I See What You Mean: Children at Work with Visual Information

[Gail Corthell]

Moline, Steve. (1996). I See What You Mean. Stenhouse Publishers Portland, Maine

 

Steve Moline has a pet peeve.  He absolutely hates to hear teachers say to students, “Write your answer and if you have time left over, you can draw a picture.”  He feels that too often, teachers ignore the benefits that students can gain by learning to add artistic representations to their school work and so not enough class time is spent teaching this valuable learning strategy.  In his book, “I See What You Mean: Children at Work with Visual Information” Moline explains just why he believes that visual texts should not be ignored by teachers; later on, he shows ways that teachers can help their students to incorporate this genre into their work.

 

Moline makes a strong argument that students must learn how to draw information as well as how to write it. His reasons are many. Ours is a world in which we must navigate a myriad of pictorial and symbolic texts that include everything from maps and diagrams to lists and graphs. More importantly, sometimes visual texts communicate information more clearly than do verbal texts, thus he believes that students will need visual literacy throughout their lives to follow instructions, drive a car, invest in the stock market and even go on vacation. So, teaching students how to communicate with visual texts will help them to be life and career-ready. In addition, this book makes the valid argument that struggling readers and writers find visual texts readily accessible. Moline says that students who have been judged to be poor writers “are sometimes discovered to be excellent communicators if they are allowed the option to write the same information in a visual form.” Another interesting point that Moline makes is that when converting information from written text to some sort of visual representation, students “recompose.” This moving between genres causes a student to ask questions such as “What is the clearest way to present my information?” and “How can I organize my information to help the reader?” This strategy can help to prevent plagiarism because it obliges students to internalize the key facts that they must present.

 

So just how can we teach the strategy of creating visual text in our classroom? Moline devotes a large portion of this book explaining just that. Chapters outline different types of visual texts and more importantly, the purpose for using each one. For instance, simple diagrams are superb at defining a subject visually and showing the relationships between parts of a subject. Students could use simple diagrams to name the working parts of a machine or the body parts of an animal. Drawing a picture diagram to scale can indicate a subject's size, mass or distance. If instead a student needs to show sequence or process, Moline's chapter on the creation of flow diagrams might be useful. In order to convey measurement, students might benefit by learning how to design a graph.  Chapter 6 covers the creation of bar, column and line graphs. In this chapter, Moline makes the point that graphs do not need to be relegated only to mathematical concepts but can be widely employed in science, and social studies as well. Other types of visual texts that are discussed in “I See What You Mean” are: maps, time lines, tables, Cutaways and Web Diagrams.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and plan to add many of its elements to my classroom curriculum this next year. I think that it will benefit my students by helping them to internalize the non-fiction information that begins to have added importance in the 5th grade. If creating visual texts will reach some of my struggling learners, then it is definitely a strategy I would like to employ. Finally, I think that learning to design visual texts might help my students to better understand similar texts when they come across them, thus aiding their reading comprehension. I highly recommend “I See What You Mean: Children at Work with Visual Information” to teachers searching for yet another way to improve the learning that takes place in their classroom.

 

My two questions for you-all:

 

1)  Steve Moline makes a strong case for the teaching of more than just "reading for the story," and yet I feel that kids too often read selectively and skim, thus missing full comprehension of what they are reading.  What methods do you have for encouraging more than just skim-reading of non-fiction texts?

 

2)  I would like to do more reading about creating visual texts.  Are there any books you would recommend?

 

See Y'all on the 9th!

[Michelle Peirce]

Hi Gail!

This book seems so interesting, you've definitely piqued my interest, I'm going to have to pick this one up for sure! Being GLAD trained several years ago, I have seen the importance on non-linguistic representations within students work and instruction. There are many activities that would encourage deeper reflection of informational texts that are best divided into categories of "Before, During and After" reading strategies. I have some slides from powerpoint I can send you that has such activities. You stated in your response that the author asks “What is the clearest way to present my information?” and “How can I organize my information to help the reader?” These are essential questions that we should focus on throughout the year as they are essential to our new Common Core State Standards.

[Gail Corthell]

I would love to see your slides!  Thanks so much