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A bilingual site for educators and families of English language learners

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Project Momentum is on a mission to provide high-quality professional learning opportunities and resources for educators to improve instruction for multilingual learners.

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professional development for teachers los angeles

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After all that tireless planning and prepping in August, the school year is finally underway! You've set up your classroom, made your plans, and welcomed bright new students into the learning space....

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Welcome to my website! Full of quick wins, low-prep activities, tech ideas and general tips and hacks to help you sprinkle a bit of variety into your lessons, engage and motivate learners and hopefully maintain a healthy work/life balance. I have been collecting so many engaging and inspiring ideas over the years and rather than hide them away in my 13 year old notebook (which I still use when lesson planning), I thought I would share them with the online world!

The odd idea may require a bit more effort (see 'more creative') but the general idea is that you can have a read of this website with your morning coffee and implement some of the ideas that day! Speaking of coffee, if you do find this website useful and would like to click the 'buy me a coffee' button, I am always extremely grateful :) But otherwise, I will continue to share the ideas and resources for free. I also hope to add more German-specific resources as these are often hard to come by (see Deutsch). But all of the other ideas work for the teaching of any language. I constantly update the website so please keep checking in!

I also run the hashtag #MFLinsta (an amazing feed of inspiring ideas from the Instagram MFL world - check it out) and I share lots of ideas on my account. My weekly Tech-Tuesday posts include my favourite ICT tools as well as Quick-Win Wednesdays.

Hope the ideas on here are useful and thank you to the wonderful MFL world, colleagues and other accounts I follow on social media for a constant source of ideas and inspiration!

​Claire x

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Welcome to my website! Full of quick wins, low-prep activities, tech ideas and general tips and hacks to help you sprinkle a bit of variety into your lessons, engage and motivate learners and hopefully maintain a healthy work/life balance.

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✓ I want to ensure you can be flexible, adaptable, and ready for everything by giving you the resources you need to reach your ELL students

✓ Let's cut out the gut-wrenching feeling you're not doing enough ( because you are!)

✓ And to do that, I want to give you access to all the done-for-you ELL lessons and support you need. You'll get it all when you join Equipping ELLs Membership.

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✓ I want to ensure you can be flexible, adaptable, and ready for everything by giving you the resources you need to reach your ELL students ✓ Let's cut out the gut-wrenching feeling you're not doing enough ( because you are!)

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Rooted Linguistics: Serving Teachers of Multilingual Learners

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Home page for teachers of English Learners/Multilingual Learners

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This is a website designed to support teachers of English Learners/Multilingual Learners.

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Educational advocacy means working on behalf of students to ensure they receive appropriate support and resources. This can involve advocating for special education services, such as individualized education programs (IEPs), or additional support like tutoring or classroom accommodations (Smith, 2023).
Why is It Important?
Without advocacy, many students might not get the help they need. For example, a student with dyslexia might struggle to read without extra support. An advocate can help ensure that the student gets access to specialized reading programs and accommodations like extra time on tests (Doe, 2022).
How can you help?
If your child has special needs, navigating the school system can be overwhelming. It is easy to feel unsure and to wonder if your child is receiving the support they deserve. Educational advocacy can change that-ensuring your child's unique needs are properly addressed in the classroom (Brown, 2021).

Every parent wants their child to succeed in school. For parents of children with special needs, this path is filled with challenges. Maybe your child isn't receiving the right accommodations, or their Individualized Education Plan (IEP) isn't being followed. The frustration can leave you feeling unheard.

At Hope Haven, our Education Advocates are here to help you navigate the complexities of the school system. Our advocates will work alongside you to ensure your child's educational needs are met. We are here to empower you, giving you the knowledge and support you need to advocate effectively for your child.

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Empowering Students: The Importance of Educational Advocacy - Hope Haven

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Discover how educational advocacy ensures every child gets the support they need to succeed in school. Learn about the role of advocates in securing special education services, IEPs, and classroom accommodations. Empower yourself and your child with Hope Haven's Educational Advocacy Program.

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Survivor Services — YWCA Evanston/North Shore | Social Justice Nonprofit

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YWCA Evanston/North Shore Survivor Services offers 24/7 crisis support for domestic violence survivors. Get help, referrals, and empowerment anytime. Take the first step towards healing now.

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In my own classroom I can use multilingual learning to encourage peer teaching, where students can learn from each other's language skills. Incorporate multicultural literature and resources into my lessons to represent diverse backgrounds. I can use visual aids and graphic organizers to support understanding for all learners. I can provide opportunities for students to share their cultural experiences and knowledge with the class.

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The Casey Foundation shares ways for organizations to effectively engage youth. Explore the strategies.

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National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

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Since 1998, NCMEC has operated the CyberTipline, a place where the public and electronic service providers can report suspected online and offline child sexual exploitation. The millions of reports made each year uniquely situate NCMEC to identify trends and create prevention resources to address the evolving needs of kids and teens online.

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'Translanguaging' - the use of different languages together - can be a powerful tool for learning ... but it can also go against the grain for language teachers who are used to supporting learners to master the intricacies of a single language. In this post, we ask what the research tells us about 'translanguaging' and how it can be used to support EAL learners in the classroom.

Picture the scene: two students are sitting together, working intently on a handout. They have different first languages but some shared knowledge of the words and phrases of each other's languages, so they are moving in and out of English to get their message across. Another two students are sitting together nearby. Both of them are Spanish speakers, but are very strong in English and often use it as their main language. At other times, as now, they blend Spanish and English together.

Are either of these examples of translanguaging?

In both cases, yes. The young people are using resources from different languages together, with very little regard for what we might call the 'boundaries' of named languages such as 'Spanish' or 'English'. They are using elements of each language together to communicate more effectively. This is translanguaging: it's about using the all your language resources to communicate.

Translanguaging is the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages, in order to maximize communicative potential.

Ofelia García (2009: 140)

Translanguaging is about communication, not about language itself. There are times when we need to be language teachers, focusing on accuracy in English so that our learners can pass exams and be taken as proficient speakers in wider society. Much of the time, though, we are working with students to explore concepts, add to their knowledge, make connections between ideas and to help them make their voices heard by others. This is often about communicating, and this is where using all our language resources can be very valuable.
A (very) brief history of translanguaging ...
Translanguaging is nothing new - it can be a very natural way for multilingual people to communicate - but as a focus of research it emerged in the 1980s in Bangor, north Wales. Cen Williams and colleagues were investigating strategies for learners to use two languages (Welsh and English) in a single lesson. They came up with the term 'trawsieithu' to describe reading or hearing input in one language (e.g. English) and writing or speaking about it in another (e.g. Welsh, or vice versa). The term was translated into English (and popularised) as 'translanguaging' by their colleague Colin Baker (see Lewis, Jones and Baker 2012).

Since then the term has expanded to cover the use of multiple languages in many contexts. It is one of a series of related terms (such as polylanguaging and flexible multilingualism) and the subtle differences between them suggest the wide range of academic work investigating how multiple languages are used - especially for learning. We can use 'translanguaging' as our general term.
The beginnings of a translanguaging pedagogy
Translanguaging pedagogy challenges what Jim Cummins (2008) called the 'two solitudes' approach to bilingualism, in which languages were kept strictly separate. It sees languages as a property of the community: the language resources that are relevant to the classroom are those shared by the students and the teacher. This separates the languages of the classroom community and the language of the test or the curriculum. We can use our classroom repertoire to learn, share and communicate, coming to focus on the language of the curriculum (highly formal and accurate English, for example) as necessary. It means making a distinction between forms of learning that require display (such as essays, often written in 'best English') and forms of learning that do not (such as worksheets). We can move between them within a lesson: perhaps using all our repertoire to discuss and to draft, moving into more formal/correct English to report to the group, back into translanguaging to revise the work-in-progress and into a very formal register for the final written product.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the strongly monolingual slant of recent education policy, much work into translanguaging pedagogy has been done outside mainstream classrooms. Creese and Blackledge (2010), for example, have looked at Gujarati and Chinese complementary schools. Li Wei and Zhu Hua (2013) studied learners at university, but connected translanguaging to migration and identity development in ways that are very relevant to school-based language policies. Hornberger and Link (2012) look at children the US, with an explicit focus on the restrictive language policies of that country, and offer ideas that are very applicable to the UK. A good starting point is García and Li Wei (2014) - a recent and very readable (only 165 pages) discussion that has a strong focus on translanguaging and education, with one author based in the US and one based in the UK.

The first issue of the EAL Journal (published in September and free to all NALDIC members) features Li Wei writing about translanguaging and the EAL classroom. Click here for information on how to join.
Recent developments
García's recent work has focused on translanguaging pedagogy as a political act, a critical response to the monolingual bias of current education policy. Earlier this year the South London EAL Group (part of NALDIC's national network of regional interest groups) discussed García's work on translanguaging stance - a teacher's political commitment to encouraging bilingualism in her classroom. The video below features Constant Leung discussing this approach and explaining how it connects to the UK context:
Constant Leung discussing Ofelia García's work on translanguaging, at NALDIC's South London EAL group. But what about exams?
Very often, we meet the colleagues who are keen to encourage multilingualism in their classroom (even experiment with a translanguaging pedagogy), but who are worried about how it will affect their students' exam performance.

A translanguaging approach is entirely consistent with high expectations in exams - if we recognise the difference between language and communication.

testing the proficiency of children in a language must be kept separate from testing their proficiency in language.

(Otheguy, García and Reid 2015: 299)

Translanguaging pedagogy is about you and your students. It draws on the languages you have available to your group - so even if you don't speak all (or any) of the other languages your students do, you can welcome them and encourage the learners to use them in the classroom. You can then make a distinction between your classroom approach to languages and the language resources the students will need to use in exams. If you have used a translanguaging pedagogy in your classroom (even if that wasn't the term you used for it) we would love to hear from you.
References
Creese, Angela and Adrian Blackledge (2010). Translanguaging in the Bilingual Classroom: A Pedagogy for Learning and Teaching? Modern Language Journal 94 (1), 103-115.

Cummins, Jim (2008). Teaching for Transfer: Challenging the two solitudes assumption in bilingual education. In: Jim Cummins and Nancy H. Hornberger (eds). Encyclopedia of Language and Education Vol. 5: Bilingual Education (2nd edition edition). Boston: Springer Science + Business Media.

García, Ofelia (2009). Education, multilingualism and translanguaging in the 21st century. In: Ajit Mohanty, Minati Panda, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (eds). Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the local. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp.128-145.

García, Ofelia, S. Johnson and K. Seltzer (forthcoming). Translanguaging Stance. In: Ofelia García (ed.). The Translanguaging Classroom. Philadelphia, PA: Carson.

Lewis, Gwyn, Bryn Jones and Colin Baker (2012). Translanguaging: origins and development from school to street and beyond. Educational Research and Evaluation 18 (7), 641-654.

Li Wei and Zhu Hua (2013). Translanguaging Identities and Ideologies: Creating Transnational Space Through Flexible Multilingual Practices Amongst Chinese University Students in the UK. Applied Linguistics 34 (5), 516-535.

Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia García and Wallis Reid (2015). Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 6 (3), 281-307.

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Interested in translanguaging and what it means for EAL? We look at the research and share the essential info.

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Resource author Christina Celic, Kate Seltzer

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Translanguaging: A CUNY-NYSIEB Guide for Educators | Rutgers Graduate School of Education - Diversified Teachers

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This guide offers you practical assistance on how to use translanguaging to help facilitate more effective learning of content and language by bilingual students. But you might not have heard of translanguaging before, or you might not understand what it means, and how it differs from other pedagogical approaches for teaching bilingual students. This introduction to translanguaging will help you see that: 1. Translanguaging challenges monolingual assumptions that permeate current language education policy and instead treats bilingual discourse as the norm.

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Translanguaging is the practice of allowing someone to access and utilize their full linguistic abilities and resources to communicate and share information.

It is both a natural process many multilingual people use and…

It is a pedagogical strategy that should be used in the classroom.

When used correctly, translanguaging allows for:

Empowerment - allows students to participate more fully and gain confidence

Improved learning - connects to their existing background knowledge

Disrupting inequality - challenges the notion that all academic learning must be done in English only

Encourages critical thinking - using their native or “home” language helps deepen their understanding

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ToR - Teacher of Record (homeroom teacher or SPED teacher)

ToS - SPED or ML Teacher

LEA - Local Educational Agency (school or school corporation)

EL - English Learner (slowly transitioning to ML, but EL is still very common)

Program Levels:

ESL - English as a Second Language

ELD - English Language Development (content based)

Sheltered English Instruction

Structured English Instruction

TBE - Transitional Bilingual Education

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Essential Actions

The WIDA PreK-3 Essential Actions were developed for all adults who play a role in the education of multilingual children to collaborate to provide multilingual children equitable opportunities to develop language, learn and thrive. The Essential Actions are not a PreK-3 curriculum, but rather guidelines, informed by research. They are designed to be integrated in various ways to help educators take a language-focused approach to family and community engagement and teaching and learning. No Essential Action is considered more important than the rest. Likewise, the Essential Actions are not intended to be followed in sequential order. Rather, educators are encouraged to consider their local context and current practices to choose which Essential Action to focus on first.
WIDA PreK-3 Essential Actions
Self-Paced Workshop

WIDA now offers a self-paced workshop that gives PreK-3 educators an introduction to the Essential Actions, provides an opportunity to build their knowledge and understanding of the Essential Actions and reflect on their own ideologies, practices and settings. Exploring the WIDA PreK-3 Essential Actions is available via the WIDA Secure Portal for educators whose state education agencies participate in WIDA's self-paced workshops. Learn more and get started on the eLearning page.

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Resources to provide equitable opportunities for multilingual children to learn and use languageMultilingual children learn and develop language across their home, community and pre-kindergarten through third grade settings. Children's identities, experiences, environments, relationships, exposure to languages, and opportunities to use language all play key roles in their early language development.WIDA promotes equitable languaging and learning opportunities for young multilingual children by offering tools and resources for PreK-3 professionals.

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WIDA English Language Development Standards (2020) - SAS

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The 2020 WIDA English Language Development (ELD) Standards* reflect the belief that multilingual learners are best served when they learn content and language together in linguistically and culturally sustaining ways. The 2020 Edition recommits to this belief by maintaining the five original WIDA ELD Standards Statements while adding new and expanded resources to address updates in policy, theory, and practice.

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WIDA Screener is an English language proficiency assessment given to new students in Grades 1-12 to help educators identify whether they are English language learners (ELLs). It is a flexible, on-demand assessment that can be administered at any time during the school year. WIDA Screener is available in two formats - online (U.S.

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Working together to support states, territories and federal agencies, and their MLsThe WIDA Consortium is made up of 41 U.S. states, territories and federal agencies dedicated to the research, design and implementation of a high-quality, culturally and linguistically appropriate system to support mu…

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Differentiated Instruction

Through this approach, which focuses on students' strengths, teachers can plan instruction that promotes a growth mindset.

Alan Ingram / Alamy Stock Photo

As educators welcomed students to the 2020-21 school year, they did so with great care and attention to their social and emotional needs. Now, as school routines become habits and students dive deeper into their learning, this message of hope and support must continue to be conveyed during instruction.

If students only hear of the gaps in their learning or that they have fallen behind, they will begin to act according to the low benchmark that has been set for their achievement. An asset-based approach to teaching is one that is grounded in what students can do rather than what they cannot do or areas of weakness. It is an embodiment of growth mindset in instruction.

