Much of the information that comes at our students is a combination of both written text and images. It is essential that our students are fully equipped to process that information in all its forms.

Considering how visually orientated we are as humans, it is no surprise that images have such a powerful impact on us. Research shows that there are a wide range of benefits derived from improved visual literacy including:

Visual Information is More Memorable

One of the most effective ways to encourage information to make that important jump from the limited short-term memory to the more powerful long-term memory is to pair text with images. Studies show that we retain approximately 10-20% of written or spoken information, but around 65% of information when it is presented visually.

Visual Information is Transferred Faster

Information presented visually is processed extremely quickly by the brain. The brain is even being able to see images that appear for a mere 13 milliseconds. Around 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual in nature.

Helps Students Communicate with the World Around Them

Traditionally, we think teaching literacy as the two way street of reading and writing. We can think of visual literacy as involving the similar processes of interpreting images and creating images. In a fast-moving world, with ever-increasing diagnosis of attention deficit disorders, we increasingly rely on images to quickly convey meaning.

Enriches Understanding

While images can be used in isolation, they often accompany text or audio. Images can greatly enrich the students’ understanding of a text or other media, but to be able to interact with these deeper levels of meaning, students must possess the necessary skills to access those depths.

Increases Enjoyment

Not only does increased visual literacy enrich the understanding of our students of the media they consume, but it can also enrich their enjoyment too - especially of visual art. If you have taken younger students to an art gallery you may have heard protests of ‘This is boring!’

However, when students have a deeper understanding of the ‘meaning’ behind the art pieces, or are familiar with the context around the art, insights into the lives of the artists, or experienced with some of the techniques that produced the pieces, students often derive greater pleasure from their visit.

The same is true of their engagement in terms of visual literacy. As informed readers of images in a range of modalities, students are opened up to an exciting dimension of shape, color and texture and more.

Creates More Educated Image Readers

In an era of fake news and ceaseless advertising, a responsible approach to the duty of educating our students must involve encouraging them to become informed viewers of the world around them, including the media they engage with. Through the teaching of visual literacy we can help students understand the different ways the images they consume can be used to manipulate their emotions and persuade them to act in a given way.

Supports EAL Learners

The use of images in the classroom can be of great benefit to students who come from non English-speaking backgrounds. As these students travel on their road to fluency in English, images can provide an effective bridge in that learning process. While the use of images in the forms of flashcards, writing frames etc for the purposes of teaching EAL learners may be obvious, the creation of images by the students themselves can also be a great way to assess their understanding of more abstract concepts and vocabulary.

Students are exposed to a vast array of visual media. When we hear the jazzy term ‘visual text’ we may immediately think of its expression in the digital age, but the roots of visual texts stretch deep into our history; all the way back to our beginnings. Think of the cave paintings in Lascaux!

However, today there are so many more forms of visual text to consider. From cave walls to computer screens and all points in between, students are exposed to billboards, photographs, TV, video, maps, memes, digital stories, video games, timelines, signs, political cartoons, posters, flyers, newspapers, magazines, Facebook, Instagram, movies, DVDs, and cell phones wallpaper - to name but twenty! All these can serve as the jumping off point for a lesson on visual literacy.

The digital age has opened the floodgate on images spilling into our consciousness and unconsciousness alike. The implications for visual literacy stretches far beyond the limits of the English classroom into all areas of our lives. From the math student interpreting graphs to the music student following musical notation, or the geography student poring over Google Earth. For a multitude of purposes, in an array of modalities, visual literacy is ever more

https://www.literacyideas.com/teaching-visual-texts-in-the-classroom