Visualising Literacy and How to Teach It

A Guide to Developing Thinking Skills, Vocabulary and Imagination for 9-12 Year Olds

Steve Bowkett, Tony Hitchman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781032025773
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000449914
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Technological advances and the way young people interact with them means children are thinking and processing information in an increasingly visual manner. Visualising Literacy and How to Teach It recognises that many, if not most, children are attracted to visual images and uses this as a basis for introducing and developing a range of thinking skills and strategies for learning. This practical resource offers a selection of visuals, each accompanied by activities that give children practice in using their imaginations in different ways.

Visualising Literacy and How to Teach It not only explores creative and critical thinking skills but also pays close attention to the overarching thinking skill that we call imagination. The book contains around 150 practical activities that develop children's imaginations, focussing on a range of thinking skills, including but not limited to the following:

• developing observational/attentional skills
• noticing details (focussing of attention)
• assimilating visual information
• increasing experience of inferential thinking, speculation, dealing with generalisations
• boosting vocabulary
• empowering one's attitude towards exploring ideas
• learning different questioning techniques
• increasing the ability to empathise
• becoming comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity

Many of the visualisation techniques can be applied to developing different aspects of emotional resourcefulness, including empathy, positive self-image, anchoring positive thoughts and modifying negative thoughts and feelings. This is, therefore, an essential resource for any teacher or education professional who is keen on developing children's ability to think and express their own ideas.

CHAPTER 1
Using this book and introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003184003-1

All of the activities in Visualising Literacy and How to Teach It aim to help children to use their imaginations more effectively. A number of associated thinking skills are covered through dozens of practical how-to techniques. We have sequenced these loosely throughout the book, though you may prefer to cherry-pick particular activities to fit in with your own programmes of study. Because of this we have repeated certain principles and ideas a number of times: these serve as rationales for using the techniques and strengthen their educational underpinning. We have also cross-referenced activities to make creating sequenced programmes easier. While we emphasise creative writing and emotional resourcefulness in the book, we also show how the thinking skills and use of the imagination are useful (one might argue necessary) in areas such as science, history, philosophy and others. You will also find that on occasions, we suggest the exact words you can use when instructing children to carry out the task: we’re not trying to be deliberately didactic, but often the particular way in which an activity is framed has a powerful influence on how children respond.

Albert Einstein famously said that imagination is more important than knowledge. He also maintained that imagination rather than knowledge was the true sign of intelligence. Most simply put, imagination is the ability we have to form and control images in the mind: the word ‘idea’ derives from the Greek meaning picture, form and pattern (though as we’ll see, it’s about more than just images). And while the definition of intelligence is complex and to some extent controversial, we can agree perhaps that intelligent thinking manipulates knowledge rather than just stores and recalls it. This also implies the creative use of knowledge, insofar as it links previously separate ideas to generate new insights and deepen understanding, bearing in mind that to have knowledge of something is not necessarily to understand it. As such, imaginative manipulation of knowledge generates information, which can be read as ‘in-formation’; the formation of clearer meanings¹ and greater comprehension. This in turn leads to what is commonly called the inner world of the mind, which powerfully shapes our perceptions of the world ‘out there’. The inner world is also no less interesting and open for exploration than the outside world – together constituting what we can call the ‘real’ world we live in.

Note

1.Professor Kieran Egan1 (cited in the following chapter) highlights the importance of ‘meaning making’ as a key aspect of true education. Similarly, educationalist Neil Postman and writer Charles Weingartner (Postman and Weingartner (1971)) quote the philosopher and communications guru Marshall McLuhan, who asserts that humans are ‘meaning making machines’. To facilitate this ability, Postman and Weingartner advocated the enquiry method of education, where learning is focussed on students asking questions rather than just being fed facts.

CHAPTER 2
Some definitions

DOI: 10.4324/9781003184003-2

Definitions of imagination vary. Educationalist Kieran Egan explores the topic in detail (Egan (2002)), pointing out that the main Hebrew term for imagination is ‘yetser’, whose root is the same as ‘yetsirah’, which translates as ‘creation’. That in turn prompts the question of what creativity is and whether it amounts to the same thing as imagination.

