image is seen. Although images have what we call dominant or shared meanings they can also be interpreted and used in ways that do not conform to these meanings.
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Interpretations will vary, but that doesn't indicate the viewers' meaning is wrong or takes away from the producers' original, intended meaning. Students must be free to determine their own meaning of what they see, and not all their interpretations will be the same. Just as the preschooler Becca in the Silvi and Degnan- Ross study was able to freely interpret the actions of the girl character in one way, her classmate may look at the character's actions from a different perspective. This leads to students being able to determine point of view and even draw conclusions about the character's attitude, personality or emotions. Just as Sturken and Cartwright explain, an image is interpreted by the viewer and based on their experiences. The illustrator of the wordless book, Becca was reading probably had a different point of view concerning the girl character in the text. There is meaning and purpose beneath the image. Images may not always conform to the illustrator's intended purpose or the viewers meaning. However, the goal of intentional looking and visual thinking is, to process what you see and think critically during the process of visualization.
Once students grasp the concept of using pictorial illustrations, they need to learn that images aren't limited to pictures in picture books: they are the photographs with captions, timelines, charts and tables- all the nonfiction text features that are meant to provide additional information to the text, but are often overlooked. As Susan Sontag explains,
"Photographs are valued because they give information. They tell one what there is; they make an inventory. To spies, meteorologist, coroners, archeologist, and other information professionals, their value is inestimable. But in the situations in which most people use photographs, their value as information is of the same order as fiction."
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Sontag explains that the use of photographs gives people information that can also be found in the text, and they sometimes provide the only source of information without words. Students should practice using images in nonfiction text. Students should be able to determine what or how the photograph helps the reader gather more information than they would be able to get from the text. While Sontag would most likely argue against the validity or necessity of photographs, she does suggest that some people actually gain information from images.
Due to the fact or idea that students have to be able to read and analyze data, lesson objectives and activities here are centered on the use of images to serve as an aid or tool to increase students' understanding of what they read. Sontag explains that photographs can provide information alone, and some feel the photographs are pointless because they show only what is read in the text. Yet there are occasions when pictures and words are both necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the text in relation to the image. "Perhaps the most common type of word/picture combination is the interdependent, where words and pictures go hand in hand to convey an idea that neither could convey alone."
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I would consider that most often both the word and image are interdependent. After students practice looking at pictures and text provide students with an opportunity to read images such as tables and graphs. In this manner students will understand how words and images work together. There are some tables and graphs that have to label information for the reader. In this light, students realize that there are times images and texts are interdependent.