Students in Year 1 have recently been looking at "how actions and emotions that influence friendships can be learnt and applied." As an introduction to the concept of visual literacy I read a book called "The Sulky Vulture." I chose this book because of the links to the 'gestural' mode, specifically facial expression and body language. It has one great sulky character who has a group of friends who try to encourage him to play new games and try new things. The expressions on the character illustrations are perfect to analyse as a prediction activity. I copied each character and introduced them before reading the book. The introduction of new vocabulary such as 'sulky' lent itself perfectly to look at synonyms before finding other words for happy, angry and sad.
After reading the book we practiced different individual expressions before students paired up and reenacted the story. Each conversation was shown with the visual expression and correct body language. Students shared how to 'read' this visual information and could give examples of when and where they had encountered similar experiences in the playground.
As a follow up activity, I used a character expression sheet given to us by Liz Million, a UK author and illustrator who visited our school last year. Students were able to choose face shapes, eyebrows, eyes, noses and mouths to create an expression of their choice. They could then develop a short story that included their character.
Further details about the "Gestural" mode can be found in the First Steps Viewing and Presenting book.
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