Presents a lesson plan based on John Singleton Copley's 1795 oil painting, "Portrait of Nathaniel Hurd." The goal of the lesson is to give students in grades four through six an awareness of portraiture and how portraits record not only character but historical times and customs. (JDH)

"At the Piano," an oil-on-canvas painting completed in 1859 by James Abbot McNeill Whistler, is used as the basis of a lesson designed to help junior high school students analyze the painting's mood, subject matter, and composition. (JDH)

Defines aesthetic scanning, the perceptual activity that artists use when creating art and that connoisseurs use when contemplating it. Shows how to ask questions that elicit information about the sensory, formal, expressive, and technical properties of a work of art. (JDH)

Children at the preoperational and concrete operational levels are influenced by a variety of perceptual cues other than subject matter when classifying paintings. While younger children had little difficulty in classifying paintings done in three stylistic categories, older children were able to perform this task with significantly greater…

Semiotics is the study of signs of all kinds. How the definitions and specialized terminologies of semiotics are related to curriculum is discussed, and how semiotics can be integrated into specific instructional activities is examined. An illustrative model is included. (RM)

This book is a guide for encouraging critical television viewing skills in children, allowing them to make up their own minds about the power and influence of television. The introduction addresses the importance of television in North America and compares viewing patterns with those in other countries. The text throughout is accompanied by…

"Viewing and Representing in the Middle Years" was a 2-year project to investigate the development of visual literacy in the classrooms of 3 Canadian middle school teachers. These teachers tried a large variety of approaches and were generally optimistic about the increased use of visual materials to make classrooms more inclusive. They…

There are a variety reasons for teaching about Japan. Many students in the United States are of Japanese heritage; Japan is the second largest trading partner of the United States; and some healing still needs to occur between the United States and Japan because of the damage and pain of World War II. Further, the Unites States and Japan share the…

This guide accompanies "Special Effects," a 40-minute IMAX film and "Special Effects II", a multimedia, interactive traveling exhibit designed by the California Museum of Science and Industry. The exhibit focuses on the underlying scientific and technical processes of special effects from the earliest motion picture to state-of-the-art digital…

A resume of the courses taught by the Centre for film and television education at all levels of education. It is also valuable for the training of visual perception in general. (Author/HB)

Discusses the educational value of the mass media and popular culture as reflective of our contemporary human condition. (DD)

Having argued that visual literacy looks toward and creates a different kind of learner, exposes the intricacies of a visual language and adds a new dimension to the definition of literature, the author presents several ERIC abstracts designed to help teachers focus on films. (Author/JB)

Children must learn to discriminate among the visual stimuli they experience and to recognize the existence of a visual language. Learning activities to help young children develop a sense of visual literacy are suggested. (PP)