Core standards and visual literacy

I’m sure none of us were surprised that there was very little in the common core state standards about visual literacy. However, the reading standards for elementary students were more geared toward visual literacy than secondary students. The foundational standards for kindergarteners were especially geared toward acquiring visual literacy. It focused a lot on corresponding the letter sounds to their written characters, along with how to read letters and words on the page. It made me think about how we often struggle most when learning a new language with writing and reading. I know when I took French classes in high school, I struggled the most with spelling and grammar, but I excelled at speaking. I thought it was interesting how visual literacy is seen as a foundational skill for students in kindergarten and first grade but is completely absent for second grade onward. I find it interesting that the common core standards don’t seem to include different types of reading in these standards as well. Seeing as most of these students will be learning in a mainly audio-visual learning environment. I know the only other kinds of visual literacy I learned while I was in high school was through my art classes. I learned color theory and perspective along with many other art techniques. Art was one of the few classes I took that relied on purely visual techniques in order to convey meaning. I feel my art classes taught me way more about visual literacy than any of the other classes I took in high school. I had taken art classes before that and after, however, that was the one class of the day where I wasn’t listening to a lecture or writing notes. It was the one time of day where I could just stop and learn how to convey my own thoughts visually.