ABSTRACT
Educators understand that teaching a child to read text is a sequential process. It’s a memorable moment for both teachers and students when that door of meaning swings open and twenty-six alphabetic symbols, in nearly infinite combinations, metamorphose into ideas, information, descriptions, and flights of imagination. Children’s ability to make meaning from text deepens and grows as they make connections between reading and writing. It is a gradual and learned experience. Just as reading complements writing in traditional literacy, observation and creation jointly form the foundation of visual literacy. Translation is an important part of the process of developing visual literacy, as children go beyond scanning and mentally filing images to asking questions about their significance and searching for connections. As teachers, their job is to help students do more than merely look at symbols; they must show them how to interpret and communicate the meaning of images, to develop “intelligent vision”.