3 Steps to Using an Asset-Based Approach to Teaching

1. Begin with a diagnostic learning activity that provides information about what students know and can do. A simple way to design a diagnostic learning activity that focuses on what students can do is to align the task to the skills or concepts from the previous grade level. Most standards are scaffolded from one grade level or course to the next. For example, in mathematics, this is known as coherence. In science, it can be seen through progressions of the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI). By looking at standards or intentionally identifying foundational skills or concepts in a curriculum document, teachers can quickly access this information.

For example, the following learning targets are based on English language arts standards:

Fifth grade: I can use the supporting details to determine the central idea.

Sixth grade: I can explain how supporting details are used to develop the central idea.

As a simple diagnostic, students read and annotate an article using text tags to identify key details and then use the tagged details to write the central idea. A sixth-grade teacher would review student work focused on the details that the students selected and how they were used to write the central idea, or the fifth-grade expectation.

With this information, the teacher can plan instruction to provide strategies for moving students from identifying the central idea to explaining how it is developed. Additional pathways are created for students who have this skill and need more practice or are ready to apply it in different ways.

2. Provide different learning pathways so that all students have the opportunity to meet high expectations. Time has always been precious in the classroom, and it feels even more so as learning this year takes place in remote or blended environments. A learning plan that can be used in these various settings may be strategically constructed so that all students are able to work toward high expectations from their starting point.

The learning plan begins with the diagnostic activity. The student can then choose or the teacher may select different pathways through the plan, with students completing a core set of learning activities aligned to the plan's learning target to ensure that they are all working toward high expectations.

Pathway A embeds instruction and review so that students build background knowledge and skills. For example, students create criteria for identifying important details. They use the criteria to identify details to tag that reveal the central idea.

Pathway B includes additional activities for student practice and application. For example, students use SEE (statement, evidence, explanation) as a cognitive routine for explaining the connection between the central idea statement and the evidence from text.

Pathway C provides activities for deepening understanding or applying learning in new ways. For example, students use SEE to evaluate a text that presents a different point of view.

Creating pathways will help eliminate endless review, repetitive tasks, and/or disengagement that can come from the one-size-fits-all approach to instruction. It communicates to the students that the teacher believes each of them is a unique but ready and able learner.

(Click here for a full example of a learning plan for a sixth grader with an asset-based approach to instruction.)

3. Provide feedback to students identifying what they can do and strategies for using their strengths to address areas of need. Embedded in each learning activity is a formative-assessment moment. These are tangible or observable evidence of student learning. In an asset-based approach to learning, they are used to provide students with feedback that includes three important pieces of information.

Strength: The evidence you selected clearly identifies the important information about the impact of the transcontinental railroad on different groups of people.

Need: The central idea is a summary statement of what is most important about the text. How can you say what is most important without rewriting all of the details?

Next step: Write the central idea for two or three paragraphs in your own words before writing the central idea for the entire text.

It is important to note that not all students need to receive the same feedback at the same time. The formative-assessment moment exists as an opportunity for students to receive the feedback they need when they need it. However, all students deserve specific and tailored feedback at some time during their learning.

When teachers begin to look at what students understand, know, and can do, it changes the way the teacher and their students approach learning. The teacher begins to leverage what students know as a means for moving learning forward. For students, small successes lead to larger ones and help develop belief in their own capability as well as the willingness to engage when learning becomes difficult. When students are made aware of how they can learn, they take another step toward being independent, self-regulated learners.

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3 Steps to Developing an Asset-Based Approach to Teaching

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Differentiated Instruction Through this approach, which focuses on students' strengths, teachers can plan instruction that promotes a growth mindset. Alan Ingram / Alamy Stock Photo As educators welcomed students to the 2020-21 school year, they did so with great care and attention to their social and emotional needs.

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Asset-based learning is a pedagogical approach or educational philosophy that views students’ diverse backgrounds as STRENGTHS rather than deficits.

For ML students, it looks at their cultures, languages, and other experiences as adding VALUE to their learning and that of others.

Some call it the “Can Do” attitude…what students CAN DO rather than what they lack.

An Asset-Based Mindset:

Values diversity

Creates an inclusive environment

Helps us connect with shared experiences

Bring the positive forward (think positive feedback)

Helps build relationships (which can impact student behavior too)

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An official website of the Indiana State Government

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Discover the value that each multilingual learner brings to the school community

Teachers of multilingual learners need to recognize their students' unique assets in order to create a learning community that develops their full potential. WIDA offers many resources to support you in understanding the strengths and needs of your multilingual learners.

The WIDA Can Do Philosophy highlights the assets that your students have developed in their homes and communities, including moving across languages, working with others, and learning about themselves and the world. When multilingual learners are encouraged to use all their ways of talking, being, and knowing to power their thinking and communicating, they engage more fully in learning and can contribute more to their classroom and school communities.

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Discover the value that each multilingual learner brings to the school communityTeachers of multilingual learners need to recognize their students' unique assets in order to create a learning community that develops their full potential. WIDA offers many resources to support you in understanding the strengths and needs of your multilingual learners.

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ML = Multilingual Learners

EL = English Learners

EB = Emergent Bilingual (more narrow focus)

DLL = Dual Language Learner (children under the age of 5 acquiring two more more languages simultaneously)

ELL = English Language Learners (still used, but outdated)

ESOL = English for Speakers of Other Languages

ESL = English as a Second Language (outdated, but still seen)

LEP - Limited English Proficiency (very outdated)

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In today's world, literacy goes way beyond just reading and writing. It's like having a bunch of different tools in a toolbox, each helping us understand and interact with the world in its own way. Digital Literacy, for example is all about navigating the online world, knowing how to find reliable information, and communicating effectively through technology. Then there's visual literacy, which helps us make sense of images, videos, and other visual cues that flood our daily lives.

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Canva up your classroom with back-to-school templates and resources

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Canva helps teachers organize classwork, decorate classrooms and create engaging student activities with creative visuals and interactive tools.

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An integrated lesson planning platform

All your tools in one place

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Take back your time. Master your craft.

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Copyright © 2024 Eduaide.Ai. LLC All Rights Reserved. Icons provided by Icons8. Site elements by Denys Koltovskyi - stock.adobe.com

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Eduaide.Ai is an AI-driven platform that helps educators create lesson plans, teaching resources, and assessments.

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Generate lessons with AI

Plan and deliver interactive lessons on any topic - with help from AI

I am teacher of 15 years who, until recently, has delved no more deeply into tech in the classroom, and here I am encouraging colleagues to come on in and see Curipod in action and leading CPD sessions. To top it off, I'm spending my evenings playing on my iPad to see how many new lessons I can create, and what new features have been added that week. The time saved, and the improvement in my lesson materials, is tangible.
- Read the full case study with Aileen Wallace

Curious?

Join our online workshop to find out how Curipod can work for you and your students!

Book your spot

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Join the growing movement of teachers using Curipod to make interactive lessons filled with creativity, reflection and critical thinking

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Brisk Teaching is the #1 AI-powered Chrome extension , helping you automate your workload without adding to it.

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"As a Language Arts teacher, one of the hardest parts of my job is providing enough meaningful feedback for my students. Brisk has allowed me to provide way more specific and actionable feedback for my students. It has also helped me to see more elements of quality that I had previously overlooked in my students' work. The ease of access with Brisk is also a huge bonus. I can use this tool in all of the different platforms that my students use. I can't wait to see future versions - that will continue to help me provide the feedback that my students need."

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Brisk is a free AI-powered Chrome extension that helps busy teachers save time directly within the tools they already use, like Google Docs, Slides, YouTube, and web articles. Teachers use Brisk as a Targeted Feedback Generator, AI Presentation Maker, AI Quiz Maker, AI Lesson Plan Generator, AI Rubric Generator, Letter of Recommendation Generator, IEP 504 Template Maker, and so much more.

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MagicSchool.ai - AI for teachers - lesson planning and more!

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Join over a million teachers saving hours of time using the #1 AI Platform for Education, MagicSchool, to help lesson plan, differentiate, write assessments, write IEPs, communicate clearly, and more!

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Start small: pilot one AI tool/task (e.g., content-generation or feedback)

Ask key questions before adoption: Does the tool meet age/privacy requirements?

Blend AI with strong teacher-student interaction — keep human in the loop

Provide student guidance: teach them about prompt-crafting, evaluating AI outputs, ethical use

Build policies/guardrails: data governance, usage norms, allow student voice

Reflect and iterate: monitor how AI is affecting teaching time, engagement, relationships.

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Personalize learning for students (quickly adapting to various needs or learning styles)

Provide immediate feedback & insights on student work

Help create/supplement content: lessons, activities, assessments

Improve accessibility/inclusion (e.g., text-to-speech, visuals)

Free teachers’ time (for higher-value tasks) by handling administrative/tight tasks

Simulate creativity, foster critical thinking in students

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By Common Sense Media | June 4, 2020

The word "literacy" usually describes the ability to read and write. Reading literacy and media literacy have a lot in common. Reading starts with recognizing letters. Pretty soon, readers can identify words -- and, most importantly, understand what those words mean. Readers then become writers. With more experience, readers and writers develop strong literacy skills. ( Learn specifically about news literacy.)

Media literacy is the ability to identify different types of media and understand the messages they're sending. Kids take in a huge amount of information from a wide array of sources, far beyond the traditional media (TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines) of most parents' youth. There are text messages, memes, viral videos, social media, video games, advertising, and more. But all media shares one thing: Someone created it. And it was created for a reason. Understanding that reason is the basis of media literacy. ( Learn how to use movies and TV to teach media literacy.)

The digital age has made it easy for anyone to create media. We don't always know who created something, why they made it, and whether it's credible. This makes media literacy tricky to learn and teach. Nonetheless, media literacy is an essential skill in the digital age.

Specifically, it helps kids:

Learn to think critically. As kids evaluate media, they decide whether the messages make sense, why certain information was included, what wasn't included, and what the key ideas are. They learn to use examples to support their opinions. Then they can make up their own minds about the information based on knowledge they already have.

Become a smart consumer of products and information. Media literacy helps kids learn how to determine whether something is credible. It also helps them determine the "persuasive intent" of advertising and resist the techniques marketers use to sell products.

Recognize point of view. Every creator has a perspective. Identifying an author's point of view helps kids appreciate different perspectives. It also helps put information in the context of what they already know -- or think they know.

Create media responsibly. Recognizing your own point of view, saying what you want to say how you want to say it, and understanding that your messages have an impact is key to effective communication.

Identify the role of media in our culture. From celebrity gossip to magazine covers to memes, media is telling us something, shaping our understanding of the world, and even compelling us to act or think in certain ways.

Understand the author's goal. What does the author want you to take away from a piece of media? Is it purely informative, is it trying to change your mind, or is it introducing you to new ideas you've never heard of? When kids understand what type of influence something has, they can make informed choices.

When teaching your kids media literacy, it's not so important for parents to tell kids whether something is "right." In fact, the process is more of an exchange of ideas. You'll probably end up learning as much from your kids as they learn from you.

Media literacy includes asking specific questions and backing up your opinions with examples. Following media-literacy steps allows you to learn for yourself what a given piece of media is, why it was made, and what you want to think about it.

Teaching kids media literacy as a sit-down lesson is not very effective; it's better incorporated into everyday activities. For example:

With little kids, you can discuss things they're familiar with but may not pay much attention to. Examples include cereal commercials, food wrappers, and toy packages.

With older kids, you can talk through media they enjoy and interact with. These include such things as YouTube videos, viral memes from the internet, and ads for video games.

Here are the key questions to ask when teaching kids media literacy:

Who created this? Was it a company? Was it an individual? (If so, who?) Was it a comedian? Was it an artist? Was it an anonymous source? Why do you think that?

Why did they make it? Was it to inform you of something that happened in the world (for example, a news story)? Was it to change your mind or behavior (an opinion essay or a how-to)? Was it to make you laugh (a funny meme)? Was it to get you to buy something (an ad)? Why do you think that?

Who is the message for? Is it for kids? Grown-ups? Girls? Boys? People who share a particular interest? Why do you think that?

What techniques are being used to make this message credible or believable? Does it have statistics from a reputable source? Does it contain quotes from a subject expert? Does it have an authoritative-sounding voice-over? Is there direct evidence of the assertions its making? Why do you think that?

What details were left out, and why? Is the information balanced with different views -- or does it present only one side? Do you need more information to fully understand the message? Why do you think that?

How did the message make you feel? Do you think others might feel the same way? Would everyone feel the same, or would certain people disagree with you? Why do you think that?

As kids become more aware of and exposed to news and current events, you can apply media-literacy steps to radio, TV, and online information.

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What is media literacy, and why is it important?

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What is media literacy, and why is it important? - Learn more and get Common Sense Media's research-backed tips.

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Prepare your students for tomorrow's headlines with our free news & media literacy activities and inquiry-based lessons lessons.

From viral trends to breaking news on social media, students must learn to navigate a noisy, biased, and challenging world. But with the right support, they can learn to be critical and not cynical, to practice empathy, and to speak up, not sit back. This collection of Common Sense's free news & media literacy lessons, videos, and classroom activities will help you get started teaching these important and complex ideas in the classroom.

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News and Media Literacy Resource Center | Common Sense Education

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Prepare your students for tomorrow's headlines with essential news and media literacy lessons, videos, printables, and more. Get a just-right resource for your classroom.

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10 Intriguing Photographs to Teach Close Reading and Visual Thinking Skills

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We pair 10 photos from The Times that we’ve used in our weekly “What’s Going On in This Picture?” with ideas from students and teachers for how you can use them, or images like them, to teach close reading and visual thinking skills.

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Want to explore the world? Each year, TIME magazine makes a list. It picks some of the World's Greatest Places. TIME for Kids picks our favorites. Get ready for an adventure! Island Living Dominica is an island. It is...

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Students examine how identity and biases can impact how individuals interpret images and experience the challenge of selecting images to represent news events, particularly connected to sensitive issues.

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Vocabulary

advertisement [ ad ver tayz mehnt] ( noun) a notice that promotes a particular product, event or service to the public or a subset of the public

consumer [kuhn soo mer] ( noun) a person who purchases or can purchase products and services to use

react [ree AKT] ( verb) behave or feel a certain way because of something else

Series Overview

As technology advances and the social landscape shifts, it is crucial for students to become digitally literate citizens. In this series, elementary students will learn the ins and outs of media literacy, from choosing reliable sources and understanding online searches to navigating online security and participating in digital communities.

Lesson Overview

As children use digital media with increasing frequency, advertisers who work with digital platforms continue to understand even the youngest kids as an ideal target audience. Among other things, this means it is important to help children learn to identify online ads and respond to them sensibly and critically.

This lesson starts by showing children some of the kinds of advertisements they might run into online and helping them analyze these ads with a critical eye. Your students will think about the purpose behind the ads as well as the way they affect young consumers.

Students will act out different possibilities for how they might react to ads when they see them online. They will consider the pros and cons to each of these reactions and develop some strategies they can use to become sensible online consumers.

