Language and Literacy Series: Reading the Visual (ePub)

Today's teachers need up-to-the-minute information to help their students make sense of the multimodal texts they encounter daily in and out of school.Reading the Visualis an essential introduction that focuses on what teachers shouldknowabout multimodal literacy and how toteachit. This engaging book provides theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical frameworks for teaching a wide-range of visual and multimodal texts, including historical fiction, picture books, advertisements, websites, comics, graphic novels, news reports, and film. Each unit of study presented contains suggestions for selecting cornerstone texts and visual images and launching the unit, as well as lesson plans, text sets, and analysis guides. These units are designed to be readily adapted to fit the needs of a variety of settings and grade levels.Book Features:An accessible introduction to visual literacy and multimodality.Classroom strategies and demonstrations for analyzing and interpreting multimodal texts.Hands-on examples of units of study for ten types of multimodal texts.Resources for developing and adapting units, including suggested texts, analysis guides, and learning objectives."Frank Serafini gets it. He knows that language and literacy were our original multimodal forms. He knows that today they are as crucial as they have ever been, but that they comport with a great many new relatives which are daily widening and transforming what we mean and how we mean it."—From the Foreword byJames Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Arizona State University"Reading the Visualpositions the analysis of visual images and multimodal ensembles as essential to language arts and literacy learning. Serafini's book contributes important scholarship in understanding the theories behind this analysis and the significance of the visual in the many texts we encounter in and out of school settings."—Peggy Albers, Georgia State University"Reading the Visualis based on wide scholarship; it brings that to a point of profound insight and of intense practicality. Those taking first steps into the area will find a path smoothed by a seductively simple style; those there already are offered constant insight and challenge. It is a book that will be valued by both kinds of reader."—Gunther Kress, Professor of Semiotics and Education, Institute of Education, University of LondonFrank Serafiniis an author, illustrator, photographer, educator, musician, and an associate professor of Literacy Education and Children's Literature at Arizona State University. Visit the author's website atwww.frankserafini.com