Using Visual Communication in the Classroom

As English teachers I think that it is important to help expand our students' scope of literacy. We can include drama, art, journalism, and various ways of communication in our classrooms. One of the reasons why I wanted to be an English teacher was the way you could mold the curriculum in different ways to still come to the same goal.

I enjoyed reading the two articles "Novelzine: Reading and Writing Community" and "Composing Infographics to Synthesize Informational and Literary Texts" because they provided different strategies that I can implement in my class to expand my students' knowledge of text. Personally, I enjoyed reading about Zines and I would love to see that used in my class. The article mentioned that "most zines share some family resemblance: combinations of handwritten text, typewritten text, and drawings" which is why I think

that I would love seeing how students can create the Zine in their own style and learn about the text in a new light.

In the article "Composing Infographics to Synthesize Informational and Literary Texts" I enjoyed reading how students can dissect informational text in a new way. I personally did not enjoy information text in some of my English classrooms because it was not engaging enough and I felt that we should just read novels instead. However, in my history classes I would soak up any informational that my teacher gave me because it felt pertinent only because my teacher used discussions, debates, or videos to help us understand the information better.

I know many students have seen infographics online. I would love seeing how my students can make their own infographics as an extention of a research paper for a presntation rather than having them use Powerpoints.