Procedure

Kids Are Consumers

1. Begin by asking your students what an advertisement is and where they sometimes see advertisements. Once you are sure that everyone understands what an advertisement is, ask students to describe different times that advertisements have caused them to react a certain way. Maybe the ad made them want to buy something, go somewhere or try a new activity. Maybe the ad made them feel angry or excited. If it helps, show an ad or two and ask students to talk about what they see and how it makes them feel. Then, ask students to draw pictures of a time they reacted a particular way to an ad, and leave them time to share their pictures if they want to.

2. Show students the handout you created, "Ads on the Internet." Explain that these ads are from sites that kids frequent a lot. Ask students to circle one of the ads on the handout and sketch a facial expression, or an emoji, that illustrates how that particular ad makes them feel.

Tricky Advertisements

1. Next, explain that sometimes advertisements can trick you into thinking things that might not be all the way true. For example, an ad might make you feel like having a certain toy will make you feel happy all the time, or eating a certain food will cause you to grow tall. Show kids an example of an advertisement targeting kids that you have seen on a poster in your school or community. Explain that this is an ad targeting children, and help them think about what the ad makers hope students will believe based on the ad. Ask students to share their own examples of tricky messages they might get from advertisements.

2. Return to the "Ads on the Internet" handout. Have kids work with partners to identify two to three different tricks these ads play on them. They can talk about these tricks or write them down as sentences. Bring students back together, and give them a chance to articulate how these tricks make them feel.

Being a Critical Consumer

1. Finally, explain to your students that as they use the internet, it is their job to be critical consumers. A consumer is someone who is buying something (or in the case of kids, someone who is trying to get adults to buy something for them). Tell students that being a critical consumer means knowing when they are looking at an advertisement and recognizing or understanding different ways the advertisement might be trying to trick them.

2. As a class, develop a list of three to five strategies kids can use when looking at webpages. Strategies should focus on how to identify whether something is an advertisement as well as what to do to protect themselves from the tricks advertisements can play.

Do Something

Kids might find themselves getting really angry about some of the stereotyping they see online. They can develop their voices by letting companies know how ads targeting children feel to real kid audiences. Encourage students to write letters or editorials describing the way they think kids might be affected by the digital economy, and why. Once everyone has a letter, send them as a bundle to a local newspaper or website. Make sure to keep kids apprised of any responses you receive. If you do not get a response, you can also make a display of their letters in the hallway of your school so that others can learn from them.
Alignment to Common Core State Standards CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.1.4
Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.1.5
Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.1.7
Use the illustrations and details in a text to describe its key ideas.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.1.8
Identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text.

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advertisement [ ad ver tayz mehnt] ( noun) a notice that promotes a particular product, event or service to the public or a subset of the public consumer [kuhn soo mer] ( noun) a person who purchases or can purchase products and services to use react [ree AKT] ( verb) behave or feel a certain way because of something else As technology advances and the social landscape shifts, it is crucial for students to become digitally literate citizens.

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Ferguson Day Two Wrap-Up: Day of Protests, Night of Frenzy

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Steve Giegerich and Jesse Bogan
August 11, 2014
FERGUSON: A calmer dawn broke Monday morning after a night of protest and looting in Ferguson left broken glass and at least one burned-out building.

Officer Brian Schellman of the St. Louis County police said two officers were injured overnight Sunday - one was hit by a brick and one suffered knee injuries. Police arrested 32 people for theft, assault or burglary.

The protests followed the fatal shooting on Saturday of Michael Brown, 18, by police. Authorities said Sunday that a police officer shot Brown, who was unarmed, after the teen attacked the Ferguson officer. After protests and a vigil earlier in the day, some people broke into stores and looted them, setting fire to a QuikTrip and leaving glass and other debris strewn about.

Schellman said the looting and destruction stopped and the area had quieted a down about 3:30 a.m. Monday.

He said the police helicopter was shot at once or twice, but was not hit. He said the night was a scary situation for even veteran officers.

Jennings school district canceled the first day of school today, saying it was concerned for student safety in the wake of Sunday night's violence.

"Safety is our uppermost concern," a Jennings release said. "At this time we do not feel it's safe for our students to walk to school."

Officials said they hoped classes could begin Tuesday.

On the lot of a QuikTrip that was looted and burned Sunday night, some men who said they had been there last night defended the damage as a response to injustice.

DeAndre Smith, 30, of Ferguson was happy to justify the looting when a reporter asked him about it Monday morning.

"This is exactly what is supposed to be happening when an injustice is happening in your community," he said, adding: "You have kids getting killed for nothing."

Smith, who moved to St. Louis from New York in December, said there could be more to come.

"I don't think it's over honestly," he said. "I just think they got a taste of what fighting back means."

Karl McCarty, 39, of Bellefontaine Neighbors, watched the chaos Sunday night and was back again Monday. He said he had a message for the young men leading the charge:

"Let it go, let justice prevail. And if doesn't prevail in the way they want, don't do this again."

McCarty said as a black man he sympathizes with the mother of Brown greatly, but thinks the protest becoming violent and destructive was all wrong.

"Sometime we create our own demise. You didn't hurt Ferguson police, you hurt yourself," said McCarty, who is a contractor in St. Louis.

"My heart goes out to her," he said of the dead teen's mother. "At a time we could have been grieving or supporting her, I feel we failed her. Instead of having a nice, simple vigil, it turned into chaos confusion and destruction."

Others also showed up to express dismay at the looting or help clean up.

Leonette Hilliard, who works as a middle school English teacher, stopped by the QuikTrip. Using one of her school folders, she wrote a note to the store and taped it to the side wall.

"Corporate neighbor: I am sorry this act of robbery and violence has happened. Please return soon."

The note was taped over graffiti saying "187 county police," the 187 a slang reference to murder.

She said she comes to the store to two or three times per week and has been doing so for about 15 years.

"This just doesn't represent who we are as a community and I wanted just to say something to do something that was productive," she said.

Pamela Richardson, 51, of Jennings, came to Ferguson on Monday morning and started picking up trash left by the looters at the QuikTrip store. A bit of smoke was still coming from the burned-out building. She rounded up beer cans and discarded Powerball tickets and crushed soda cans from the lot.

"It sends the wrong kind of message," she said of the looters. "Don't destroy other people's property that they worked hard for because something else has happened. One doesn't outweigh the other, you know. No connection between the two."

Workers at an AutoZone swept up broken glass from the windows that were shattered and workers at a nearby cellphone store waited on a company to board up the front plate glass window.

The glass walls of a metro bus stop were broken, and trash was strewn up and down the road.

The NAACP released a statement Monday morning saying state and local branches would seek answers about the shooting of Brown and the national office would monitor the situation.

"The death of yet another African-American at the hands of those sworn to protect and serve the community where he lived is heartbreaking," NAACP president Cornell Williams Brooks said in the statement. "Michael Brown was preparing to begin college, and now his family is preparing to bury their child - his life cut short in a tragic encounter with the police."

The group called for calm collective action.

"Even as we call for accountability by those charged with protecting the community, we call on the community to act -collectively and calmly until we secure justice for the family of Michael Brown," the statement said.
Our earlier story:
FERGUSON: A day of protests and vigils Sunday for an unarmed black teenager who was shot to death by a Ferguson police officer erupted Sunday night with confrontations, looting and gunshots.

Authorities said Sunday that a police officer shot an unarmed black teenager after the teen attacked the Ferguson officer. But pressure for a deeper explanation grew locally and nationally through the day.

Hundreds of people gathered at the shooting site Sunday night for a vigil for Michael Brown, 18, who was to begin technical school classes today.

While some people prayed, others spilled onto West Florissant Avenue, choking off traffic. Looting was reported at a QuikTrip at 9420 West Florissant Avenue about 9 p.m. and soon spread from there. Most of the businesses being targeted were mainly along West Florissant.

Around 11 p.m., looters smashed into a Wal-Mart in the area near Interstate 270, as well as cell phone, clothing and dollar stores. A large fire was burning at West Florissant and Northwinds Estates Drive. A civilian was reported beaten near West Florissant and Chambers.

Jimmy Muhammad, 32, said he and his colleagues had just fended off a gang of masked young men with guns who tried to break into his uncle's store, United Mart, in the 10300 block of West Florissant. The front door was shattered.

"It's bad," said Muhammad, still gripping a pistol. Sirens blasted from all the police vehicles speeding by to other crime scenes. "I don't blame the police, but they can't keep up."

Silas Chung, 53, didn't get to his small store, Up N Up Fashion, in the 11600 block of West Florissant, soon enough to defend it.

"I feel bad," said Chung, cleaning up the damage. "This world is getting worse and worse."

At Ferguson Avenue and West Florissant Road, about 150 demonstrators also blocked traffic. They were taunting police officers, who were lined up in riot gear, carrying shields and batons.

"It could have been one of your kids," yelled Charles Staton, 35, of Ferguson, at the officers. "Protect and serve. They aren't protecting."

At the same time, about 100 people remained in front of the Ferguson police station, where South Florissant Road was also blocked by demonstrators. There the emphasis was on keeping the peace.

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar promised a thorough outside investigation.

"It's turning into something it's not supposed to be," said Darryl Jones of Pine Lawn as the looting began.

Late Sunday, County Executive Charlie Dooley came to the line and tried to convince raucous demonstrators to leave. His efforts were yelled down. Eventually, officers moved their line forward with the help of barking dogs on tight leashes.

"It's time to leave," the officers said. Reporters on the scene said the area calmed down shortly after as action moved elsewhere.

Some people were caught in the crowds, though, and couldn't easily leave. J.R. Grace came for the vigil but never made it because of the blockade. He was disheartened by the events playing out.

"The businesses didn't kill that man. That's not going to solve anything," he said. "That's only going to make things worse."

Gunshots were reported in the area late Sunday, and a SWAT team was seen in the area. Hundreds of police officers from surrounding communities reported on the scene.

"We have officers from just about every department around here," said St. Louis Police Capt. Ed Kuntz. "Obviously we don't want to use force. We are hoping that just the presence is enough."

By 1 a.m. today, he said pockets of stores had been looted from north of Interstate 270 to the city's northern border. Kuntz, who has worked in policing for 34 years, said of the level of looting: "This is the first time I can remember this ever happening here."

Benjamin L. Crump, a civil rights lawyer known for representing the family of Florida shooting victim Trayvon Martin, announced Sunday night that he had been hired to represent Brown's family. Crump is based in Tallahassee, Fla.

In Washington, a spokesperson said Attorney General Eric Holder asked civil rights lawyers in the Justice Department to monitor the case. In St. Louis, Special Agent Cheryl Mimura said, "I can confirm that the FBI is working closely with the St Louis County PD to review the matter at this time."

Protesters complained that the killing was emblematic of deep tensions between black residents of North County and a predominantly white Ferguson police force. Officials have not revealed the race of the officer who killed Brown.

"We have to stick together because we are targets," said Robert Brefford, 26, an African-American musician from Berkeley who spoke in front of the police station Sunday night. He said police in the area pull over, poke and prod black drivers to provoke them.

"The bleeding began long before Michael Brown," said Pastor Traci Blackmon of nearby Christ the King United Church of Christ.

She passed a petition seeking a dialogue with officials. "We come in peace," she said. "But we are angry and in need of action and answers."

Shontell Walters, of Berkeley, complained to stone-faced police outside their headquarters: "This child was ready to go to college and you killed his dream." She added, "He is not coming back. He could have owned a business and made money for Ferguson someday, but you killed him."

Dooley also visited protesters around noon Sunday to acknowledge their "justifiable anger" and implore them to "channel this anger into justice." But the group turned on him for expressing confidence in the ability of county police to do a fair investigation, buffeting him with heated rhetoric and questions.

"How can we protect our children?" one mother screamed at him.

The shaken Dooley responded, "This is not the way to console the family right now."

The NAACP and State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis, joined a chorus seeking a federal investigation.

State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, said of the gathering in front of the Ferguson police station: "This demonstration has to happen to release all the negative energy people are feeling on the inside. And we are doing it peacefully."

Activist Zaki Baruti said the presence of police dogs near demonstrations reinforced the perception of bias against black people. "It sends a very negative message, and it is a very insensitive reaction to the outrage of the people," he said.

Another protest was scheduled for 10 a.m. today outside the police station. And the St. Louis County NAACP is planning a mass public meeting at 6 p.m. today at Murchison Tabernacle Church, 7629 Natural Bridge in St. Louis.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a New York-based civil rights leader, called the shooting "very disturbing" and said he planned to meet here with Brown's family today or Tuesday.

The demonstrations Sunday drew national news media attention to two sites: the police station, at 222 South Florissant Road, and the street where Brown fell, in the 2900 block of Canfield Drive.

Brown's stepfather, Louis Head, sat cross-legged, head in hands, sobbing Sunday morning before a memorial on Canfield that would grow exponentially through Sunday with teddy bears, flowers and tributes.

"Ferguson killed my son," he said. "Ferguson flat-out murdered my son in the street, a cold-blooded murder."

In a news conference Sunday morning, Belmar, the county police chief, said the Ferguson officer had an encounter with two "individuals" about noon Saturday and that Brown pushed the officer back into his car and "assaulted" him in the vehicle.

Belmar said one shot was fired by the officer's gun inside the car during the struggle, and that the officer then got out of the car and fired multiple times. Brown fell dead in the street. Belmar said the crime scene covered a distance of just 35 feet.

Belmar did not describe the reason for the initial contact, nor indicate whether police think the shooting was justified. He also did not provide any details about the person who had been with Brown.

He said the shots that hit Brown were "more than just a couple but I don't think it was many more than that." He said an autopsy was pending.

The chief said the investigation's results will be forwarded to St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch, whose office would decide whether criminal charges were justified.

Belmar noted that as Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson arrived at the scene Saturday, he called Belmar to ask for a county investigation.

Jackson sat beside Belmar but did not speak in a short news conference at 10 a.m. at the community's firehouse.

Belmar emphasized that the outside investigation and consultation with the FBI - which has jurisdiction over allegations of civil rights violations by police - are "standard protocols."

The officer who fired, whose name has not been disclosed, is now on administrative leave. Belmar said that officer has been on the Ferguson force for six years and appears to have "no other issues" in his past.

Belmar and Jackson abruptly left the news conference as reporters continued to call out questions.

Ferguson police and demonstration leaders were forced late Sunday morning to tamp down a rumor that a youth who had been with Brown in the police encounter was found dead.

It apparently began on social media and was still circulating Sunday afternoon despite a promise from Baruti, a demonstration organizer, that it was not true.

About a block from the police station, at Wellspring Church, Pastor F. Willis Johnson Jr. urged Sunday morning that frustration and anger be channeled into constructive acts, such as praying and volunteering in schools.

"We can't act unjust in the name of justice. We can't act uncivil, and then cry for civility," Johnson preached.

Brown, a 2014 Normandy High School graduate, was scheduled to begin classes today at Vatterott College.

Reproduced with permission from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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Ferguson Day Two Wrap-Up: Day of Protests, Night of Frenzy St. Louis Post-Dispatch Steve Giegerich and Jesse Bogan August 11, 2014 FERGUSON: A calmer dawn broke Monday morning after a night of protest and looting in Ferguson left broken glass and at least one burned-out building. Officer Brian Schellman of the St.

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The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) unites a community of educators committed to advancing media literacy education.

