One of the main purposes of the classroom-based research featured in this article was to develop 9-year-old students' visual meaning-making skills and competences by focusing specifically on elements of visual art and design in picturebooks. The complexity of the picturebook format requires and rewards slow looking by readers/viewers. However,…

During a classroom-based study, Grade 4 students were provided with multiple opportunities to develop their visual meaning-making skills and competences, as well as their aesthetic understanding of and critical thinking about multimodal texts. Intentionally designed instruction during the research included a range of activities focused on specific…

Participation in a classroom-based study provided Grade 4 students with multiple opportunities to develop their visual meaning-making skills and competences, as well as their aesthetic understanding of and critical thinking about multimodal ensembles. Intentionally-designed instruction during the multifaceted research included a variety of…

Picturebooks were one format of multimodal text used during the classroom-based research that is featured in this article. Although the research conducted with a class of grade 7 students had several overarching purposes, the two most relevant to this article were to investigate student development of visual meaning-making skills and competencies…

During a classroom-based study that explored the teaching and learning of visual elements of art and design, Grade 7 students had the opportunity to read four graphic novels. Theoretically, the research was informed by social semiotics, visual literacy, sociocultural theory, and Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading. The instructional unit…

Explicit pedagogy that focuses on visual design and composition principles can affect students' responses to and understanding, interpretation and analysis of images, as well as the creation of their own visual representations. This article considers the why, the what, and the how of teaching various visual elements of art and design to students…

During a 10-week classroom-based study, 20 fourth grade students participated in a number of interdependent activities that focused on developing their visual meaning-making skills and competencies. As well as reading, responding in writing to and discussing a selection of picturebooks, graphic novels, and magazines, the students created graphic…

This article discusses a study that explored first-grade students' responses to and interpretations of eight picture books with metafictive devices. The article focuses on children's visual and written responses to the picture books and describes the relationship between the students' visual and verbal texts with respect to storytelling. The two…