GRAPHICAL LITERACY: READING GRAPHS, CHARTS, MAPS, AND TIMELINES As students develop into fluent readers, they encounter and must interpret graphical elements embedded in texts, including diagrams, timelines, charts, maps, illustrations, flowcharts, graphs, and tables (Roberts et al., 2013). Developing graphical literacy is important, as literacy standards demand that students be able to integrate and evaluate many of these types of visual content. Some standards even recognize the importance of graphical comprehension by explicit references in their anchor and grade-level standards. However, despite the inclusion of graphical literacy in higher standards and in many texts for students, “there is surprisingly little published research on instructional approaches to teaching children how to comprehend or produce graphics” (Roberts et al., 2013, p. 13). Magazine articles are often rich with graphical devices. Scholastic Magazines+ titles that target younger students often contain scaffolds that promote the understanding of graphical details; an example is the strategic use of color coding to clarify which visuals and text go together. Younger students may find it more challenging to understand that graphics and charts are connected to the text, but they can gain a stronger mastery with such conventions over time and increased exposure (Jordan & Massad, 2010). Moreover, older students can often navigate and interpret charts and images accompanying magazine articles because they are already interested in the content and topic, and therefore have prior background knowledge; the graphics serve to deepen their understanding of the topics (Gabriel et al., 2012). Scholastic Magazines+ in particular uses visual graphics to enhance students’ experiences with the text. For example, in one issue of Science World ® , students will find a graph displaying the chemical structure of saturated and unsaturated fats in foods, while readers of Scholastic MATH ® can use a graph to help calculate the volume of different sizes of dominoes. Social studies content in an edition of The New York Times Upfront ® is accompanied by multiple graphics: a map of food waste across the globe, a line graph depicting food consumption and loss, and a pie chart showing the contents of landfills and incinerators. These graphical representations are presented in age- and reading-level appropriate ways to facilitate accessibility and understanding.
SCHOLASTIC RESEARCH & VALIDATION 10
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