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LibGuides: Audio/Visual and Multimedia Resources and Tools: Visual Literacy

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LibGuides: Audio/Visual and Multimedia Resources and Tools: Visual Literacy

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Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL)

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Superseded by Companion Document to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: Visual Literacy (April 2022)
Introduction

The importance of images and visual media in contemporary culture is changing what it means to be literate in the 21st century. Today's society is highly visual, and visual imagery is no longer supplemental to other forms of information. New digital technologies have made it possible for almost anyone to create and share visual media. Yet the pervasiveness of images and visual media does not necessarily mean that individuals are able to critically view, use, and produce visual content. Individuals must develop these essential skills in order to engage capably in a visually-oriented society. Visual literacy empowers individuals to participate fully in a visual culture.

Visual Literacy Defined

Visual literacy is a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media. Visual literacy skills equip a learner to understand and analyze the contextual, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, intellectual, and technical components involved in the production and use of visual materials. A visually literate individual is both a critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture.

In an interdisciplinary, higher education environment, a visually literate individual is able to:

Determine the nature and extent of the visual materials needed

Find and access needed images and visual media effectively and efficiently

Interpret and analyze the meanings of images and visual media

Evaluate images and their sources

Use images and visual media effectively

Design and create meaningful images and visual media

Understand many of the ethical, legal, social, and economic issues surrounding the creation and use of images and visual media, and access and use visual materials ethically

Visual Literacy and Higher Education

Across disciplines, students engage with images and visual materials throughout the course of their education. Although students are expected to understand, use, and create images in academic work, they are not always prepared to do so. Scholarly work with images requires research, interpretation, analysis, and evaluation skills specific to visual materials. These abilities cannot be taken for granted and need to be taught, supported, and integrated into the curriculum.

Notably, some K-12 and higher education standards include visual literacy as one of several key literacies needed for success in contemporary society. ¹ Many discussions of transliteracy, metaliteracy, and multimodal literacy also include visual literacy among the literacies important for today's learners. A diverse body of literature on visual literacy and visual studies also exists. Yet standards outlining student learning outcomes around interdisciplinary visual literacy in higher education have not been articulated. The Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education addresses this gap in the literature and provides tools for educators seeking to pursue visual literacy with college and university students.

The Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education establish an intellectual framework and structure to facilitate the development of skills and competencies required for students to engage with images in an academic environment, and critically use and produce visual media throughout their professional lives. The Standards articulate observable learning outcomes that can be taught and assessed, supporting efforts to develop measurable improvements in student visual literacy. In addition to providing tools for educators across disciplines, the Standards offer a common language for discussing student use of visual materials in academic work and beyond.

Visual Literacy and Information Literacy

The Visual Literacy Standards were developed in the context of the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, and are intended to complement the Information Literacy Standards. The Visual Literacy Standards address some of the unique issues presented by visual materials. Images often function as information, but they are also aesthetic and creative objects that require additional levels of interpretation and analysis. Finding visual materials in text-based environments requires specific types of research skills. The use, sharing, and reproduction of visual materials also raise particular ethical and legal considerations. The Standards address these distinct characteristics of images and visual media and challenge students to develop a combination of abilities related to information literacy, visual communication, interpretation, and technology and digital media use.

Implementation and Use of the Standards

The Standards may be used as a whole, or in part, depending on curricular needs and overall learning goals of a program or institution. A visual studies course or a year-long series of courses involving visual materials may be an appropriate context for full implementation of the Standards. In other circumstances, the individual standards may be more useful as stand-alone tools for teaching and assessing specific sets of learning outcomes. Depending on the assignment or project, it is possible that two or three of the standards would be applicable and useful, but the remaining standards would not be relevant. Implementation of the Standards may also vary across disciplines, depending on how visual materials are used in that discipline. Individual disciplines may choose to articulate additional discipline-specific visual literacy learning outcomes.

The Standards follow a linear structure, but it is understood that student information behavior is iterative. ² Students may search, interpret, and evaluate simultaneously. Appropriate learning outcomes may be employed as needed, and visual literacy learning may not necessarily follow a progression from Standard 1 to Standard 7.

Visual literacy education is typically a collaborative endeavor, involving faculty, librarians, curators, archivists, visual resources professionals, and learning technologists. Integrating visual literacy into the curriculum requires partnerships and shared implementation strategies across academic departments and units. Libraries play an important role in this process by selecting and providing quality image resources, developing research and subject guides for images, teaching image research strategies, and raising awareness of the ethical use of visual media. Libraries are also established partners in working with students to develop the critical thinking and evaluation skills essential to participation in visual culture.

The accessibility of visual materials and the needs of differently abled individuals, including visually impaired students, is an important consideration in visual literacy instruction and Standards implementation. Adaptive or assistive technologies, such as audio descriptions of visual materials or multimodal access to visual media, could be components of an accessibility strategy for visual materials.

Standards Development Process

The Visual Literacy Competency Standards were collaboratively written by the members of the Visual Literacy Standards Task Force (VLTF), using the Information Literacy Competency Standards as a foundational document. In March 2010, the ACRL Information Literacy Standards Committee gave support to the ACRL Image Resources Interest Group's (IRIG) proposal to develop Visual Literacy Competency Standards. The Visual Literacy Standards Task Force reviewed the visual literacy and standards literature and developed a public bibliography in Zotero; appointed an Advisory Group comprised of librarians, technologists, curators, and administrators; created a blog for communication and community engagement; conducted open meetings and discussion groups; and engaged in outreach with multiple organizations. The first public draft of the Standards was distributed in February 2011.

Notes

1. Two of these standards are Standards for the 21st-Century Learner, American Association of School Librarians, 2007; and NCTE Framework for 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment, National Council of Teachers of English, 2008, http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Positions/Framework_21stCent_Curr_Assessment.pdf.

2. Head, Alison J. and Michael B. Eisenberg. Truth be Told: How College Students Evaluate and Use Information in the Digital Age. Project Information Literacy, Information School, University of Washington, 2010.

Standards, Performance Indicators, and Learning Outcomes

Standard One

The visually literate student determines the nature and extent of the visual materials needed.
Performance Indicators:
1. The visually literate student defines and articulates the need for an image.
Learning Outcomes:
2. The visually literate student identifies a variety of image sources, materials, and types.
Learning Outcomes:
Standard Two

The visually literate student finds and accesses needed images and visual media effectively and efficiently.
Performance indicators:
1. The visually literate student selects the most appropriate sources and retrieval systems for finding and accessing needed images and visual media.
Learning Outcomes:
2. The visually literate student conducts effective image searches.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Develops a search strategy appropriate to the image need and aligned with available resources
b. Recognizes the role of textual information in providing access to image content, and identifies types of textual information and metadata typically associated with images (e.g., captions or other descriptions, personal or user-generated tags, creator information, repository names, title keywords, descriptions of visual content)
c. Recognizes that images are often organized differently than text-based information and that this affects the way images can be accessed (e.g., absence of full-text search, variations in controlled vocabularies, lack of subject terms)
d. Identifies keywords, synonyms, and related terms for the image needed, and maps those terms to the vocabulary used in the image source
e. Uses images to find other images through exploration, social linking, visual search engines, or browsing
f. Performs image and topical research concurrently, with each informing the other in an iterative resource-gathering process
g. Assesses the quality, quantity, and appropriateness of images retrieved, and revises the search strategy as necessary

3. The visually literate student acquires and organizes images and source information.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Retrieves or reproduces the needed image using appropriate technologies or systems (e.g., download functions, copy and paste, scanning, cameras)
b. Accesses physical objects as needed to support the image research objective (e.g., site visits to archives, repositories, museums, galleries, libraries)
c. Organizes images and the information that accompanies them for personal retrieval, reuse, and scholarly citation

Standard Three

The visually literate student interprets and analyzes the meanings of images and visual media.
Performance indicators:
1. The visually literate student identifies information relevant to an image's meaning.
Learning Outcomes:

2. The visually literate student situates an image in its cultural, social, and historical contexts.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Describes cultural and historical factors relevant to the production of an image (e.g., time period, geography, economic conditions, political structures, social practices)
b. Examines the purposes and meanings of an image in its original context
c. Explores choices made in the production of an image to construct meaning or influence interpretation (e.g., framing, composition, included or excluded elements, staging)
d. Describes the intended audience for an image
e. Explores representations of gender, ethnicity, and other cultural or social identifiers in images
f. Investigates how the audience, context, and interpretation of an image may have changed over time

3. The visually literate student identifies the physical, technical, and design components of an image.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Describes pictorial, graphic, and aesthetic elements of an image (e.g., color, composition, line, shape, contrast, repetition, style)
b. Identifies techniques, technologies, or materials used in the production of an image
c. Determines whether an image is an original or a reproduction
d. Examines an image for signs of editing, alteration, or manipulation (e.g., cropping, color correction, image enhancements)

4. The visually literate student validates interpretation and analysis of images through discourse with others.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Participates in classroom and other discussions about images
b. Seeks expert and scholarly opinion about images, including information and analysis found in reference sources and scholarly publications
c. Informs analysis with discipline-specific perspectives and approaches

Standard Four

The visually literate student evaluates images and their sources.
Performance indicators:
1. The visually literate student evaluates the effectiveness and reliability of images as visual communications.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Evaluates how effectively an image achieves a specific purpose
b. Assesses the appropriateness and impact of the visual message for the intended audience
c. Critiques persuasive or manipulative strategies that may have been used in image production to influence interpretation
d. Evaluates the use of visual signs, symbols, and conventions to convey meaning
e. Analyzes the effect of image editing or manipulation on the meaning and reliability of the image
f. Determines the accuracy and reliability of graphical representations of data (e.g., charts, graphs, data models)
g. Evaluates images using disciplinary criteria

2. The visually literate student evaluates the aesthetic and technical characteristics of images.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Evaluates the aesthetic and design characteristics of images (e.g., use of color, composition, line, shape, contrast, repetition, style)
b. Evaluates the technical characteristics of images (e.g., resolution, size, clarity, file format)
c. Evaluates the quality of image reproductions, based on indicators such as color accuracy, resolution, manipulation levels, and comparison to other reproductions

3. The visually literate student evaluates textual information accompanying images.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Evaluates information that accompanies images for accuracy, reliability, currency, and completeness
b. Uses observation of visual content to evaluate textual information
c. Verifies information that accompanies images by consulting multiple sources and conducting research as necessary

4. The visually literate student makes judgments about the reliability and accuracy of image sources.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Assesses reliability and accuracy of image sources based on evaluations of authority, and point of view or bias
b. Makes judgments about image sources based on evaluations of image and information quality
c. Critiques how an image source may create a new context for an image and thereby change its meaning

Standard Five

The visually literate student uses images and visual media effectively.
Performance indicators:
1. The visually literate student uses images effectively for different purposes.
Learning Outcomes:
2. The visually literate student uses technology effectively to work with images.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Uses appropriate editing, presentation, communication, storage, and media tools and applications to prepare and work with images
b. Determines image file format, size, and resolution requirements for a project, and converts images accordingly
c. Edits images as appropriate for quality, layout, and display (e.g., cropping, color, contrast)

3. The visually literate student uses problem solving, creativity, and experimentation to incorporate images into scholarly projects.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Experiments with different ways of integrating images into academic work
b. Uses visual thinking skills to clarify and solve problems

4. The visually literate student communicates effectively with and about images.
Learning Outcomes:
Standard Six

The visually literate student designs and creates meaningful images and visual media.
Performance Indicators:
1. The visually literate student produces visual materials for a range of projects and scholarly uses.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Creates images and visual media to represent and communicate concepts, narratives, and arguments (e.g., concept maps, presentations, storyboards, posters)
b. Constructs accurate and appropriate graphic representations of data and information (e.g., charts, maps, graphs, models)
c. Produces images and visual media for a defined audience
d. Aligns visual content with the overall purpose of project

2. The visually literate student uses design strategies and creativity in image and visual media production.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Plans visual style and design in relation to project goals
b. Uses aesthetic and design choices deliberately to enhance effective communication and convey meaning
c. Uses creativity to incorporate existing image content into new visual products

3. The visually literate student uses a variety of tools and technologies to produce images and visual media.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Experiments with image-production tools and technologies
b. Identifies the best tools and technologies for creating the visual product
c. Develops proficiency with a range of tools and technologies for creating images and visual media

4. The visually literate student evaluates personally created visual products.
Learning Outcomes:
Standard Seven

The visually literate student understands many of the ethical, legal, social, and economic issues surrounding the creation and use of images and visual media, and accesses and uses visual materials ethically.
Performance Indicators:
1. The visually literate student understands many of the ethical, legal, social, and economic issues surrounding images and visual media.
Learning Outcomes:
2. The visually literate student follows ethical and legal best practices when accessing, using, and creating images.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Identifies institutional (e.g., museums, educational institutions) policies on access to image resources, and follows legal and ethical best practices
b. Tracks copyright and use restrictions when images are reproduced, altered, converted to different formats, or disseminated to new contexts
c. States rights and attribution information when disseminating personally created images

3. The visually literate student cites images and visual media in papers, presentations, and projects.
Learning Outcomes:
a. Gives attribution to image creators in citations and credit statements to acknowledge authorship and author rights
b. Includes source information in citations and credit statements so visual materials can be reliably found and accessed by other scholars and researchers
c. Cites visual materials using an appropriate documentation style

Appendix 1: Sources and Bibliography

In preparing the Standards, the Task Force consulted a broad range of literature on visual literacy, related literacies, and education standards. The complete bibliography consulted is publicly available in the ACRL/IRIG Visual Literacy Bibliography in Zotero ( http://www.zotero.org/groups/acrl_irig_visual_literacy_bibliography).

Key Sources:

Bamford, Anne. The Visual Literacy White Paper. Adobe Systems Pty Ltd, Australia, 2003. http://www.adobe.com/uk/education/pdf/adobe_visual_literacy_paper.pdf.

Choi, Youngok. "Effects of Contextual Factors on Image Searching on the Web." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 61, no. 10 (2010): 2011-2028.

Green, David. Using Digital Images in Teaching and Learning: Perspectives from Liberal Arts Institutions. Academic Commons, 2006.

Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Association of College & Research Libraries, 2000.

Nixon, Andrea Lisa, Heather Tompkins, and Paula Lackie. Curricular Uses of Visual Materials: A Mixed-Method Institutional Study. Carleton College, Dean of the College Office, 2008. http://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/support/assets/CUVMFinal.PDF.

Visual Literacy Standards Task Force (VLTF)

Denise Hattwig, Chair
University of Washington

Joanna Burgess
Reed College

Kaila Bussert
Cornell University

Ann Medaille
University of Nevada, Reno

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ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education

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Approved by the ACRL Board of Directors, October 2011 Superseded by Companion Document to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: Visual Literacy (April 2022) Introduction The importance of images and visual media in contemporary culture is changing what it means to be literate in the 21st century.

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What Is Data Literacy? Definition, Components, Uses - Dataversity

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Data literacy (DL) describes how well an individual or organization understands, works with, analyzes, visualizes, and applies data to reach their goals. The specific context and use case determine what applying data literacy looks like in practice. For example, while reading visualizations on product deliveries provides value, true data literacy involves going further. It involves actively […]

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​​What Is data literacy?

So what is data literacy? The definition is: the ability to explore, understand, and communicate with data in a meaningful way. This can be on different levels: technically and advanced, or on a much more basic level.

Importance of data literacy

According to a study we sponsored with Forrester Consulting, 87% of employees rate basic data skills as very important for their day-to-day operations. That same percentage of business owners expect basic data skills from their employees at all levels. Despite this, only 40% of employees feel they've been properly trained on the data skills they're expected to have. On top of that, according to a study conducted by Accenture, companies lose an average of 43 hours per employee per year due to data-induced procrastination.

