Words & Pictures: Literacy, Art and Common Core Together

Visual thinking strategies for English learners: Learning language through the power of art

“…VTS can also help combat some of the English print fatigue that ELs often suffer in school. Working with visual texts can provide much-needed relief from what can be overwhelming print processing required by the normal literacy demands of ELA class and of school in general (Chevalier, 2015).…”

“…VTS has been shown to support the academic skills that language learners need to develop for school. VTS promotes students' vocabulary development (Cappello & Lafferty, 2017) and helps ELs with the literacy demands required of standards‐based instruction and assessment (Cappello, 2017; Chevalier, 2015; Franco & Unrath, 2014), particularly through science and history. By showing students pictures that are historically or scientifically grounded, content‐related linguistic inquiry can be guided toward exploring important concepts across the curriculum.…”

“…Scholars have found that critical thinking is deeply embedded in the VTS process (Chevalier, 2015; Dawson, 2018; Franco & Unrath, 2014; Vidal et al, 2019; Yenawine, 2019). Through the questioning sequence (specifically, What makes you say that?…”

“…Though the literature reflects that VTS has been implemented frequently in English education and arts/museum education (Bageant, 2018; Cappello, 2017; Cappello & Walker, 2016; Chevalier, 2015; Franco & Unrath, 2014; Vidal et al, 2019), studies focusing on its use with linguistically diverse learners in the United States (e.g., Limón‐Corrales, 2020; Rojas, 2020) are relatively new. To this point, in her literature review of empirical work in the Journal of Visual Literacy , Brumberger (2019) found that there was a need for more research on “how best to teach visual literacy in different contexts and for different types of learners ” (p. 176, emphasis added).…”

VTS: From the Museum into the ENL Classroom

“…There is literature describing how VTS's implementation enhances school-museum partnerships and viewers' engagement with art (Bangeant, 2018;Cappello, 2017;Cappello & Walker, 2016;Chevalier, 2015;Franco & Unrath, 2014); there is also literature showing how English educators, both English language arts (ELA) and ESOL teachers, have integrated VTS into their instructional repertoires to bolster students' literacy development, language learning, and content learning (Dawson, 2018;Laman & Henderson, 2018;Limón-Corrales, 2020;Rojas, 2020;Walsh-Moorman, 2018). As we have written elsewhere (Clark-Gareca & Meyer, 2022), we believe that VTS has great potential for language learners as it fosters their positive interactions with art while also supporting language acquisition, critical thinking, and expressive writing whether in museums or school classrooms.…”