Visualizing (online reflection #3)
My class just finished reading the novel Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding. As a proverbial cherry on top for the unit, my MT (Mentor Teacher) and I decided to show them the film adaptation. You know, the black and white arthouse flick from the 60s? Yeah, that one. Anyways, we decided to show them the film because we both felt that the students had a somewhat hard time engaging with the text. Retrospectively, we felt there was a missing sense that the students were being deprived of: we realized that students had a hard time connecting to Golding’s images. Wanting to adhere to notions of dual-coding (that is delivering information in visual and verbal formats) we decided to allow real images (i.e. the film) to help build their understanding of the novel, the setting, the characters, etc. Reading through a pedagogical text, I was surprised to see this notion supported: “[films, video, etc.] serve as parallel texts that lay thematic content alongside the writer’s ideas in pri...