Tag

Visual Literacy

Celebrating National Share-a-Story Month

By | 4-6 years, 6-8 years, 8+ years, Advice for Parents, Teaching Resources

Happy National Share-a-Story Month! May 1st marks the beginning of a whole month of creating and celebrating stories, in all different ways!

At Discovery Diaries HQ, we’re passionate about this year’s theme: The Planet We Share. While our space missions take us far from home, looking at that small blue dot from beyond our atmosphere both humbles and inspires us. We see how interconnected we are, not just on an intergalactic scale but as members of our world and our communities. Stories help us learn more about that world and the people in it.

Stories can be told in all kinds of ways. Long before the written word, people shared them verbally, through music and by making art. Throughout May, we’ll be celebrating storytelling in all its different forms.

To help us celebrate, we’d like to challenge you to tell one story each week in May using different storytelling methods. Here are five different ways to get you started:

  1. Get your Hemingway on and write a piece of micro-prose, using Visual Verse’s daily visual prompt.
  2. Embrace the gift of the gab like Christian Rogers and host an oral storytelling session. You can do this in-person with your household, or online with your friends (with a parent’s permission if you’re under 16). Your story could be one you’ve made up or one you’ve been told.
  3. Follow in the footsteps of the great bard and dabble in poetry. Writing a Shakespearean sonnet is a particularly satisfying challenge. Following one of our templates will help you keep those rhymes in order.
  4. Songwriting is a fun way to share a story. Musician Will Stoert has created a simple five-step method to help you write a song. You don’t need any knowledge of music to use it, so warm up those vocal chords and have some fun!
  5. Not all stories are told through words. From the time our ancient ancestors painted the walls of caves, visual storytelling has been one of our traditions. Why not make your own space-themed comic strip? There’s no limit to where an intergalactic story can take you!

The Federation of Children’s Book Groups has all kinds of resources you can use to celebrate National Share a Story Month, from downloadable activities to reading lists. Their handy mind-map with help you come up with ideas around this year’s theme.

Don’t forget to let Discovery Diaries HQ know how you’re going with your Share-a-story Challenge! Use #discoverydiaries on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to tell us how you’re spinning tales.

Free Creative Writing Resources for Teens

By | 11+, 8+ years, Further Education (FE), News, Teaching Resources, Visual Literacy

Download our latest free teaching resource for students aged 12+. We’ve created a set of creative activities that use art and photography to inspire creative writing and storytelling in the classroom. This free resource has been created in partnership with FXP Festival, a STEM initiative based on a computer and mobile game design and development competition for school and college students in the UK.

Inside this book you will find 6 activities to ignite a passion for creative writing and storytelling, and prime your students for FXP Festival in Cambridge (6-8 July).

The aim of these activities is to give students an experience of language and literacy that they can really make their own. We use visual prompts to ensure that every student can find a “way in” to literacy, and we focus on holistic communication (verbal, visual, creative, text etc). The ultimate aim is to empower young people with the confidence to communicate creatively and effectively.

These activities are designed for years 8–11 and FE and they include differentiation ideas for adapting within this range. All of the activities are flexible in nature so you can incorporate them into existing classes or tie them to your curriculum.

This resource is based on activities designed by writers, publishers and educators at The Curved House and Visual Verse. This edition of the resources is published in collaboration with FXP Festival 2019. It is a free resource for teachers, parents and educators, so please feel free to share. We hope you enjoy and look forward to seeing what your students come up with.

Download this Resource (PDF)

Visual Literacy Reading Curved House Kids

Reading Fast and Slow

By | Blog, Visual Literacy

This is an extract from an article published on The Bookseller Blog, 13 March 2013. 

Last week was one of our favourite days – World Book Day. This annual event is a chance for parents, teachers, kids and readers of all ages to celebrate books and stories – a day to remember the reasons why we read.

Our world is now split between online and offline, the virtual and the real, the physical and the digital. We all know these two realms do not exist independently of each other, which is why being able to read whatever is in front of you (whatever form that takes) is becoming more nuanced and complex. For us, finding a way for books – particularly children’s books – to acknowledge those two worlds seems more important than ever. We need to allow ourselves to be open and flexible to the idea of reading taking more forms than it ever has before – but we also need to ensure children have ways to appreciate the value and transformative power of stories, and the act of reading itself.

Working in the field of visual literacy we know that digital media has transformed the volume of information presented to us on a day-to-day basis, particularly when it comes to images and messages. We see them everywhere and we often find ourselves wondering which bits to recognise and acknowledge, and which bits to stop and dwell upon, to reflect and comprehend and engage and build upon the ideas we are being shown. Stories are perfect for this – allowing us to spend time getting to grips with a narrative, with characters, giving our brains the opportunity to concentrate and focus. They train us to remember how to do something beyond an immediate reaction to stimuli.