Since this is intended to be a practical resource book to develop children’s thinking, we offer what are some hopefully pragmatic definitions around the idea of imagination.

• Creativity. The act of bringing something new into existence. In terms of thinking, a creative idea is one formed when two or more previously unconnected thoughts are brought together. Etymologically, the word comes from Latin meaning to produce, bring forth, grow and is linked to Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture. (In this context, note the agricultural metaphors for learning on page 10.)
• Daydreaming. To daydream is to be more or less aware of the thoughts streaming through the mind. We can make a distinction between ‘idle daydreaming’ when we might hardly notice those thoughts, being ‘lost in reverie’, and ‘systematic/deliberate daydreaming’ when we guide and prompt thoughts with a clear purpose or intention in mind. Most of the activities in this book aim to promote deliberate daydreaming, which is one aspect of metacognition: the ability to notice and manipulate one’s thoughts.
• Idea. Can we get away with saying an idea is a ‘unit of thought’, which we may receive passively from elsewhere and do nothing with it or creatively and imaginatively put it together with other ideas to produce something new? The word itself comes from the Greek ‘to see’ and ‘form, pattern’, which leans more towards the active manipulation of mental content.
• Imagination. Again coming from Latin and meaning to ‘picture to oneself’. But as we’ve already suggested, imagination goes beyond just thinking visually. Egan in Imagination in Teaching and Learning (Egan (2002)) asserts that the imagination is a kind of meeting point where perception, memory, ideas, metaphor, emotion and a range of other kinds of thinking work together. As hinted previously, imagination is an elusive concept, though we can usually recognise an imaginative idea when it appears.
• Originality. Robin Barrow (1990) suggests that an imaginative idea is one that is unusual and effective. This touches on the notion of originality. If creativity involves bringing ideas together in a new way, then as children’s creativity and imaginations develop, they will have more ideas that are original to them – ideas that they have not thought about before, even if in the general scheme of things those ideas are well-known. True originality in the form of completely new ideas represents imagination elevated to a very high degree. In our opinion this has profound implications for what learning means, going beyond the simple delivery of ‘facts’ and their subsequent recall under test conditions. True education must require children to actively do something more with the information they are given. This goes to the heart of information as ‘in-formation’, the creation of fresh insights and deeper understanding.

If we allow this take on originality then we can acknowledge two important principles in the development of children’s thinking:

• To have our best ideas, we need to have lots of ideas.
• How many ideas can we have, and what use can we make of them?

Both principles recognise the generative power of the imagination. A creative person in whatever field will intend – and tend – to produce many ideas. Both principles also touch on the notion that generating ideas uses different modes of thinking than assessing or evaluating those ideas, once they have formed, to see if they are useful (or ‘effective’ to use Barrow’s term). As such, while creative and critical thinking are not the same thing, they overlap and are mutually supportive. Simplistically, we can say that creative thinking produces the ‘raw material’ of lots of ideas that can then be reflected upon, analysed and evaluated to discover how well they fit their intended purpose.

Going beyond this, Egan (2002) argues that developing the imagination helps students to become more autonomous thinkers, able to see conventional ideas for what they are, presumably creating options to make use of more unconventional and original ideas. Clearly, to think unconventional thoughts in any area of enquiry, one needs to have an understanding of the conventions of that field. We look at this in the context of creative writing on page 68, though the notion has a much broader application.

As an aside to this, while many of the activities in the book are generic and can be applied across the subject range, we point out along the way how some can be used in topics found in science, geography, maths, physical education and mental/emotional resourcefulness.

CHAPTER 3
Educational benefits of developing imagination

DOI: 10.4324/9781003184003-3

The aim of this book is to use images and text to develop a range of thinking skills and strengthen the imagination, as it is in part defined in the previous chapter. We use the word ‘strengthen’ deliberately in line with the analogy that the imagination is like a muscle; the more it is exercised the stronger it becomes. We will also show how a strong imagination, coupled with an understanding of different ways of ‘flexing’ it, aids children’s learning across the subject range and can also be beneficial in developing emotional resourcefulness and wellbeing: since the mind and body are linked, how we think as well as what we think influences how we feel and act.

