Interpreting Visual Information

Under the Common Core, students will need to be able to use pictures, photos, and graphs as sources of information. The Common Core Reading Anchor standard number 7 says that students are expected to be able to “Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.” This is not something new. Teachers have been talking young children through “picture walks” for years. And older students have long been required to answer questions about graphs and charts.

What is different is the way this plays out in the CCSS tests . Students will be expected to cite an image as a source for an essay. This is not necessarily difficult, but it is different from traditional essays.

So how can you prepare your students for this challenge? Start out by teaching students how to refer to a graph, chart, or picture in an essay. The information contained in a graph or chart is relatively straight forward, but how can students use the information contained in a photograph as evidence in an essay? Get images from the internet and display them for a class discussion. For example, what does a photograph of astronauts on board a space station suggest about living conditions in space? How would you write about that? It will be important for your students to refer back to the image. You may want to give them sentence stems:

The photo shows that... 

According to the chart … 

The graph demonstrates that …

For younger students, you will want to teach them how to draw conclusions from pictures. How is the child in the picture feeling? How can you tell? Also, make sure that you are including nonfiction pictures in your discussions. What does the picture tell us about frogs?

I'm confident that your students will actually enjoy this challenge. It's fun for children to look to visuals as a source of information. They just need some explicit instruction.