Not to mention the amount of data produced and cataloged grows by the day, and utilizing data becomes increasingly important for businesses to stay ahead of their competition. Creating a culture of data literacy at your company can provide many benefits, including:

Better decision making

Clearer understanding of ROI and attribution

Increased employee satisfaction and retention

Better customer experience and satisfaction

Data literacy skills

When you start saying "data" and "skills" in the same sentence, people can get intimidated. Luckily, there are data literacy skills that anyone can learn and master, regardless of their current knowledge level. We've divided these into technical and non-technical skills.

Non-technical skills

It can see like all the data skills are technical and difficult to learn, but in reality, many are completely non-technical and accessible to anyone who wants to build their skills. This includes things like problem-solving, critical thinking, researching, and more.

Some of the non-technical data literacy skills include:

Critical thinking: Essential for analyzing and understanding data, critical thinking skills are developed through questioning your assumptions, using logic to work through problems, and diversifying where you get your information.

Research: Knowing about the subject matter of your data is critical to understanding it. You can develop this skill by learning how to evaluate sources, narrow your search, and spot implicit or explicit biases.

Communication: A large part of data literacy is being able to communicate to others what your data is telling you. You can sharpen your communication skills by practicing active listening, working on your public speaking, and seeking feedback from trusted peers.

Domain knowledge: And perhaps most important is keeping up with the industry and latest trends. You can work on expanding your data knowledge by reading books, following blogs, or researching trends.

Technical skills

Technical skills are, of course, equally important to developing data literacy. These range from relatively simple skills to learn like data analysis and visualization, to much more complex such as calculus and statistical programming.

Some of the technical data literacy skills include:

Analysis: Data analysis is the statistical and logical technique used to interpret and evaluate data. It includes collecting, formatting, cleaning, and processing data as well as analysis and interpretation.

Visualization: Data visualization is the graphical representation of information in different forms, such as charts, graphs, maps, etc.

Management: Data management is the entire process of collecting, vetting, and storing data. It includes data cleaning, data mining, and data warehousing.

Mathematics: If you want to really understand data on a deep level, you need to know the basis for its analysis. That involves learning about statistics, linear algebra, and calculus. Even a conceptual understanding of each will further your knowledge.

Programming languages: If you want to build dashboards or complex data analysis programs, you need to understand and use programming languages. Some of the best for data work include Python, R, and SQL.

Challenges of data literacy

So what challenges can you expect when pushing for data literacy in your organization? You may encounter such challenges as your employees being resistant to change or new technology, there being a skills gap between your users, issues with data governance, and silos in your organization.

User resistance: You may find people are resistant to new technology or processes, and don't want to embrace change. Ensuring that you get these people onboard with the benefits will help you handle any such resistance and ensure success.

Skills gap: When training your team to handle new procedures or tools, you may find that some of your team already knows how to use it and some struggle to adopt. Ensuring a thorough education of new concepts and tools will help to eliminate this issue.

Silos: You must be careful that the people on your team who best understand data don't silo into certain departments (such as IT or BI), but that each team has an understanding and can utilize data to the best of their ability.

Data governance: The more data your organization learns to handle, the better your data governance practices need to be. Ensuring you have best practices for every stage of the data governance lifecycle will ensure that your processes run smoothly and your data is accurate.

Build data literacy with a framework

Creating data literacy and a culture of data at your organization can be a huge task, regardless of how well-versed you and your staff already are in data. It requires a top-to-bottom approach, buy-in from stakeholders and contributors, and all around a lot of teamwork and effort. That's why we recommend building a framework or blueprint in order to meet all your goals.

1. Ask the important questions

2. Align stakeholders

3. Create employee journey map

4. Assess business needs

5. Fill out initial framework

6. Teach data skills

Learn more about data literacy frameworks.

How to become data literate

Of course, not everyone is in an organization trying to build a culture of data literacy. Some people want to build their own data literacy to further their careers and learn more about the growing ecosystem of data in the professional world.

Other than working on learning the data skills we outlined above, how can you work to become data literate?

Sources: You need to know where the data you're working with came from, and if it's biased or came with any sort of agenda attached. Make sure you examine all data critically to judge its source and if its trustworthy.

Understand: Work on understanding the data you see and interact with in your day to day life. Do you understand where it came from? What it's telling you? What importance it has? Can you draw any conclusions from it?

Analyze: Once you know your data source and understand what it's saying, you can analyze the data. Learn about statistical and analytical methodologies and common analysis used in your field of data study, so you can better understand data analysis.

Learn: And, as always, we recommend furthering your data education. Learn the basics, learn current trends, keep up with leading experts in the field.

Data literacy and data culture

We've already talked a lot in this article about how building data literacy at your organization means creating a thriving data culture. But what is data culture, and how can you create one?

A data culture refers to the collective behaviors and beliefs of a group of people who value, practice, and use data throughout your organization. This results in data being woven into the core of everything you do, from operations, to mindset, and the very identity of your organization. A data culture is characterized by three things: praciting data-driven behaviors, valuing strategy use of data, and creating community.

So how do you create a data culture at your organization? We've created a data culture playbook to help organizations move in the right direction. The playbook covers four important steps:

1. Aligning leadership metrics and business priorities.

2. Building data sources to address critical decision points.

3. Growing value through targeted use cases.

4. Promoting widespread data discovery.

Learn more about data culture.

Getting started with data literacy

You know the importance of data, and having data skills and creating a workforce that values data literacy. Now is the time to get started. Start following the steps we outlined above. Work on building a data culture at your company. Create and execute against a data literacy blueprint. Follow data trends and stay informed.

Work with us here at Tableau to access personalized tools and expert support to make your company data literate.

Connect with your customers and boost your bottom line with actionable insights.

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Data literacy explained: Definition, importance, examples, and more

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Data literacy is increasingly important in the professional world. Learn all about what it is and what it means for you.

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Visual literacy is the ability to find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media.

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Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed (GPS)

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The complexity of data analysis, especially in terms of school data, requires knowledge and understanding of mathematics and statistics

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Data literacy is the ability to derive meaningful information from data (just as literacy in general is the ability to derive information from the written word).

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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education

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“Multimodal Literacy” published on by Oxford University Press.

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Multimodal literacy : researching classroom practice : Walsh, Maureen : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Handwriting Instruction Resources for Educators and Parents - Handwriting Resources

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Preserving Handwriting in the Digital Age Handwriting Resources is a dedicated community with a common mission—to preserve handwriting as a foundational skill in the digital…

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Looking for handwriting tips, handwriting strategies, tools for addressing handwriting needs, or activities to improve handwriting? Here we're covering how to address handwriting issues through play and multisensory learning.

Activities to Improve Handwriting

This is the space to use fun ways to improve handwriting in new writers and children who are not yet writing AND kids who need to correct handwriting problems. This is your one-stop shop for all handwriting activities and writing tips and tools!

Handwriting challenges come in so many different forms! From the child who holds their pencil inefficiently, to the student who was never taught the correct letter formation and now struggles with legible written work, to letter reversals, to poor line awareness and spatial awareness ...handwriting is complicated!

Whether you are an occupational therapist working with clients with handwriting challenges, parents of a child struggling with handwriting, or an educator who is struggling to address poor skills...there is something for you.

Read on for pencil grasp activities, ideas to help with spacing, letter size, and line awareness. We've got cursive resources, and sensory handwriting activities here. Looking for something else? Let me know what kind of handwriting tools you need!

Handwriting

This is a space where we share tips, tricks, and fun ways to improve handwriting in new writers and children who are not yet writing with a pencil. Scroll down to find the tools you need to address handwriting issues, big and small!

But first, here is a fantastic tool that explains everything you need to know about handwriting. There are so many skills kids need for handwriting.

So many therapists, teachers, and parents have downloaded this resource and added it to their handwriting toolbox. When you enter your email, you'll receive a series of 6 emails based on the underlying areas that make up handwriting. These emails include topics that really play into legibility of written work, like letter formation, line awareness, spatial awareness, and other areas. The email series is a true resource for anyone who works with kids on handwriting.
Get the free handwriting printable pack and email series here.
Starting at the beginning is essential. These three resources are a great starting point for understanding skills needed for handwriting:

Creative Handwriting Activities

You don't always need a pencil to work on handwriting! Working on skills like line use, spacing between letters and words, letter size, and paper orientation can involve fun and creative writing activities...without a pencil! Here are some ideas your kids will LOVE:

If you are looking for easy ways to work on handwriting skills, try our 30 day series.

Letter Formation Activities in Handwriting

Use these creative movement and hands-on learning activities to work on letter formation, writing on lines, and spacing between words and letters. Click around to see all of the ideas with Occupational Therapist recommended tips in each post. Stay tuned, because more activities will be added to this page! motor activities sorted by category.

Working on pencil control in handwriting? Why not start a handwriting club for kids? Kids can work on handwriting skills in a fun way. Here's how to start a handwriting club kids will WANT to join!

Understand what's happening behind letter reversals and get some tips and tricks, too.

Toys to Improve Visual Perception- In this resource, you'll find fun toys that act as handwriting tools to improve handwriting skills. Kids will love playing with these toys that build underlying handwriting skills.

Spatial Awareness in Handwriting - Spacing between letters and words is an essential piece of the handwriting puzzle. Adding more white space between words helps with overall legibility, especially when visual perceptual skills or visual motor integration abilities impact sizing, line use, or letter formation.

Teach Carryover of Grasp Patterns with Molded Crayon s - Working with small pencils or small crayons improves pencil grasp but also hand strength. Use this molded crayon activity to work on carryover of grasp patterns in written work.

How to Start a Handwriting Club - A handwriting club is a great way to incorporate social skills into handwriting. Kids that write together have fun and build skills together! Use a handwriting club as a way to work on handwriting carryover or small group handwriting practice.

How to Teach a Better Pencil Grasp with Molded Crayons - Small molded crayons are a great tool for building hand strength and endurance in handwriting. Have you ever worked with a child that complained of hand fatigue when writing? Building endurance in fine motor skills begins with play.

The Handwriting Book - This comprehensive handwriting resource was created by pediatric occupational therapists and physical therapists. Use this book as a tool for working on a variety of handwriting skills.

Handwriting Accommodation Strategies - Activities to improve handwriting only go so far. Sometimes accommodations are needed in the classroom or home for a functional handwriting status. Try these tips and strategies.

Core Strength Impacts Handwriting - Did you know that addressing core strength and posture is a valuable strategy that impacts handwriting legibility? This resource covers how and why this happens. Let's dive into core strength and handwriting.

Handwriting Problems and Strategies to Help - There are many handwriting issues that are common to see in the classroom, clinic, or home. These handwriting red flags can be addressed with simple strategies, tools, and practice. Try incorporating these ideas into practice.

Writing Trays and Handwriting - Writing trays are a fantastic activity to improve handwriting skills. In fact, when used correctly, writing trays offer multisensory letter formation practice that helps to establish a motor plan for letter formation.

Letter Formation Direction Change in Handwriting - When forming letters, there are many pencil direction changes that impact letter formation. Part of this refers to pencil control, but another consideration is the push and pull of the pencil within the hand. Try this strategy to improve handwriting through a multisensory writing activity.

Bold Lines Handwriting Trick for Line Awareness - using a highlighter or a marker is a great way to work on line awareness and help children write on lines. They marker lines add a bold line that allows for a clear writing line and can be a great way to ensure proper letter size for letters that hit the middle line (a, c, e, g, i, j, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, u, v, w, x, y, z).

Extended Wrist Fine Motor Activity - An extended wrist is needed in handwriting, to enable a functional grasp. When children write with a flexed wrist, they are not exhibiting wrist stability and then use the forearm to move the pencil rather than distal muscle features. A neutral or extended wrist allows for proper positioning of the intrinsic and extrinsic muscles to manipulate the pencil while writing.

Additionally, an extended wrist while writing pulls the thumb, middle finger, and pointer finger into a tripod grasp naturally, using tenodesis, due to the musculature of the forearm and hand.

Tenodesis grasp and release occurs as a result of tendons in the forearm and fingers that travel over multiple joints. As a result, the tendons act as a big pulley system allowing the extension of the wrist to pull the fingers into flexion. Tenodesis grasp and release can be used to benefit a grasp on the pencil when writing.

Handwriting On-the-Go Practice Clipboard - Working on handwriting doesn't need to be boring or happen only at a table. This DIY clipboard activity doubles as a slant board that allows for proper positioning of the wrist and fingers in a functional pencil grasp.

Children can use this handwriting practice clipboard as their personal "desk" to write and move that pencil while out and about, in the car, or in places where a desk may not work out physically.

Natural Handwriting Activities for Summer - Just like the "Summer slide" that happens with math or reading, a summer slide can occur with handwriting! The nice thing is that often times, children are still moving, playing, and building muscle skills during natural summer play experiences.

But, with this resource, you can help kids continue to work on handwriting skills in fun, meaningful, and motivating writing experiences during the Summer months. Activities like writing letters, making a Summer bucket list, writing notes, and making shopping lists are ways to work on letter formation in ways that don't seem like writing practice.

Motor Planning and Handwriting - When children learn to write, and they practice letter formation, they are establishing a motor plan, or muscle memory for letter formation. This is a powerful tool for functional handwriting, because if we all had to look up each letter's formation when we write, it would definitely not be functional in the way of writing speed! This resource describes more in detail about the motor planning piece of handwriting skills.

Line Awareness Writing Activities

Writing on the lines can make handwriting go from sloppy to legible. Here you will find resources to help kids write on the lines when copying written work from both a near point and far point such as a the board. These line awareness activities are strategies to improve legibility by addressing writing lines in handwriting.

Color Mixing Rainbow Writing Letter Formation Activity - You may have seen rainbow writing activities for young elementary aged children to practice spelling words. However, this rainbow writing activity uses markers and a color-changing multisensory activity to work on pencil control and line awareness. When kids trace over the lines they can see where their marker moves off the lines.

Line Awareness Handout - This free handout covers all things line awareness. Access this handwriting worksheet in our free Handwriting Tips and Tricks series, and use the handout to recommend tactics to work on line awareness.

Line and Spatial Awareness with Graph Paper - Graph paper is a great way to work on spatial awareness, letter sizing, and line awareness. Writing each letter within the boxes enables children to focus on the spatial restraints of lines on a paper. This is a great way to build the perceptual skills to keep a pencil within a writing space such as baselines and middle or top lines when writing.

Cursive Writing Lines Art - This activity was done using cursive letters, but you could work on formation of printed handwriting as well. Make creative art that builds letter formation and line awareness as well. Children can trace over the lines, build fine motor skills, and carryover of line awareness with this fun activity.

Pre-Writing Lines with Leaves - Building line awareness and the directionality of lines is a pre-writing concept that begins with recognizing shapes and then copying those shapes to connect the lines. This carries over to formation of letters and placement on lines within a writing space. This is a fantastic pre-writing activity that uses leaves and multi-sensory learning that will "stick"!

Pre-Writing Lines Fine Motor Activity - Continue the pre-writing lines skills with this resistive fine motor activity that builds a muscle memory of pre-writing lines shapes and forms. This is a great way to build skills in spatial and line awareness.

