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What spoke to me first during this section, was that visual literacy is something that needs to be actively taught. I had never thought about it this way, but like the article and videos said, visual literacy is just like learning to read, it builds upon itself and it starts in beginning stages. It also stressed how important it is to keep presenting students with visual stimuli (art, etc.) to help them become practiced at looking at something and critically observing it for understanding. All of these complex critical thinking skills need to be taught, guided, and ultimately, practiced, for students to become visually literate.
I appreciated identifying visual literacy as a term and defining it--"the ability to find meaning in imagery." This helped me to understand this area as a learning goal and something with which I can integrate into my instruction. I also thought it was interesting to learn about the studies Abigail Housen had done in identifying five stages of visual literacy. Art can be appreciated and explored at all stages, even the first stage in which students look at a picture and try to relate it to what they know. In a way, they are storytelling when they look at art and begin to tell what they see. This made so much sense to me. The article also stressed how stage two is so impotrant because students are SO ready to learn. At this stage, hey are curious and realize that there is so much more to visual stimuli than just the basic truths with which they are familiar. They know that there is value/meaning with which they haven't learned yet. We, as teachers, need to take advantage of this curiosity and develop those visual literacy skills.
My final takeaway from this section was truly understanding the difference between "arts enhancement" and "arts integration." So many people think that arts integration is just using something like music or art to support the learning of some OTHER standard. However, that is simply, "arts enhancement," or using the arts to enhance the learning of other standards. True art integration is teaching fine arts standards as their own standard along with teaching other subject standards. The examples of teaching math (fractions) while simultaneously relating it to music standards (rhythm notation and value) made so much sense in illustration what art integration truly is.
For my own classroom, I have realized what was stated in the last video, that arts integration does not work unless students have access to a strong arts base. As a music teacher, it is essential that I give my students the strong base that they need to understand music, form, patterns, active listening, etc., so that my colleagues can find ways in their classroom to connect learning to fine arts standards as well. This is EXACTLY what was said at the very beginning of this section--that concepts learned across multiple disciplines will be learned the most thoroughly.
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