Common Core in Action: 10 Visual Literacy Strategies

Do you wish your students could better understand and critique the images that saturate their waking life? That's the purpose of visual literacy (VL), to explicitly teach a collection of competencies that will help students think through, think about and think with pictures. Standards Support Visual Literacy Instruction Visual literacy is a staple of 21st century skills, which state that learners must "demonstrate the ability to interpret, recognize, appreciate and understand information presented through visible actions, objects and symbols, natural or man-made." Putting aside the imperative to teach students how to create meaningful images, the ability to read images is reflected in the following standards. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7: "Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos or maps) with other information in print and digital texts." How to Teach Visual Literacy: Visual Thinking Routines Think-Alouds Asking the 4WS

44 Prompts Merging Reflective Thinking With Bloom's Taxonomy 44 Prompts Merging Reflective Thinking With Bloom’s Taxonomy by Peter Pappas It’s been four years since I first published my “Taxonomy of Reflection.” My interest in reflective thinking is rooted in a simple but powerful statement by Donald Finkel who wrote that teaching should be thought of as “providing experience, provoking reflection.” (Teaching with Your Mouth Shut) Most school mission statements include a reference to “fostering life-long learners.” Unfortunately, self-reflection is rarely taught in school. I developed my Taxonomy of Reflection in an effort to provide a schema of prompts that could be used by students, teachers and administrators to hone their reflective skills. Seen through Bloom, that’s the equivalent of “Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from short- or long-term memory.” Below are 44 sample of higher order reflective prompts. 1. Student 2. 3. Teacher 4. 5. 6. Principal 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.