Tips and Tricks for Writing and Coloring Within Lines - These tips and tricks can be used to help kids with spatial awareness and line awareness in coloring as well as handwriting.

Pre-Writing Handwriting Lines - This pre-writing lines activity gets kids forming lines in a given space, a great activity that transfers to handwriting and forming letters in a space on lines.

Creative Ways to Work on Line Awareness - These line awareness activities and information go into more detail on the implications of line use in handwriting, tips to improve writing lines, and carryover skills.

Sky Ground Writing Method - The sky and ground method of line awareness helps children to visualize the top and bottom line spaces for movement of the pencil to form letters. This DIY writing line paper can be made with just two markers.

Trouble with Margins - Margin awareness is a visual perceptual concept involved in handwriting that isn't always addressed until you see writing moving across the page, or trouble with writing lists. This activity can help with organization on the page.
How to help with carryover of handwriting skills
Pencil Grasp Activities

Pencil grasp plays a role in handwriting, especially when considering a functional pencil grasp. For more information and tools to promote a functional pencil grasp, be sure to join the Pencil Grasp Challenge.

The activities below help to promote a functional grasp by improving the fine motor skills needed for hand strength, open thumb web space, separation of the sides of the hand, and endurance when writing which all play a role in a functional grasp in handwriting.

Small Pencil Trick for Helping with Pencil Grasp - Using a small pencil like a golf pencil promotes a more functional pencil grasp because the positioning needed to grasp and move the pencil requires more precise motor movements and pulls the thumb into an open web space. Don't have a golf pencil? Use the tips in this blog post.

Thumb IP Joint Flexion Pencil Grasp Trick - This pencil grasp trick promotes awareness of an open thumb web space by opening the space between the thumb and the pointer finger and adding rotation to the thumb MP joint into opposition so the pencil is grasped. The precision motor movements of thumb IP flexion allow for precision of grasp. This is a fun activity kids will love!

Thumb Opposition - Thumb opposition allows for precision of grasp and a refined ability to manipulate a pencil when writing. Opposition activities like this one allow for eye-hand coordination development, as well as bilateral coordination, and strengthening of the arch or intrinsic muscles which are necessary for fine motor tasks like writing with endurance.

Magnetic Spoons and Handwriting Game - This fine motor activity works on eye-hand coordination and grasp skills, both of which are needed for handwriting!

Mechanical Pencil for Writing Too Dark or Too Light - This activity for handwriting addresses pencil pressure. When kids write too hard that they break the pencil point, addressing proprioception through the pencil is needed. Drawing awareness to this can help and using a mechanical pencil is a great way to work on pencil pressure in writing.

Easy DIY Slant Board and WHY Use a Slant Board? A slant board is a handwriting tool that kids can use to work on accuracy and pencil grasp. This resource explains why using a slant board is important.

Fine Motor Play Dough Intrinsic Muscle Strength - This intrinsic hand strength activity is a fun way to work on the fine motor skills needed for pencil grasp and endurance when writing.

Pencil Control Exercises - Pencil control is an essential part of handwriting skills that impact letter formation, neatness of letters, and placement on lines or given writing spaces. Use these pencil control exercises to build hand strength and visual motor skills.

Rainbow Hundreds Chart - This rainbow fine motor activity is a great way to work on precision in pencil grasp.

Handwriting Quick Check Self-Assessment List - Use this handwriting self-assessment to check for handwriting skills with writing tasks.

Coban Wrap Pencil Grip - Coban is a therapy tool that many occupational therpaists have in their therapy bag! Use coban to create a DIY pencil grip that molds to the child's fingertips.

Distal Finger Control Exercises - These distal control exercises promote precision and movement of the pencil in small spaces, using movements needed for writing letters of the alphabet.

Spatial Awareness & Line Awareness Activity Without Handwriting - This spatial awareness activity is a handwriting activity that helps kids to work on bilateral coordination needed to write and hold the paper with their assisting hand. It's also a great way to work on pencil control, motor planning, and eye-hand coordination, skills needed for handwriting and letter formation!

Omitting Letters and Words when Copying - Sometimes kids have trouble with copying written material and omitting letters or words when they copy. This can be a visual perceptual skill that results in errors. This resource covers letter omission in handwriting.

Handwriting and Visual Perception with Tangrams - Working with tangrams is a visual perception activity that helps with spatial awareness and the visual discrimination skills needed in handwriting. Try these tangram activities to help.

A Complete Guide to Handwriting - This blog post includes many links to handwriting activities and resources.

Paper Position Desk Paper Positioner - Positioning paper is a big part of handwriting. This resource includes information on how the paper should be positioned and how to add a visual prompt to promote better paper positioning when writing.

DIY Desk Fidget Tool - Use this DIY desk fidget toy to help with attention during handwriting tasks.

Use a Timer to Help with Letter Formation - Forming letters a problem? Try this timer activity to work on letter formation, speed of handwriting, and accuracy of letter placement on the lines in written work.

Executive Functioning Skills and Handwriting - Executive functioning skills are a part of everything we do, even handwriting! This blog post covers the executive functions needed for letter formation, copying skills, visual attention, and organization on a page.

Sensory Letter Formation

Sensory Letter Formation - This sensory writing activity works on letter formation but allows covers easy tips for handwriting skills. This post includes information on why it's important to teach lower case letters before upper case letters and how to form letters starting at the top.

Homemade Pencil Grip - Did you know a homemade pencil grip is as easy as using balloons? This pencil grip draws the distal fingers to the tips of the pencil and is good for kids that need a visual and physical cue to hold the pencil at the end.

Benefits of Stickers in Occupational Therapy - There are many benefits to playing with stickers and handwriting skills are part of that especially when you take into consideration all of the fine motor skills that impact a functional pencil grasp.

Toys and Games for Reluctant Writers - Sometimes kids are reluctant writers because they HATE to write or because writing is HARD. These activities and ideas for reluctant writers many handwriting fun and meaningful...and motivating!

The Benefits of Coloring - There are many benefits to coloring that impact handwriting like hand strength and controlled motor movements of the hands.

Gift Ideas for Spatial Awareness - These toys and tools are fun games to work on spatial awareness in handwriting.

31 Days of Occupational Therapy with Free or Inexpensive Treatment Materials - So much about the tools that therapists use can be from everyday functional items or materials found around the home. Others are recycled items that are used to improve functional skills or the underlying skills that impact handwriting and pencil grasp.

Toys and Tools to Improve Visual Tracking - Visual tracking skills are needed for reading and writing. These games and toys help to improve visual tracking skills in written work.

Pencil Pressure Simple Handwriting Trick - Pencil pressure is a common handwriting problem for many children. Use this easy activity using a foam sheet to work on the proprioceptive skills needed for appropriate pencil pressure.

Sandpaper Letter Formation Trick - One handwriting activity is using sandpaper to work on letter formation and building the muscle memory skills needed for forming letters with automaticity. This activity for letter formation is great for new writers or fixing letter formation mistakes.

Boxes and Dots Handwriting Method - Writing with appropriate letter size can impact formation and legibility. This box and dot method can help with forming letters correctly, as well as addressing letter reversals.

Easy Trick for Tripod Pencil Grasp - This pencil grasp trick involves hiding a small object in the palm of the hand to work on separation of the sides of the hand and tripod grasp in handwriting.

What is Visual Spacing - Spatial awareness in handwriting is an important part of legibility. Use this button spacing tool to work on spacing between letters and words for better legibility.

Visual Tracking Tips and Tools - This visual tracking tips and tools address the visual processing skills needed for writing, copying material from a near point, copying words or sentences from a distant point like a chalkboard, and the visual shift, visual memory, and visual tracking skills needed to know where the writer left off.

Handwriting Puzzles Spacing Awareness Activity - These spacing puzzles are a fun way to work on the visual perceptual skills needed for writing words and letters with spacing so that kids can read their own handwriting. This is a great self-check activity for kids.

Easy Trick for Helping with Letter Formation and Sloppy Writing - This activity for handwriting skills works on letter formation and re-trace of pencil lines when writing. Kids can self-check their handwriting with this fun self-assessment activity and then carryover the letter formation skills.

Transfer Paper for Spacing, Line Awareness, Letter Formation, Pencil Pressure - Did you know you can use transfer paper for a fun handwriting activity that works on letter formation and handwriting skills.

Hand Dominance and Fine Motor with Scooping and Pouring - This handwriting activity addresses bilateral coordination skills and crossing midline needed for holding and positioning paper when writing with a pencil.

Visual Scanning Fine Motor Fidget Toy - This visual scanning activity is a great way to work on the visual skills needed for handwriting and copying written material.

Functional Play Ideas with Every Day Toys - Use toys found around the home to work on handwriting skills, fine motor skills, visual perceptual skills, and visual motor skills.

DIY Letter Strip Desk Ruler - Make a letter strip for the desktop that can go right into a pencil box or inside the desk. This DIY letter strip helps with letter formation and visual memory skills needed for helping kids copy letters and write letters in their assignments.

Letter Construction Method for Accurate Letter Formation - This letter construction activity works on proper letter formation and sequencing of letter formation so that kids start letters at the top and move to correct formation of parts. The visual cues are great for kids.

Desk Positioning and Posture While Writing - These desk posture tips cover the correct positioning needed for writing when sitting at a desk.

DIY Dry Erase Board Handwriting Travel Kit - Make this DIY dry erase board to work on handwriting while in a car or on the go. It's a pencil box activity that kids will love!

Building Letters Worksheets - Use cotton swabs as a sensory handwriting activity for working on forming letters. This is a fun way to work on letter writing with kids!

Hot Glue Letters & Words - Multisensory handwriting activities like this hot glue gun letters help with forming letters with a crayon rubbing activity. This is a great activity for bilateral coordination and fine motor skills, too.

Letter Formation Resistive Surface - Use this activity for handwriting skills using a resistive surface with an item you probably already have in your home.

Letter Formation with Push Pins in a Can - Work on letter formation using push pins in a lid for a resistive surface that promotes a tripod grasp.

Lego Letters - Build letters using LEGO pieces that help with tripod grasp, hand strength, bilateral coordination, and visual motor skills.

Handwriting Warm Up Exercises - These handwriting warm-up exercises are a great way to build hand strength and get the hands warmed up for a writing task.

Handwriting on Foam Craft Sticks - Writing on foam sheets adds a proprioceptive resistance feedback for letter formation. This writing activity can help with teaching kids letter formation in proper sequence.

Nature Letters - Work on forming letters with sticks, leaves, and petals. This is a fun letter formation activity that incorporates visual discrimination, figure ground skills, and other visual perceptual skills.

Handwriting Accommodations

Visual Processing Checklist for Handwriting - Visual processing is a huge piece of handwriting. Consider all of the visual processing skills needed to copy and write letters and words: visual discrimination, figure ground, visual closure, visual attention, visual memory, eye-hand coordination, visual motor integration, and more!

Handwriting Accommodations for the Classroom - Use these suggestions for helping children with handwriting in the classroom.

Pencil Grasp with an Egg Carton - This handwriting activity uses just an egg carton to build the intrinsic muscle strength needed for a tripod grasp.

This massive resource on letter formation covers everything you need to know about the development of handwriting skills, including why you should teach upper case letters first in handwriting instruction, why proper formation is important, and why letters should start at the top. You'll also gain access to a free letter formation worksheets designed to promote handwriting skills.

Then head to this article on Lower Case Letter Formation for specific strategies related to writing lowercase letters.

Next, read this resource on letter reversals and discover strategies to help with writing letters backwards, and the development of letter reversals, including when letter reversals are normal for new writers.

Try these motor planning in handwriting activities including a carpet square activity to use the benefits of resistive writing surfaces in helping kids to learn to form letters.

Cursive Handwriting Activities

Cursive handwriting is a form of written work that works well for many students, especially those who struggle with pencil control, fine motor skills, and the formation of letters. Cursive letters are much smoother and have a natural flow. Use the handwriting activities below to work on learning cursive writing.

Try these ideas for teaching cursive handwriting. These are the best creative cursive activities that we've done here on the blog. Be sure to stop back for more ideas.

Check them out by clicking on the links below for tips and ways to work on letter formation with smooth cursive letter lines, loops, re-tracing, and connectors. Here is information on the research on cursive writing.

How to Teach Letter "c" in Cursive - Teaching cursive letter c is a building block for forming other cursive letters based on the motor plan to turn the cursive c into other letters including: cursive a, d, g, o, and q.

Textured Cursive Lines - Cursive letters flow and these handwriting activities use textured lines to build a motor plan for combining cursive letters. This is a fun multisensory writing activity.

Holding the Paper in Cursive Writing - Positioning the paper is essential for cursive writing slant and formation. This resource covers paper positioning for lefties and righties.

Cursive Pencil Grasp - Does cursive require a different pencil grasp? No...but cursive writing requires new and different pencil movements which can impact pencil grasp! Read more to find out what I mean.

Cursive Lines Art - Use art to work on cursive letter lines.

31 Days of Cursive - Use this resource and activity list for fun and hands-on approaches to teaching cursive handwriting.

Cursive Handwriting Journal - Print this cursive handwriting journal to work on letter formation of cursive letters using multi sensory writing with several different textured writing activities.

Fizzy Dough Cursive Letters- Textured sensory writing is fun with this play dough letters. These cursive letters are sensory and fun! This activity uses the sense of touch with tactile exploratory input with fizzy, sensory letter formation.

Sensory Processing and Handwriting

Getting the senses involved in handwriting can be so beneficial to learning the motor plan of letter formation. Try these sensory ideas for improved handwriting using all of the senses.

Sensory Processing and Handwriting - This informative resource covers all things sensory and handwriting. There are many aspects to handwriting that incorporate the senses.

Cursive Letter Fizzy Dough - Make baking soda dough, add the vinegar and watch those letters FIZZ and pop! This is a great activity for building fine motor skills and letter formation!

Pressing Too Hard When Writing Proprioception Tips is the perfect post if you are looking for tips on writing with too much (or too little) pencil pressure.

Sensory Letter Formation

Sensory Letter Formation Work on letter formation using dish soap in this tactile and olfactory letter learning and writing activity.

Sensory Bottle with Letters - You can use whatever materials you have available to make a sensory bottle for self-regulation AND letter identification and handwriting, too.

Glitter Glue Tracing Letters - This cursive writing activity can be done with printed letters too. Use glitter glue for a tactile experience that builds a motor plan and muscle memory for letter formation.

Sensory Letter Bin - Make a sensory bin using materials you have in the home...then add letters for a handwriting experience kids won't forget!

Tripod Grasp Activities for Kids

Spacing activities in handwriting

Try these DIY Spacing tool crafts. Kids can make them and feel proud to use them in handwriting:

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Activities to Improve Handwriting - The OT Toolbox

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Use these handwriting activities to help kids work on and imporve handwriting legibility with fun ways to work on letter formation, line use, and placement.

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How to Utilize Multiple Literacies to Maximize Learning

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In today’s technology-driven world, it’s essential for students to develop multiple literacies. Here’s how to teach this in your classroom.

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How to Read with Purpose: A Complete Guide

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Master how to read effectively, retain more, and learn deeply with proven strategies on how to read.

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Discover the annual winners of the Newbery Medal, Caldecott Medal, Coretta Scott King Awards, and Pura Belpré Awards - as well as other children's book awards from the American Library Association and other literacy organizations.

