Visual Literacy and Common Core Standards

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

Standards identified on the Teach with Movies website that you may find useful as you develop a Visual Literacy curriculum. CCS STANDARDS THAT REQUIRE OR SPECIFICALLY PERMIT THE TEACHING OF FILM: 28 important CCS Standards, most relating to grades 6–12, refer directly to the use of movies, employing the word “film,” the term “diverse media” or similar terms. Several standards refer to “drama,” which on page 57 of the Standards is defined to include filmed versions of plays.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS GRADES K–12

Reading: CCR 7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. Grade 4: RL.4.7. Make connections between the text of a story or drama and a visual or oral presentation of the text, identifying where each version reflects specific descriptions and directions in the text. Speaking and Listening: CCR 2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally. Grades 1–5: SL.1.2. Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media. [Standard 1.2 for Grades 2–6 contain increasingly complex activities with text read aloud and information presented . . . in “other media” or “diverse media.” These activities include distilling and describing the main ideas, paraphrasing, etc.]

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS GRADES 6–12

Reading: CCR 3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text. Grade 6: RL.6.3. Describe how a particular story or drama’s plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution. Grade 7: RL.7.3. Analyze how particular elements of a story or drama interact (e.g., how setting shapes the characters or plot). Grade 8: RL.8.3. Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision. Grades 11–12: RL.11-12.3. Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed). Reading: CCR 5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.

Grade 7: RL.7.5. Analyze how a drama’s or poem’s form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning. Reading: CCR 7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

LITERATURE

Grade 6: RL.6.7. Compare and contrast the experience of reading a story, drama, or poem to listening to or viewing an audio, video, or live version of the text, including contrasting what they “see” and “hear” when reading the text to what they perceive when they listen or watch. Grade 7: RL.7.7. Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film).

Grade 8: Analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production of a story or drama stays faithful to or departs from the text or script, evaluating the choices made by the director or actors. Grades 9 & 10: RL.9-10.7. Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment . . . Grades 11 & 12: RL.11-12.7. Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. (Include at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an American dramatist.) __________________________________

Adapted from materials developed by teachwithmovies. org. “The Common Core State Standards and Feature Films in the ELA Classroom,” Teach with Movies, http:// www.teachwithmovies.org/common-core-standards.html.