So far this semester, we have been navigating through the awesome and interesting world of biology. We have explorered ecology, busted out biochemistry, and are now crankin' out cells! Little did I know how much the honors students that I have been working with would get frustrated by a simple diagram.
A big part of visual literacy in the science classroom is being able to understand these diagrams. As a college student, these diagrams have been thrown at me left, right, and at the back of my head. Otherwise, to me, they are SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). Diagrams have been what has helped me get through the complexity of science. Clearly, my student do not understand my point of view. While administering a cell part quiz to the students, it became very clear that these students did not understand how to read these diagrams.I would get questions such as "Is that line pointing to this little spot or the whole thing?" or "If there are two lines branching off of one line does that mean that those are the same?". Now, to be honest, the cell is confusing since there are a bazillion and a half parts. But I was not prepared for these types of questions.
Half frustrated and half disheartened, I decided to do a mini lesson on reading diagrams for my students. After much jumping around and drawing crazy lines and shapes, this was something that was so easily cleared up after the 15 min. lesson. My question is why are Honors level freshmen struggling with this? This is part of our science literacy! Diagrams are designed to simplify and/or illustrate a complex concept. Scientists use them, the newspaper uses them, and often we see them in pop culture. Our students need to know this.
As teachers, we need to make sure that our students are literate in not only the text literacies, but also in the visual literacies. If we do not teach these skills, how can our students learn them?
Goal for this upcoming semester: Teach my students visual literacy of using diagrams.
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