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Each year a committee of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) identifies the best of the best in children's books. According to the Notables Criteria, "notable" is defined as: Worthy of note or notice, important, distinguished, outstanding.

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Critical thinking is vital to any kind of success, including your career and beyond. Simply put, critical thinking is a questioning approach to form a judgment or conclusion. It encourages reflective and independent thinking to guide us through the hundreds of decisions that we make throughout a week. Having these skil

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‍"To be a great speaker, you must first be a great listener." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Listening is a cornerstone of learning English, allowing you to absorb vocabulary, pronunciation, and accent naturally. The better you listen, the faster you'll improve.

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Yet, many learners rely on passive listening-catching snippets of conversation with native speakers and hoping for progress. While this offers some exposure, it's neither the fastest nor the most effective way to build fluency.

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To truly enhance your communication skills, listening must be an intentional, active process. The good news? You don't need a classroom or a conversation partner to sharpen your skills. With the right strategies, you can practice deliberate listening from the comfort of your home.

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We've compiled ten practical activities that seamlessly fit into your routine, helping you strengthen your listening skills and speak with confidence.

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1. Listen to Podcasts or Audiobooks

Podcasts and audiobooks let you practice listening effortlessly, whether you're commuting, cooking, or taking a walk.

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With countless topics to choose from- business, health, storytelling, or even romance-you can immerse yourself in conversations that interest you.

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The more you listen, the more familiar you become with natural vocabulary, pronunciation, and cultural nuances. To make the most of this practice, take notes, jot down new words, and summarize key points to reinforce what you've learned.

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Start with beginner-friendly, slow-paced options, then gradually challenge yourself with more conversational, fast-paced content. Just be sure to choose podcasts with clear, well-spoken English so you're absorbing the best spoken language habits.

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2. Watch English Movies with Subtitles

If you love movies, why not turn them into a learning tool? Films expose you to natural conversations, different accents, and real-life interactions-all while keeping you entertained.

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Subtitles can enhance your learning by helping you connect spoken words with their written forms. You'll also pick up on facial expressions, gestures, and tone, adding depth to your understanding. Be sure to pick movies and shows you genuinely enjoy to keep the process engaging.

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When you're ready for a challenge, turn off the subtitles and focus solely on listening and word recognition. This gradual approach helps you improve without feeling overwhelmed. Plus, since you're watching something you love, it feels more like fun than study time!

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3. Practice Listening Comprehension with BoldVoice

BoldVoice is a powerful tool for improving listening comprehension at any stage of your learning journey. The app provides expert guidance through carefully designed video and lessons, helping you fine-tune your pronunciation and listening skills.

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Powered by AI, BoldVoice gives you unlimited access to lessons taught by real-life Hollywood accent coaches. Each lesson is structured to match your proficiency level, ensuring a personalized learning experience. You'll also find interactive AI exercises like role-playing to reinforce your listening skills in an engaging way.

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Best of all, BoldVoice offers a 7-day free trial, giving you full access to all features so you can start improving your English with confidence!

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4. Practice Dictation Exercises

Dictation is a powerful way to sharpen your listening skills and attention to detail. This exercise involves listening to a short passage and writing down exactly what you hear.

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While it may sound simple, it trains you to catch small but crucial elements of speech, such as contractions, word endings, and linking sounds.

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Start with a clear audio clip or a YouTube video featuring native speakers, play it multiple times, and write down what you hear. As you improve, challenge yourself by reducing pauses between repetitions. Once finished, compare your version with the transcript (if available) and take note of any errors.

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Regular dictation practice strengthens your ability to recognize subtle differences in spoken English while reinforcing spelling and grammar.

5. Engage in Language Shadowing

Language shadowing is an active listening technique that helps you develop fluency and natural pronunciation.

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The method is simple: listen to a sentence and immediately repeat it as accurately as possible. This practice strengthens both listening and speaking skills by training your ear to pick up rhythms, intonations, and speech patterns.

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For best results, start with short clips of interviews or TED Talks featuring clear, conversational English in a neutral accent. Play a sentence, pause, and repeat it while mimicking the speaker's pronunciation and pacing. Pay attention to enunciation and even body language to capture the full expression of the speech.

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At first, shadowing may feel challenging, but the goal is precise imitation. As you build confidence, work with longer clips to improve your ability to keep up with natural, fast-paced conversations.

Practice English Listening Comprehension

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6. Sing Along to English Songs

Singing along to English songs is a fun and effortless way to improve listening comprehension, pronunciation, word recognition, and rhythm.

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This time, however, you'll be more intentional-focusing on the lyrics and how words are pronounced.

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Music naturally reinforces vocabulary, flow, and intonation, as many songs use rhymes and common phrases. It also exposes you to slang and cultural references that appear in everyday speech.

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To make this a habit, create a playlist of songs with clear lyrics and listen as you go about your day. Singing along not only boosts your confidence but also helps you internalize words and phrases in a memorable way!

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7. Listen for Minimal Pairs

Minimal pairs -words that differ by just one sound, like "bit" vs. "beat" or "pat" vs. "bat"-can be tricky for English learners. Mastering them is key to improving both listening comprehension and pronunciation.

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As you listen to songs, podcasts, or conversations, train your ear to pick out these subtle differences. You can think of this as a sort of DIY listening comprehension test.

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Write down minimal pairs you notice and practice saying them aloud. Repeating them in context helps you distinguish similar sounds more easily and understand how small shifts in pronunciation can change a word's meaning.

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This exercise sharpens your ability to catch sound variations in spoken English, making it easier to follow fast-paced speech and avoid misunderstandings.

8. Watch News Clips

News clips are a great resource for improving listening comprehension because newscasters typically speak in clear, standard American English. Regularly watching the news exposes you to well-articulated speech, proper intonation, and structured sentence patterns-all of which help refine your listening skills.

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To make this practice effective, start with shorter clips and simpler stories that match your current level. Gradually, you can explore different topics like politics, sports, technology, and culture to build vocabulary and familiarity with various subjects.

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For deeper learning, watch the same clip multiple times. Pay close attention to details like names, dates, and key facts. Most importantly, focus on understanding the overall message rather than getting stuck on individual words.

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9. Listen for Tone, Rhythm, and Emotion

The way something is said can be just as important as the words themselves.

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Tone, rhythm, and emotion influence meaning, helping listeners grasp whether a statement is happy, sad, sarcastic, or serious-even when the words remain the same.

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For example, in an excited phrase like "I can't believe it!" the pitch may rise, and the speaker may talk faster. In contrast, a more serious version-"I can't believe it... I really lost all that money."-would likely be spoken in a slower, lower tone.

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To develop this skill, pay attention to how native speakers use pitch, speed, and volume in different situations. Try practicing with recordings, movies, or interviews that showcase a range of emotions.

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Over time, you'll sharpen your ability to interpret meaning beyond words, making conversations easier to follow and more engaging to participate in.

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10. Transcribe Any Tricky Words You Hear

Ever wondered why "maneuver: sounds like /məˈnuːvər/ instead of how the spelling might suggest?

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The key lies in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) -a system that represents speech sounds with specific symbols, helping you decode pronunciation with precision.

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Whenever you come across a tricky word, look up its IPA transcription to understand its correct pronunciation. This is especially useful for words that sound nothing like their spelling.

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For example, "subtle" is pronounced /ˈsʌt.l̩/, with a silent " b."

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Using an IPA chart as a reference can help you recognize common pronunciation patterns, making new words less intimidating. Over time, this practice will refine your listening skills and give you greater confidence in spoken English.

Enhance Listening Comprehension with BoldVoice

Listening is a crucial part of learning any language, and it's even more beneficial when you do it the right way. From the comfort of your home, you can effectively practice and improve your English even while doing everyday tasks.

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Go through the listening comprehension exercises discussed in this article and see how best you can incorporate them into your routine. But if you want to fully exploit these listening activities, go the extra mile with advanced tools that offer structured learning like BoldVoice.

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With BoldVoice you can listen, access resources, including sound breakdown, and receive instant feedback. As you learn, you can also track your progress to know how effective your efforts are and make adjustments where necessary.

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Don't forget to sign up on BoldVoice right away to enjoy your 7-day free trial offer and start improving your English at home!

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10 Listening Comprehension Activities to Improve English at Home | BoldVoice

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Boost your English listening comprehension with these 10 practical exercises. Strengthen pronunciation, fluency, and confidence with engaging, everyday activities.

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Here, you will find listening comprehension exercises divided into the following four levels of difficulty:

All audio files are found in mp3 format. You can use the following media players to play mp3 files on your computer:

A transcript of each recording can also be found which will allow you to listen to the recording again if you want to check your answers, and to follow what is said by reading the transcript.

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Top 30 Must-Read Book Genres Explained 2025 | Cozy Book Cafe

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Explore the Top 30 Essential Must-Read Book Genres of 2025. Discover a new favorite today and take pleasure in our book suggestions here at Cozy Book Cafe.

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Definition of Genre

Genre means a type of art, literature, or music characterized by a specific form, content, and style. For example, literature has four main genres: poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fiction. All of these genres have particular features and functions that distinguish them from one another. Hence, it is necessary on the part of readers to know which category of genre they are reading in order to understand the message it conveys, as they may have certain expectations prior to the reading concerned.

Types of Genre

There are five types of genres in literature, which include:

Poetry

Poetry is the first major literary genre. All types of poetry share specific characteristics. In fact, poetry is a form of text that follows a meter and rhythm, with each line and syllable. It is further subdivided into different genres, such an epic poem, narrative, romantic, dramatic, and lyric. Dramatic poetry includes melodrama, tragedy, and comedy, while other poems includes ode, sonnet, elegy, ballad, song, and epic.

Popular examples of epic poems include Paradise Lost, by John Milton, The Iliad and The Odyssey, by Homer. Examples of romantic poems include Red Red Rose, by Robert Burns. All these poetic forms share specific features, such as they do not follow paragraphs or sentences; they use stanzas and lines instead. Some forms follow very strict rules of length, and number of stanzas and lines, such as villanelle, sonnet, and haiku. Others may be free-form, like Feelings, Now, by Katherine Foreman, which is devoid of any regular meter and rhyme scheme. Besides that, often poetry uses figurative language, such as metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, and alliteration to create heightened effect.

Drama

Drama is a form of text that is performed in front of an audience. It is also called a play. Its written text contains dialogues, and stage directions. This genre has further categories such as comedy, tragedy, and tragicomedy. William Shakespeare is known as the father of English drama. His well-known plays include Taming of the Shrew, Romeo & Juliet, and Hamlet. Greek playwrights were the pioneers in this field, such as Sophocles' masterpiece Oedipus Rex, and Antigone, while modern dramas include Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller.

Prose

This type of written text is different from poetry in that it has complete sentences organized into paragraphs. Unlike poetry, prose focuses on characters and plot, rather than focusing on sounds. It includes short stories and novels, while fiction and non-fiction are its sub genres. Prose is further categorized into essays, speeches, sermons, and interpretations.

Fiction

Fiction has three categories that are, realistic, non-realistic, and semi-fiction. Usually, fiction work is not real and therefore, authors can use complex figurative language to touch readers' imaginations. Unlike poetry, it is more structured, follows proper grammatical pattern, and correct mechanics. A fictional work may incorporate fantastical and imaginary ideas from everyday life. It comprises some important elements such as plot, exposition, foreshadowing, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Popular examples of literary fiction include, James Joyce's novel A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Non-Fiction

Non-fiction is a vast category that also has sub-genres; it could be creative like a personal essay, or factual, like a scientific paper. It may also use figurative language, however, not unlike poetry, or fiction has. Sometimes, non-fiction may tell a story, like an autobiography, or sometimes it may convey information to readers.

Other examples of non-fiction include biographies, diaries, memoirs, journals, fantasies, mysteries, and romances. A popular example of non-fiction genre is Michael Pollan's highly celebrated book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which is an account of the eating habits of Americans.

Function of Genre

Different genres have different roles. For example, fiction and dramatic genres help students and writers learn and improve their communication skills. A poetic genre, on the other hand, enhances imaginative and emotional power of the readers. Non-fictional texts and essays help readers develop analytical and persuasive capabilities. However, the major function of genre is to establish a code of behavior between the writers and audience, and keep the readers informed about the topics discussed or the themes presented.

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Genre - Examples and Definition of Genre

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Genre means a type of art, literature, or music characterized by a specific form, content, and style. For example, literature has four main genres: poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fiction. All of these genres have particular features and functions that distinguish them from one another.

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IXL Language Arts | Topics for pre-K to 12th grade

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See all of the language arts topics available on IXL! From phonics to grammar, reading to writing, there’s always something new to learn.

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Science of Reading | National Center on Improving Literacy

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Alphabetic Principle & Phonics information for parents and educators from The National Center on Improving Literacy (NCIL).

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Curioso: The world’s leading kids content platform for learning & discovery

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Browse Reading Resources. Award winning educational materials designed to help kids succeed. Start for free now!

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(Last Updated On: November 2, 2022)
A broad understanding of infographics types will widen your options when presenting complex data in an infographic poster. Take a visit to today's blog post to sort out your exact match.
Infographics are an effective technique for rapidly and clearly presenting the information. When applied properly, they may make information easier for the audience to understand. But it can be difficult to jumpstart because there are different types of infographics available. In this blog post, we'll discuss 10 types of infographics and when each one should be used.

The outline will be packed in an infographic poster below:

Inspired by Freepik

Types of Infographics #1: Information

Compared to other infographics types, informational infographics typically contain more text. Therefore, they are ideal for using images to teach any concepts or subjects visually. Moreover, building content infographic like this will help you build trust since they let you educate your audience and show your major knowledge.
Takeaway ideas:

Coffee Infographic Image Vector by Favete
Types of Infographic #2: List

List infographics are one of the most popular types of infographics. Thus, they work well to draw viewers and increase interaction. In contrast to a bullet list, they allow viewers to arrange data in a more appealing way. You can use it to list anything that you think your readers will find helpful.
Takeaway ideas:

Image by Freepik

Types of Infographic #3: Timeline

Since a timeline is often arranged in a linear layout, this infographic type is quite popular with historical topics and future events forecast. To emphasize the information, images or visual graphics might be applied into the timeline. Otherwise, this type of infographic can shorten a long, complex story easier to understand. One way is to explain how something has evolved over time, or how one thing leads to another.
Takeaway ideas:

Image by Freepik

Types of Infographics #4: Comparison

Comparison infographics are a wise choice when you want to highlight contrast effects. In most cases, a comparison infographic will have one option on each side of a divide, either vertically or horizontally. By doing so, this makes it possible for the audience to distinguish between two or more items visually. Since they are presented in side-by-side infographic poster format, they can highlight similarities, contrasts, and relative relationships.
Takeaway ideas:

Image by Freepik

Types of Infographics #5: Map

Using a location infographic is one of the finest methods to express patterns visually across a region or worldwide. Specifically, this style of visual is excellent for pointing out regional and worldwide statistics that readers care about. Moreover, it is also possible to use map infographics to compare a wide range of selections as well.
Takeaway Ideas:

Branches of Starbucks worldwide

Living costs across the nation

Good food stores in a city

Company geographical sales distribution.