We intend Visualising Literacy to be full of activities and techniques that can be used across a wide age and ability range. And because many of the activities prompt creative thinking, differentiation lies not so much in the materials themselves but in any child’s response to them, given his or her current level of ability – i.e. differentiation by outcome. While some of the activities need to be run in a certain sequence as aspects of a wider visual exploration, others can be cherry-picked and used individually as ‘mind warmups’ or lesson starters to help prepare the children for further learning. We also discuss what we believe to be a useful attitude that you can cultivate in the children to help them get the most out of the picture-work that you do with them. Having said that, this book does not cover all aspects of visual literacy (for some excellent ideas along those lines, see, for instance, Browning Wroe and Lambert (2008); Stafford (2011) in ‘References and Resources’). Rather, it is more broadly based and with an emphasis on how-to techniques for thinking rather than just helping children to ‘read’ images.

It is a cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words. Whether this is always true or not, certainly pictures can serve as springboards for generating words, thus encouraging children’s language development and social interaction. As such, many of the activities can also be used for teaching languages other than a pupil’s native tongue. Other educational benefits of working with pictures include the following:

• developing observational/attentional skills
• noticing details (focussing of attention)
• boosting visualisation skills (together with understanding further applications of this)
• increasing concentration span
• assimilating visual information
• making creative connections
• increasing experience of inferential thinking, speculation, dealing with generalisations and other ways of thinking
• appreciating the mind-body link (your imagination goes right through you)
• developing metacognitive abilities across a range of sensory modes
• gaining experience of cross-matching sensory impressions to enrich ideas (synesthetic thinking)
• boosting vocabulary
• empowering one’s attitude towards exploring ideas
• learning different questioning techniques
• increasing the ability to empathise
• becoming comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, etc.
• coupled with a reduced fear of the wrong answer, etc.
• coupled with a lessening need to know ‘the right answer right now’
• becoming more familiar with criteria of relevance and quality in ideas and language

CHAPTER 4
The attitude

DOI: 10.4324/9781003184003-4

Children frequently ask us if they need to be clever to have ideas. Our answer is that they don’t necessarily have to be clever, but they do need to be nosy. By this we mean noticing things and asking questions, these being the two core skills that underpin effective thinking. Younger children especially tend to be pleased and relieved to hear this because most already are nosy in these two important ways. For instance, Warren Berger in A More Beautiful Question notes that in a 2013 study it was found that the average four-year-old girl in the UK asks 390 questions a day, with boys of a similar age ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• 1 Using this book and introduction
• 2 Some definitions
• 3 Educational benefits of developing imagination
• 4 The attitude
• 5 Mind warmups
• 6 Picture exploration – a medley of thinking skills
• 7 Questioning with confidence
• 8 Collecting motifs
• 9 Colour combinations
• 10 Subtle distinctions
• 11 Sound work
• 12 Submodalities
• 13 Step in – the physical dimension
• 14 What’s the feeling?
• 15 Two anecdotes
• 16 Just enough
• 17 Sensory treasures
• 18 Spelling strategies
• 19 Break state
• 20 Minimal writing and artful vagueness
• 21 Cross-matching senses
• 22 Drawing out meaning
• 23 Point of view
• 24 Picture masking
• 25 Beyond the frame
• 26 Cinematic method of describing a picture
• 27 Studying pictures
• 28 Sensory journey
• 29 Educational value of the sensory journey
• 30 Vivid particularities
• 31 Creative conversations
• 32 Imagining impossible things
• 33 More thought experiments
• 34 Inspiration
• 35 A medley of visualisations
• 36 Reframing
• 37 Scrambletales
• 38 Linking game
• 39 Descriptive writing
• 40 Some literary devices for descriptive writing
• 41 Pictograms and hieroglyphs
• 42 Letter associations
• 43 Describing phonemes
• 44 Interpreting abstract shapes
• 45 Venn diagrams
• 46 ‘Sliderman’
• 47 Heads or tails
• 48 Dice journey
• 49 Controlling the imagination
• 50 Tackling text
• 51 Thoughts, feelings, memories and dreams
• 52 Mindfulness
• 53 A special place
• 54 Imagination beyond the curriculum
• References and resources
• Index