Student Meaning-Making of the Artwork in a Science Trade Book: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity for Developing Visual Literacy

ABSTRACT 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 elements of visual art and design. Student participants read and discussed, and wrote about selections of children’s literature during Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science. The Sea Book was one of the books featured during an interdisciplinary unit on Ocean Literacy, a component of the overall case study research. Content analysis of the students’ responses about the trade book revealed their capacity to engage in five synergistic visual reading skills. As well, data analysis revealed how the students perceived, described, and interpreted the use of color, visual point of view, typography, framing and line in Milner’s artwork as fulfilling multiple, and often concomitant, meaning-making purposes. The findings demonstrated that instruction about how to read and understand visual representations can enhance students’ knowledge and interpretation of content conveyed through multiple modes of representation, and develop students’ capacity and agency for critically reading visual and multimodal texts.