The Potential of the Visual: Teaching literacy with multimodal texts

Jennifer Asha

Images can tell stories, convey information and persuade viewers in complex and sophisticated ways. To be literate is about more than being able to read printed text; it is also about closely viewing, deeply understanding, meaningfully engaging with and responding to visual texts. The Potential of the Visual: Teaching Literacy with Multimodal Texts gives teachers the knowledge they need to teach their students to become active, aware and critical viewers.

Part 1 of the book outlines the theoretical knowledge that teachers need to teach viewing as an integral part of teaching literacy. It puts forward a pedagogical framework for teaching literacy in our visually rich environment. Part 2 uses a variety of high-quality multimodal texts – picture books, advertisements and videos – to demonstrate the teaching of viewing in authentic contexts. Each of these chapters outlines one possible lesson for each text; lessons through which one visual feature can be explored. The example lessons can be extended to include investigation of other visual and verbal features evident in the focal text as part of literacy learning.

This multilayered book will help teachers understand visual text construction and raise their knowledge and practice in using the potential of visual, multimodal texts.