"The Red Tree" is an exquisite visual text, and it offers a great opportunity for teaching visual literacy to students. What I particularly love about this novel is that it is more of an exploration of feeling, and not an explicit narrative. The story exists because people can relate to the feelings expressed in the text, making the narrative more personal to the reader. As such I think it would be cool to do an introductory to the novel that focuses only on the images in the text. I would hand out photocopied images from Tan's book without the text and see if students could predict the order of the images, and what the book will be about. We could even do a project where they would write their own story to accompany the images. |
This activity can be an opportunity to teach about elements of visual literacy discussed in our readings from this week, such as color, shadows, density, lines, shapes, and modality. Students can concider questions about the intended audience, and the author's style.
Thus students can consider the effects of these techniques on the reader, and think critically about the images they encounter on a daily basis. And the best part? it can be easily aligned with most grades.
Thus students can consider the effects of these techniques on the reader, and think critically about the images they encounter on a daily basis. And the best part? it can be easily aligned with most grades.