Image by Freepik

Types of Infographics #6: Statistics

Statistics infographics are given birth to digest complex and nuanced data. For this reason, we can use this type of infographic to portray data from many sources or present survey results. By using a combination of text, charts, images, etc., this infographic design focuses on keeping the message's straight and clear. This makes data more lively than endless boring statistics or tables.
Takeaways ideas:

Image by Freepik

Types of Infographics #7: Flowchart

A flowchart uses boxes, flow lines, arrows, and others to reflect the steps of any process from start to finish. In doing so, flowchart infographics are applied to walk viewers through an array of stages or to drive decisions. This type of infographic is also called process, since it shows a complete view to finish something with full steps guide.
Takeaway ideas:

Image by Freepik

Types of Infographics #8: Hierarchy

In terms of hierarchy, this type of infographic organizes information according to levels. Although most commonly seen in the shape of a pyramid, it can also be seen in the form of an organizational chart. Thus, the critical function of this infographic poster is to compare the different levels, ranks and show the connection between each of them.
Takeaway ideas:

Image by Freepik

Types of Infographics #9: Anatomical

Searching for a way to break down elements? You can handle that with the aid of anatomy infographics. In detail, this type of infographic includes a framework using labeled diagrams to help you highlight and explain parts. Your audience may thank you for using anatomical infographics instead of describing them in words only.
Takeaways ideas:

Image by Freepik

Types of Infographics #10: Animated

An animated infographic is a static infographic that includes certain animated elements to express movement and motion. In this situation, creatives can make an infographic poster animated by adding interactive components, transitions, or color schemes. You may also draw attention to the most important portions of your design by including subtle movements. Overall, there are 3 basic types of this infographic: GIF, Video, and HTML5. For detail, you can learn more about animated infographics overview and examples.
Takeaway ideas:
Let's see how this kind of infographic example can save you space for presenting.

Animated Infographics by GIPHY

Last Words

From the above types, we can see that infographics come in many different shapes and sizes. Therefore, before rolling up your sleeves into creation, you might think ahead about which types of infographics may fit the best. Picking out the right type will bring about the best result and efficiency and save you time for later work. Also, you can mix several types of infographics at your disposal, as long as the information is well-supplied to the audience's needs. Finally, do not forget to follow our Blog and YouTube channel for the latest information.
See also: Top 6 Websites to Delete Image Background 4 Places to Find out the Best Website Color Scheme Generator How to Combine Colors to Beautify Your Next Design

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10 Most Common Types of Infographics (with Ideas Takeaway)

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(Last Updated On: November 2, 2022) A broad understanding of infographics types will widen your options when presenting complex data in an infographic poster. Take a visit to today's blog post to sort out your exact match. Infographics are an effective technique for rapidly and clearly presenting the information.

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Consider multimodal literacy for the following:

Varied Input = gathering visuals or tactile objects to help with understanding

Engaging Activities = using multiple formats and music or movement to help make connections to the material

Flexible Assessments = allow students to showcase their material in different ways

Supporting Diverse Learners = can provide more scaffolding and support for students with different needs

Modern Ties = ways to incorporate our “modern world”

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Multimodal literacy is the ability to create and interpret meaning from texts using multiple forms of communication:

Visual Aspects:  images, diagrams, illustrations, font types

Linguistic Aspects:  written words, text, alphabetic language

Oral Aspects:  spoken words, communication

Gestural Aspects:  body language, movement, facial expressions

Spatial Aspects:  layout, organization

Temporal Aspects:  timing, sequencing

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Manuscript = print penmanship, based on individual block letters (not connected and each character is clear and distinct)

Cursive = connected penmanship, flowing and without spaces between letters within a word

Slant = angle of the paper or text

Basic Strokes = straight lines (vertical and horizontal), circles, diagonals, undercurves, downcurves, and overcurves

Pencil Grip = “proper” way to hold a writing utensil

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Multiple literacies is the ability to create and understand meaning through various modes of communication.

It can contain visuals, digital aspects, reading and writing just to name a few.

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Children's literature serves as a minor reflecting society's values, beliefs, and aspirations, while also acting as a window, offering young readers glimpses into diverse worlds and experiences. Through carefully crafted narratives, children's books have the power to shape young minds, fostering empathy and critical thinking. Also, a lifelong love of reading.

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Metacognition is a high order thinking skill that is emerging from the shadows of academia to take its rightful place in classrooms around the world. As online classrooms extend into homes, this is an important time for parents and teachers to understand metacognition and how metacognitive strategies affect learning. These skills enable children to become better thinkers and decision-makers.

Metacognition: The Neglected Skill Set for Empowering Students is a new research-based book by educational consultants Dr. Robin Fogarty and Brian Pete that not only gets to the heart of why metacognition is important but gives teachers and parents insightful strategies for teaching metacognition to children from kindergarten through high school. This article summarizes several concepts from their book and shares three of their thirty strategies to strengthen metacognition.

What Is Metacognition?

Metacognition is the practice of being aware of one's own thinking. Some scholars refer to it as "thinking about thinking." Fogarty and Pete give a great everyday example of metacognition:

Think about the last time you reached the bottom of a page and thought to yourself, "I'm not sure what I just read." Your brain just became aware of something you did not know, so instinctively you might reread the last sentence or rescan the paragraphs of the page. Maybe you will read the page again. In whatever ways you decide to capture the missing information, this momentary awareness of knowing what you know or do not know is called metacognition.

When we notice ourselves having an inner dialogue about our thinking and it prompts us to evaluate our learning or problem-solving processes, we are experiencing metacognition at work. This skill helps us think better, make sound decisions, and solve problems more effectively. In fact, research suggests that as a young person's metacognitive abilities increase, they achieve at higher levels.

Fogarty and Pete outline three aspects of metacognition that are vital for children to learn: planning, monitoring, and evaluation. They convincingly argue that metacognition is best when it is infused in teaching strategies rather than taught directly. The key is to encourage students to explore and question their own metacognitive strategies in ways that become spontaneous and seemingly unconscious.

Metacognitive skills provide a basis for broader, psychological self-awareness, including how children gain a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Metacognitive Strategies to Use at Home or School

Fogarty and Pete successfully demystify metacognition and provide simple ways teachers and parents can strengthen children's abilities to use these higher-order thinking skills. Below is a summary of metacognitive strategies from the three areas of planning, monitoring, and evaluation.

1. Planning Strategies

As students learn to plan, they learn to anticipate the strengths and weaknesses of their ideas. Planning strategies used to strengthen metacognition help students scrutinize plans at a time when they can most easily be changed.

One of ten metacognitive strategies outlined in the book is called "Inking Your Thinking." It is a simple writing log that requires students to reflect on a lesson they are about to begin. Sample starters may include: "I predict..." "A question I have is..." or "A picture I have of this is..."

Writing logs are also helpful in the middle or end of assignments. For example, "The homework problem that puzzles me is..." "The way I will solve this problem is to..." or "I'm choosing this strategy because..."

2. Monitoring Strategies

Monitoring strategies used to strengthen metacognition help students check their progress and review their thinking at various stages. Different from scrutinizing, this strategy is reflective in nature. It also allows for adjustments while the plan, activity, or assignment is in motion. Monitoring strategies encourage recovery of learning, as in the example cited above when we are reading a book and notice that we forgot what we just read. We can recover our memory by scanning or re-reading.

One of many metacognitive strategies shared by Fogarty and Pete, called the "Alarm Clock," is used to recover or rethink an idea once the student realizes something is amiss. The idea is to develop internal signals that sound an alarm. This signal prompts the student to recover a thought, rework a math problem, or capture an idea in a chart or picture. Metacognitive reflection involves thinking about "What I did," then reviewing the pluses and minuses of one's action. Finally, it means asking, "What other thoughts do I have" moving forward?

Teachers can easily build monitoring strategies into student assignments. Parents can reinforce these strategies too. Remember, the idea is not to tell children what they did correctly or incorrectly. Rather, help children monitor and think about their own learning. These are formative skills that last a lifetime.

3. Evaluation Strategies

According to Fogarty and Pete, the evaluation strategies of metacognition "are much like the mirror in a powder compact. Both serve to magnify the image, allow for careful scrutiny, and provide an up-close and personal view. When one opens the compact and looks in the mirror, only a small portion of the face is reflected back, but that particular part is magnified so that every nuance, every flaw, and every bump is blatantly in view." Having this enlarged view makes inspection much easier.

When students inspect parts of their work, they learn about the nuances of their thinking processes. They learn to refine their work. They grow in their ability to apply their learning to new situations. "Connecting Elephants" is one of many metacognitive strategies to help students self-evaluate and apply their learning.

In this exercise, the metaphor of three imaginary elephants is used. The elephants are walking together in a circle, connected by the trunk and tail of another elephant. The three elephants represent three vital questions: 1) What is the big idea? 2) How does this connect to other big ideas? 3) How can I use this big idea? Using the image of a "big idea" helps students magnify and synthesize their learning. It encourages them to think about big ways their learning can be applied to new situations.

Metacognition and Self-Reflection

Reflective thinking is at the heart of metacognition. In today's world of constant chatter, technology and reflective thinking can be at odds. In fact, mobile devices can prevent young people from seeing what is right before their eyes.

John Dewey, a renowned psychologist and education reformer, claimed that experiences alone were not enough. What is critical is an ability to perceive and then weave meaning from the threads of our experiences.

The function of metacognition and self-reflection is to make meaning. The creation of meaning is at the heart of what it means to be human.

Everyone can help foster self-reflection in young people.

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What Is Metacognition? How Does It Help Us Think?

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Metacognition is a high order thinking skill that is emerging from the shadows of academia to take its rightful place in classrooms around the world. As online classrooms extend into homes, this is an important time for parents and teachers to understand metacognition and how metacognitive strategies affect learning.

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Setting a purpose for reading helps keep students focused and engaged while reading, and gives them a mission so that comprehension can be reinforced. Reading with purpose motivates children and helps students who tend to rush, take their time reading so they won't skip over key elements in the text. Here are a few ways teachers can set a purpose for reading, as well as teach their students how to set their own purpose.

As the teacher, when you set a purpose for reading be specific. Here are a few prompts:

Read until you get to the part where so and so did this.

Stop reading until you find out about so and so.

Read until you discover___.

Read until you find out where the story takes place.

Close the book when you figure out the problem in the story.

After students have completed your task you can help build comprehension by asking them to do a few quick activities. Here are a few suggestions:

Draw a picture of what they think will happen next in the story.

Create a concept map recording elements in the story.

Write down a problem they discovered while reading the story.

Ask critical thinking questions, such as "What the solution to the problem in the story?...What is the purpose of this book?....What is the author trying to accomplish?...What issues arise in the story?"

Retell the story in your own words with a partner.

Compare how the characters have changed throughout the story.

Before teaching students how to set a purpose for what they are reading make sure they understand that a purpose drives the choices they make while they are reading. Guide students into how to set a purpose by telling them the following three things.

1. You can read to perform a task, such as specific directions. For example, read until you meet the main character in the story.

2. You can read for pure enjoyment.

3. You can read to learn new information. For example, if you wanted to learn about bears.

After students decide what their purpose for reading is then they can select a text. After the text is selected you can show students before, during, and after reading strategies that match their purpose for reading. Remind students that as they read they should refer back to their main purpose.

Here are a few tips, questions, and statements students should be thinking about before, during, and after reading a text.

What do I already know about the topic?

What can I expect to learn?

Skim the book to find out what I will be learning.

Pause during reading to reflect upon what was just read. Try to link it to something you already know.

Do I understand what I just read?

Place a sticky note next to any question, unfamiliar word, or comment you would like to share in the text.

Reread any passages that confused you.

Go over your sticky notes.

Summarize in your head what you have just read.

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Get Students Motivated to Read by Setting a Purpose

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Setting a purpose for reading helps keep students focused and engaged while reading, and gives them a mission so that comprehension can be reinforced. Reading with purpose motivates children and helps students who tend to rush, take their time reading so they won't skip over key elements in the text.

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Set the Stage (community, seating, focus)

Plan to read aloud (Select a book - check length 15 min for reading and discussion and think about what is the best book for you)

Establish a clear purpose for reading (Indiana ELA Standards - Consider Comprehension)

Practice before class (plan questions, key vocabulary)

Make it interactive (ask open ended questions, model thinking)

Extending the read aloud (open ended questions for discussion, revisit focus)

PRACTICE!  (roommates, family, friends, etc.)

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Listening to literature being read aloud is one of the most valuable and pleasurable experiences beginning readers and writers can have. Read alouds should be part of every child's day.

Story time, circle time, and read alouds offer a chance to model good reading and thinking strategies and to expose young learners to a rich variety of literature. When this exposure is accompanied by supportive and engaging discussions, children are able to extend their world view and develop important critical thinking skills.

The following are some helpful hints that will help you make the most of your read aloud time.

Plan enough time for each session (15-20 minutes)

You'll want to give yourself and the children enough time to read aloud, to enjoy, and to discuss the story, poem, or information text.

Choose stories or texts that respond to children's interests and experiences

For very young children or emergent readers, choose books with vivid pictures, a strong story line, engaging characters, and evocative language. Humorous and predictable books are particularly successful.

Preview the book before you read it with the group so you can anticipate questions or reactions

Practice reading the book through so you can decide where to pause for emphasis and where to elicit questions, predictions, or reactions.

Introduce the book to the group

Point out the cover illustration, title, and author. Invite the children to predict what the book is about, and talk about how the book might connect to their own experience or to other books they've heard or read. You can also give a brief explanation about why you chose to read the book. "This is the story of a boy who goes on an unusual trip. I chose it because you just came back from a trip." Or "This is the story about a special friendship between a mouse and a whale. I have read this many times. I wonder what you will think about it."

Read with expression

Let your voice reflect the tone of the story or the personalities of the characters. Don't read too fast. Vary your pace so you can pause for emphasis. Allow time for children to think about what's happening or what might come next.

Build in time for listeners to respond along the way

Allow time for children to study the pictures as you read, make comments, and ask questions about the story.

Encourage predictions

Ask children what they think will happen next. Help them confirm or revise these predictions as the story unfolds. Try to honor many ideas and interpretations, not just the "correct" ones. Instead of accepting or rejecting comments or ideas as right or wrong, use comments such as "That's one possibility, let's see what the author has in mind." or "Well that's an interesting idea. How did you think of that?"

Watch your audience

Watch the children's expressions and body language and be sensitive to signs of boredom or confusion. You may need to change your reading plan, change the book, or do more preparation next time.

Save time at the end of the story to get reactions

Ask open-ended questions that don't have right or wrong answers and that can't be answered with a yes or no reply. For instance, ask what the child liked (or disliked) about the book and why. You may ask what he or she thought about the characters or how the problem was solved. Find out if the book made listeners think of any personal experiences or other books they've heard or read.

Point out parts of the story you noticed or especially liked

Show the children special language patterns or phrases or parts of the text that made you feel or visualize something. Ask children if there were other parts of the book they noticed.

Remember that for some children, listening to stories is a new experience

Some children aren't used to being read to and will need to develop that interest and ability. Start with short, interesting stories with strong pictures. In some cases, allow active children to manipulate play dough or to draw while listening. Be responsive to facial expressions and body language.

Encourage discussion about the story

Ask the children questions about what's going on and encourage them to predict what will come next. Be sure, though, not to turn the discussion into a quiz!

Most importantly: Have a good time!

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From previewing to reading with expression, here are several helpful hints for anyone preparing to read a book aloud to a group of children.

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CLCD is the complete solution for schools, districts, librarians, and educators to discover the right books for children.