To read the full article visit The Bookseller Blog…

Can you make this face happy? A visual literacy exercise for everyone

By | 4-6 years, 6-8 years, 8+ years, Blog, Teaching Resources, Visual Literacy, Worksheets

When we teach visual literacy we don’t just teach how to ‘read’ and interpret images, we also explore the interpretation of other visual references. One of these is facial expression and, in particular, understanding emotion. Being able to interpret an emotion, and knowing how to express different emotions, are vital to our interactions with the world. This is a quick exercise to try yourself.

Download and print the worksheet below.

Try to turn this face into a happy face.

What changes will you make to change it’s mood? Are there small changes that can make a big difference? Can you completely reinvent the face? Tweet us a picture to @curvedhousekids or post it to our Facebook page, we’d love to see what you make of it.

Visual Literacy Exercise

Click to download PDF

 

 

curved house kids visual literacy books kristen harrison

Up, Up into Space in Deutsch!

By | Kids Gallery

We are SO impressed with this book by a 7-year-old in Frankfurt, Germany. This young writer has written the whole of Up, Up, into Space in her native German, complete with the speech bubbles and everything. Amazing work and super neat handwriting. Well done!

curved house kids visual literacy books kristen harrison

curved house kids visual literacy books kristen harrison

curved house kids fun palaces

Berlin’s First Fun Palace: Free Festival of Art and Science

By | Blog, News

Calling all creative kids! On the 4th and 5th of October, for one weekend only, Curved House Kids will set up a Fun Palace at Shakespeare and Sons bookshop.

What’s a Fun Palace? A Fun Palace is a free and creative space, where kids and adults alike can explore activities around art and science. We’ll be filling the weekend with all kinds of engaging and inspiring activities that bring science to life. With sessions looking at space, geology, chemistry, paleontology (dinosaurs!) and the animal kingdom, visitors to the Berlin Fun Palace will be able to explore their favourite subjects through storytelling, songs and games. Join authors, illustrators and artists including Megan Archer, Chester Travis, Kristen Harrison, Alice Connew and Jenna Stout for a fun-packed weekend creating Berlin’s first Fun Palace.

Activities include:

  • Meet the Illustrator: Learn about space, the solar system and gravity with illustrator Megan Archer, whose book Up, Up in to Space! is published by Curved House Kids.
  • Meet the Author: Chester Travis, author of My Summer Snowman, shares his poetry-writing skills while teaching us about the animal kingdom.
  • Rock n’ Roll: A rockin’ game where music meets geology!
  • Dinosaur Doodles: How would you draw a Sordes Pilosus? Or a T-Rex? This drawing game is the ultimate challenge for dinosaur fans!
  • Add your drawing to our “Imagine a Future” mural inspired by author extraordinaire, Lucy Hawking! In one of her videos, Lucy asks: “Can you imagine a future noone else has thought of?”.
  • Splashing Sounds: Learn how to make music with water and sound waves.
  • Planets on Parade: Make your own planet mask and join our planet parade!

This Berlin Fun Palace is one of many Fun Palaces happening in the UK and around the world on 3rd and 4th October, 2014. Over 100 Fun Palaces have been devised to celebrate theatre director Joan Littlewood’s centenary and her vision of creating fun and engaging spaces for anyone to access. Fun Palaces is a campaign for culture that everyone can join – combining arts and sciences, welcoming and free, at the heart of local communities across the world.

When and Where?

11am – 4pm on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th October
Shakespeare and Sons Bookshop and Bagel Cafe, Warschauerstrasse 74, 10243 Berlin
Cost: Free

A full programme of events will be published on the Curved House Kids website w/c 22nd September.

About Curved House Kids

Founded by Kristen Harrison in 2013, Curved House Kids is a Berlin-based publishing house that develops books and learning materials that integrate visual literacy into the teaching of core reading and writing skills. Our work tackles the reasons kids may not be reading, whether it be learning difficulties, additional needs, lack of confidence, or the ubiquitous distractions of digital technologies. By allowing kids to make their own books we empower them to be part of the creative process and encourage them to form a life-long bond with books and storytelling.

About Fun Palaces

In 1961, UK theatre director Joan Littlewood and architect Cedric Price conceived the Fun Palace as a ‘laboratory of fun’, ‘a university of the streets’. It was to be a temporary and movable home to the arts and sciences that would welcome children and adults alike. This wasn’t possible in 1961; it’s very possible now.

