ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how students and their teachers transact with visual images as part of their interpretations of challenging texts. It describes three visual arts-related instructional strategies designed to bring learners closer to a variety of challenging Holocaust texts, to the context of The Diary, and to each other. The chapter presents the visual strategies in a purposeful sequence; it begins with the strategy that is most directly and narrowly prepared by teachers (Cordel) and end with the strategy that is most explicitly student driven (Archives). In doing so, the chapter provides a scaffold for you and other teachers to take increasing pedagogical risks while infusing the visual arts into classroom pedagogies of practice. It considers how seeing the text is a fundamental component of layering literacies. The visual arts expand ways of knowing and the modes through which learners can perform their understandings of the curriculum.
