Treating Images as Texts: Challenging Diverse Learners in an Untracked English Language Arts Class

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Classroom Issues in Detracked Environments

Abstract

This qualitative study examined modifications of curriculum to better serve students in an untracked, 10th grade ELA class. The goal was to learn how inclusion of nonverbal texts affected teaching and learning with this heterogeneous group of students. Maintaining an emphasis on close reading and careful textual analysis, the classroom teacher integrated nonverbal texts, or images, with traditional verbal, alphabetic texts. Findings suggest that the immediate and simultaneous access to meaning-making provided by the nonverbal texts positioned all students—whether strong or struggling readers of verbal texts—as active meaning-makers and participants in a community of learners. Broadening our view of what qualifies a text as complex or challenging may position more students as agentive learners in multiple disciplines.

Author

• Kathleen A. Reilly, Towson University