Visual Learning

Visual Literacy aided by the Internet

Visual literacy is critical to the learning process. Students need to see what they are learning about and how it applies to what they are being taught. Often teachers believe that if they have more words displayed on the Smart Board that students will learn more about the material, but in most cases the opposite is actually true. Students can learn more from pictures that do not contain words or have little wording then items that are only words and no pictures.  The use of the Internet is a great way to get visual literacy into your classroom. The internet allows you to find images quickly and easily to display for all students to see while you are teaching them a new skill or concept. After the lesson has been taught there are many educational internet programs that students can use that will help them fully understand the material that was just being taught to them. These educational programs have lots of visuals that help aide in the learning process for students. As 21^st century learns are in my classroom I want the role of the Internet to be more and more. The Internet is not going away anytime soon and my students should be exposed to it in as many different ways as possible. The internet aids my teaching and should be used to its full potential when appropriate for all different subjects being taught.

Two strategies I would use in my classroom would be when starting a new topic with my students I would put up a picture that is related to the new material or story we are going to be learning about. I would not explain the picture to them, I would only ask them to look at this picture for a minute and think about what you see.  After the minute was up students can share with their partners, group, and whole group their thoughts on the picture. After a 5-10 minute discussion on the picture then I would explain to them the meaning behind the picture and how it leads into the next topic or book we are going to be talking about. Another strategy that can be used is showing a picture on the board to the students and allow them to write down as much as they can about this picture in 5 minutes. After the 5 minutes is up allow the students to share in their teams what they wrote about, this can be used as a quick write and allows the students to focus and get their brain flowing with ideas. It allows for creativity and the practice of writing.