Co-directed by author Stella Duffy and Sarah Jane Rawlings, Fun Palace takes the best of that never-built 1960s vision and bring it into the 21st century in a weekend of events, locally curated and attended – linked nationally and internationally, virtually and actually. On 4 & 5 October 2014 there will be hundreds of local, pop-up Fun Palaces across the globe, each one based on the needs and wants of that community, all part of the national network of Fun Palaces.

For more information, please visit:

http://funpalaces.co.uk/

https://curvedhousekids.com/

For further enquiries, please contact:

Kristen Harrison

kristen@thecurvedhouse.com

+49 176 876 02770

Andrew Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Children's Book Awards

Visual Literacy Packs for Teachers, Parents and Guardians

By | Visual Literacy

This Visual Literacy Packs, compiled as part of the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the CILIP Carnegie Medal and the 50th anniversary of the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal awards – provide activities and teaching plans to accompany the reading of Carnegie and Greenaway award-winning books.

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-born philanthropist (1835–1919) who established over 2800 libraries across the English-speaking world. Kate Greenaway (1846-1901) was a popular nineteenth century children’s books illustrator. The Medals are awarded by librarians to those who show outstanding excellence in children’s and young person’s literature.

Check out the packs below!

Visual Literacy Pack 1
Visual Literacy Pack 2 (top ten)

 

Brian Kennedy, Director, formerly Hood Museum of Art

By | Visual Literacy

We often refer to this TEDx talk by Brian Kennedy in our work, so wanted to share it here. This is from when Kennedy was director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College (he is now Director of Toledo Museum of Art), speaking about the growing field of visual literacy and why we need it.

Kennedy notes in his speech that, although society has become much more visual, visual literacy itself has declined, and what’s necessary is to “reintegrate the capacity of our senses” for the digital age.

Much of our work and thinking stems from the idea that ours is an increasingly visual world and in order to get children reading (and get everyone interested in words, text and storytelling) we must present it in a way that reflects how they navigate the world – ie. visually.

Visual Literacies Project Archives

By | Visual Literacy

More great Visual Literacy resources from the US. Inter-Disciplinary.net, the Project Archives of Visual Literacies: Exploring Critical Issues has made available materials from conferences, research events, and other publications related to the project to provide you with some wonderfully helpful resources for developing future research and publishing opportunities.

Available presentation topics from the most recent conference include “Visual Literacy Through Graffiti” and “Visual Literacy as a Means to Facilitate Conscious Choice in Learning.”

Click here to find out more about the project.

Project Archives Visual Literacy Resources

WALL-E Visual Literacy resources

Examining WALL-E: How we can show meaning without words

By | Visual Literacy

“Visual Literacy” available online as a chapter excerpted from the book Media Literacy in the K-12 Classroom, by Frank W. Baker, published by the International Society for Technology in Education. The chapter examines the ability of photography and video—notably the first 10 minutes of the animated feature film WALL-E—in conveying meaning without words. The excerpt also provides details about the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) Corporation’s set of “Language Arts Viewing Standards” K-12 education.

Read the chapter here!

 

Vislit Visual Literacy Conference

The 2014 International Visual Literacy Conference

By | Events, Visual Literacy

Toledo Museum of Art Visual Literacy Conference VISLIT

The Toledo Museum of Art is hosting the 47th Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy (IVLA), this year’s theme being The Art of Seeing: From Ordinary to Extraordinary.

Conference events include Panel Discussions and Paper Presentations to interactive Workshops and Demonstrations which brings together teachers, researchers, students, artists and anyone else with interest in the field of visual literacy to discuss and critique work and practices.

We hope to attend the conference and engage with other thinkers and do-ers, movers and shakers, working in visual literacy education and we’re looking forward to hearing about the outcomes of the various workshops and events.

Head over to the VISLIT resource page as well, for an excellent introduction to visual literacy, perfect for anyone wanting to know how they can improve visual literacy through art.

Parents: Can’t get to Toledo? Don’t worry! There is even a family guide resource so you can explore the museum and visual literacy with the kids without having to leave the house!

http://www.vislit.org/

 

Martin Scorcese Video on the Importance of Visual Literacy

By | Visual Literacy

Our favourite bushy-browed filmmaker, Martin Scorcese, discusses the importance of the filmmaker’s visual decisions in conveying aspects of the story that can’t be told through dialogue. He notes that students today “need to know how ideas and emotions are expressed through a visual form” – such as the filmmaker’s tools such as lighting, panning the camera, and framing an image — to make an emotional and psychological point to an audience.

Aaaaaand ACTION!