Visual Literacy

 

Our purpose

• N.Z.C. ‘Understanding, using and creating oral, written, and visual texts of increasing complexity is at the heart of English teaching and learning’.

• We are aiming to create a culture of Visual Literacy.

• Responding to a world that is rich in visual complexity and almost constant communication.

• Empowering our children as consumers, readers - and, ultimately, creators of visual texts.

• We’ll start to look at ways that we can do this today - but more to come!

Share a visual text you love (buddies; rotate?)

• What excites, moves, interests you?

Hook: how many different kinds of visual texts have you encountered so far today?

Brief share - paint a picture of what’s coming our way on a daily basis (film, TV, phones, coffee cups, food packaging, billboards, posters, signage, branding, print media etc.).

How this world looks to our children

• Growing up in a world of sophisticated visual texts.

• We know that some of our children are particularly invested in games, YouTube etc.

• They are adept at reading these texts. Can they say how they do what they do? (Inside the black box.)

Putting power in our children’s hands. Can we help them to become more conscious and knowledgeable consumers (and creators).

Banksy: visual texts in the built environment

• A picture is worth a thousand words - designed for maximum impact!

• Connects to advertising, logos, signage - and the shorthand that’s possible in pictures.

• Share an example and short discussion. Imagine you come upon this on a wall. What do you notice first? What else do you see? What’s your reaction? Is there a message? Are there other layers of meaning carried by the images?

Making design choices: some principles (rules to use - or choose to break)

• Having a few design principles in mind helps us get started with a visual text (reading or creating).

• Here are some ideas from the world of print to consider:

• Visual hierarchy (what key things do you want people to notice and what do you want people to look at first?).

• Directing eye movement (through lines, making use of how our eye track across the page, the Z and F).

• Space and balance (negative space; how things are arranged on the page).

• Lines and shapes (curves, straight lines, dynamic movement and direction, organic and inorganic).

• Layers (hierarchy, dynamism, movement)

• Typography (size, style, hierarchy).

• Symbols (think Banksy, shorthand, loaded with meaning - but concise)

• Colour (snags the key, carries a range of powerful messages).

Focus on colour

Look at the colour swatch on your desk. What associations does it have for you?

• Actually, we all have expertise in reading colour as part of visual texts: based on tens of thousands of years of human interaction with the natural environment - cultural knowledge and influences (which will differ).

• Unpick some of the colours.

A great resource that sums some of this up 99designs.

Time for some art

• Using what we’ve learnt about design, and especially colour, create a poster manifesto for yourself: My Ways of Working (choose around 3 words to work with).

• Allow time to share.

Wrapping up and planting a seed

• We hope there are some ideas you can already begin to share with your children.

• How else can foster a culture that takes visual texts

Literacy PLD

Leading PLD- Leading Student Agency by demonstrating Teacher Agency

Effective PLD:

● Links to identified student needs and learning outcomes

● Integrates knowledge and skills

● Operates within a learning community and culture of trust

● Offers sustained, multiple opportunities to learn (= TIME)

● Is collaborative, shared, collegial

● Active role taken by leaders

● Is inquiry-based

CONTEXT from Staff Business Plan 2020

The 3 big drivers for 2020 are Positive Education, Sustainability and Te Ao Māori. All 3 intersect and all 3 will receive the same time and attention. Additionally all 3 will have a team of staff driving the components, based on passion, knowledge/ expertise.

End of 2019 data in reading, writing and maths will determine TAI and help fine tune PLD.

As well as ongoing assessment for learning and tracking progress against annual targets the science curriculum will be reviewed to determine effectiveness. The science curriculum also has strong links to Sustainability and Te Ao Māori.

The PE/ Health curriculum, with it’s close relationship to Positive Education will also be timely to review.

The Wellbeing and Te Ao Māori goals link directly to the umbrella goals of the Kāhui Ako

We got into our PLD groups and started to brainstorm initial ideas. 

Targets and what next... Teacher Agency

Planning and next steps for target groups.

We completed an activity in teams around Effective Literacy and Numeracy practice - Big picture planning

Senior Team:

Junior Team:

We know our target students and are shaping our programmes to meet the needs of our learners. PLD for 2020 will come from what our students need. We want to lead Student Agency by modelling Teacher Agency. 

Reading and Writing Monday 5th and Thursday 8th August

Beginning the Internal Evaluation: 

What makes an effective literacy programme? 

Reflection from Teacher Inquiries

We shared our TAIs with each other in small teams.

A summary of TAIs with links to individual TAIs.

Here are our next steps:

Matariki/ Mahutonga Actions:

Effective Feedback has helped to raise achievement for students in Mahutonga Matariki.
Effective interventions from our TAI which we will implement in the programme include:
Written Feedback is given as a question, with the intention of action being taken. (Can you…..?) No more than 2 actions
Responding to feedback timetabled
Focus on typed feedback
Keeping a feedback folder to track goals
Pink and green coding used (artfully) in a range of ways
PSG in margins, making students work
Feedback given to the writer, not to the piece of writing.
Feedback connects to student’s goals and writing criteria

Autahi Actions:

Keep it simple
Connecting reading and writing for emergent writers
Using Yolanda Soryl type phonics/formation teaching (letter formation is connected to sound/letter knowledge)
Using visual success criteria, experience and writing exemplars for those that need pushing to the next level
Making writing fun and different (with art, etc).

Tautoru Actions:

Suz- sound boxes using frequency words to fluency. Linking from reading to writing.
Keeping writing relevant to current experiences in other curriculum areas to expand vocabulary and give authentic reasons to write.
Find regular opportunities to share with an audience.
Giving feedback on specific goals/SC (some of ours can’t read the feedback so will need to think about how to record). For more fluent writers:Using P-punctuation and S-spelling. Use pink and green.

2018 Planned Actions

These meetings were focused around planned actions for 2018. 

This was the "Smackdown" led by Gabrielle

This was the "Smackdown" led by John:

We started by planning from the why?