1. Close Looking: The Art of Visual Literacy January 17, 2015

2. Close Looking: The Art of Visual Literacy This session will focus on guiding students to expand their literacy range by exploring “close looking” – using specific steps to understand visual meaning and its relationship to literature. Help your students gain deeper access to imagery, create meaning and analyze art to enrich reading. We will explore the role of visual literacy with the Common Core State Standards and the new National Core Arts Standards. 2

3. Visual Literacy: A Definition What do you know about visual literacy – turn to your neighbor to explain your definition of visual literacy. Share 3

4. Jackson Pollock

5. IT IS CRITICAL THINKING! “Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be ‘read’ and that meaning can be communicated through a process of reading.” 5

6. The Communications Revolution 3 waves: –Cuneiform –Printing Press –Digital 6

7. How do we make sense of it all? By slowing down. By taking our time. By being visually literate 7

8. Why Visual Literacy is important: Understanding what you see. Important for every career field. Slowing down and understanding what we see could save a life, solve a cold case or help prepare for a natural disaster. Artworks plus all images, maps, graphics, video, etc. Important for successful living. Visual literacy is the key sensory literacy. We must teach it. Proficient readers create strong images in their mind. Event Name8 “The arts are a form of communication, a universal language. The arts train us to be effective storytellers.” - Brian Kennedy

9. 9 We employ visual literacy strategies all the time, often without realizing it- we need to highlight and investigate these processes creating opportunities to apply them in new and exciting ways.

10. How to Close Look Look, Observe, See, Describe, Analyze, and Interpret Students make observations, connections and inferences. Looking critically at a piece sharpens observations and helps students argue from evidence and builds critical-thinking. 10

11. Look The first step in the process: call it out and encourage it. Allow yourself to take the time to slow down and look carefully. Position yourself so that you can see the work clearly and comfortably. 11

12. Observe Observation is where close looking comes into play. Observation is an active process, requiring both time and attention. It is here that the viewer begins to build up a mental catalogue of the image’s visual elements. 12

13. See Looking is a physical act; seeing is a mental process of perception. Seeing involves recognizing or connecting the information the eyes take in with your previous knowledge and experiences in order to create meaning. This requires time and attention. 13

14. Describe Describing can help you to identify and organize your thoughts about what you have seen. It may be helpful to think of describing as taking a careful inventory. What figures, objects and setting do you recognize? You can begin the process by identifying and describing the Elements of Art within a composition.Elements of Art 14

15. Analyze Analysis uses the details you identified in your descriptions and applies reason to make meaning. During analysis we can think about how the Elements of Art are arranged according to the Principles of Design. Elements of ArtPrinciples of Design Analysis is also an opportunity to consider how the figures, objects and settings you identified in your description fit together to tell a story. 15

16. Interpret Interpretation, combines our descriptions and analysis with our previous knowledge and any information we have about the artist and the work. Interpretation allows us to draw conclusions about the image. 16

17. The Elements of Art Shape Line Color Space Texture 17

18. The Principles of Design Rhythm Movement Proportion Variety Emphasis Balance Harmony 18

19. Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O39niAzuapc –Brian Kennedy, Toledo Museum of Art 19

20. Connections? CCSS – Key Shifts – Anchor Standards Emphasis on: – Informational Text – Text Complexity – Interaction with multimedia National Core Arts Standards 20

21. Sample Visual Literacy Strategies Think-alouds Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) –“What’s going on in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find?” Asking the 4WS –“What do I see? What does it remind me of? What’s the artist’s purpose? So what?” Five Card Flickr: dealt 5 random images –One word association –ID a song for one or more of the images –Describe what all the images have in common –Compare answers Image Analysis Worksheets Close Looking –Literal observation –Interpretation –Evaluation/Application 21

22. Popular Photography 83% of American teens take pictures with their cell phones (Lenhart, Ling, Campbell, & Purcell, 2010). More students are into photography because of its accessibility. The size and affordability of smaller cameras makes incorporating images into instruction easier than ever. There are also many photo-sharing websites to share our images with others or to the Cloud. 22

23. Analyzing Photos What am I looking at? What does this image mean to me? What is the relationship between the image and the displayed text message? How is this message effective? 23

24. In 1935, photographer Dorothea Lange, while working for the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, snapped a picture of a migrant farm worker and her starving children at a farm in California where the workers were picking peas. Lange was one of a number of photographers who were hired to document conditions of people during the Great Depression. Little did she know that the photo of Florence Owens, known as “Migrant Mother,” and the accompanying news coverage would cause the government to rush food aid to the starving workers. 24

25. In 1945, when America was still involved in WWII, Ansel Adams photographed Mount Williamson, part of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range in California. It is a beautiful image: clouds sit atop the mountain range, and the sun’s rays find their way through the clouds, past the mountain to the ground below. In the foreground, large rocks can be seen. It’s a nicely balanced photo and represents one of the best landscape photos ever taken. But, might something else be going on here?. 25 Unless you have studied Adams and his images, you would not have known that this vista was the view for the Japanese-Americans who were detained during World War II in an internment camp located at Manzanar, California. Media literacy asks us to consider what is outside the frame; what do we not know?

26. Photo Analysis Look at the photo Look again Observe elements Draw a sketch on the back Quick list words, thoughts, feelings Tagxedo Group look at the word cloud. Observations, discussion Invert Summarizing statement 26

27. 27 Debriefing - How did the process have you think/question more critically? - Did you need more information to make sense of details in the photo? - What did you notice about yourself as a learner? - How did you become more engaged and curious? - Collaboration - Next steps …

28. 28 Visual literacy is something that has been primarily confined to our arts classrooms; in the arts, students learn how to look at a painting and how to read, analyze, and deconstruct the techniques used by the artist. Usually they study and become aware of concepts such as lighting, color, composition, and more. Today, the need for visual literacy has spread to other disciplines. Because so much information is communicated visually, it is more important than ever that our students learn what it means to be visually literate. Those who create visual images (such as photographs) do so with a purpose in mind, using certain techniques. In order to “read” or analyze an image, the audience (our students) must be able to understand the purpose and recognize the techniques. Just like media literacy, visual literacy is about analyzing and creating messages. Images can be used to influence and persuade, so it is critical for educators to learn how to teach with and about images and to help our students understand the language of visual art.

29. Towards CCSS Implementation All Teachers  Scaffold comprehension of complex texts  Integrate technology/multimedia into instruction  Use Visual Literacy as story starters, as tools, as symbols for deeper thinking, for collaborative discussions – and more – as sensory images for comprehension. 29

30. Esther L. Tokihiro Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator STEAM Team Esther_Tokihiro@sccoe.org 408-453-6572 www.artspiration.sccoe.org Facebook: Artspiration Twitter: @Artspiration Pinterest: Artspiration SCCOE YouTube 30