Assessing visual literacy
How to Make a Paper Airplane by Damien and Takashi (grade 6). This storyboard has all the key features we look for in an information text: it is clear, economical, reader-friendly and accurate.
Visual literacy can be held to the same standards as conventional (words-only) literacy. When presenting information, a student's text should be:
- clear
- economical
- reader-friendly
- accurate
There are other features we look for in specific kinds of text. For example, in a storyboard or time line, we expect the steps to be arranged in a meaningful sequence. In a map, we want the colors to be used consistently. In a scale diagram the details should be drawn to scale, and so on.
Assessing Adam and Antonio's ant
In practice, it helps to have a checklist of features to look for when making your assessment. Here is a student diagram by two children in Grade K/1, followed by an assessment of their work:
Here is an assessment of their diagram:
Here are some features of this assessment:
- You would not have noticed so many details if you didn't have this checklist in front of you (right?).
- The comments column (on the right) is as important as the checklist (on the left). You need to fine-tune the checklist, otherwise you would miss some of the unique details of this ant diagram.
- Did you notice that a blank box was included in this checklist? This has been used to add the comment Worked as partners; Antonio drew; Adam wrote. This blank space was included because there are always unique features of any student text that are worth commenting on. When using a checklist, don't just stay "inside the square." It's always worth asking, "What else is there?"
- Look at the last box, called "Follow-up." This box helps you with what to teach next. Assessment isn't much use if it does not feed back into our teaching.
But how do I make an assessment checklist?
You don't need to. It has already been done for you in The Information Toolkit. This series of teacher's books includes assessment sheets for all the key visual texts:
- Diagrams with labels (picture glossaries)
- Diagrams with keys
- Scale diagrams
- Cross sections
- Cutaway diagrams
- Flow charts
- Storyboards
- Timelines
- Multiple timelines
- Web diagrams
- Tree diagrams
- Tables
- Word wheels
- Maps
- Bar graphs
- Column graphs
- Line graphs
- Venn diagrams
The assessment sheets in the Toolkit may be photocopied for classroom use.
For a contents list of The Information Toolkit click here.
