FILM IN THE CURRICULUM
Visual Literacy and Common Core Standards Today’s student is at home in a world of screens. Smart phones, video games, television, and movies present information in an increasingly sophisticated collaboration of word and image. This complexity prepares students to better interpret the world around them, and is vital to their development of reading and writing skills, critical thinking, and empathy. Film offers teachers the opportunity to help students develop Visual Literacy. Dr. Diana Dumetz Carry, Ed.D defines Visual Literacy as “the ability to decode, interpret, create, question, challenge and evaluate texts that communicate with visual images as well as, or rather than, words. Visually literate people can read the intended meaning in a visual text, interpret the purpose and intended meaning, and evaluate the form, structure and features of
the text.” Diana Dumetz Carry, “Visual Literacy: Using Images to Increase Comprehension,” Reading Recovery Council of North America. Teach with Movies advocates for the use of film in the curriculum. “Screen-based stories are the literature of today’s youth and teachers who don’t use movies as an integral part of their lesson plans are denying themselves and their students a powerful motivator. They are foregoing the benefit of the strong current of modern technology to assist in education.” Some of the new Common Core State Standards refer specifically to the use of film and other multimedia, and movies can be very useful in meeting many of the standards that make no specific reference to film. Below is a list of
2020 Wisconsin Film Festival, Big Screens, Little Folks Study Guide
3
