1. Introduction Scholarly Discussion
Classroom Context
Conclusion and Future Implications
Student Work
Activity – Procedures
Activity – Bang’s Principles
Every student has a story. The unfortunate truth is that many are left on the
shelf while potential readers pick up others. An educator’s job entails picking
up every story and reading its entirety no matter how terrific the triumph or
sorrowful the disappointment. Insofar as sharing those stories with their
peers, a teacher’s goal then must be to aid students in “developing a
language to see differently…within disciplines” generating “largely reflective
talk…[with] both a heuristic and communicative function” acknowledging
“aesthetic choices…perspectives…changes…[This] offers teachers and
students a way to talk back to the accountability culture by making explicit
their understandings of multimodality and of themselves as sign-makers”
(emphasis mine; Siegel, 2012, p. 12). Here students studying additional
languages gain the agency to express their ideas in a new, enlightened
manner. Therefore, looking critically into use of student voice via illustrated
texts in secondary Italian classrooms, the integration of visual literacy will
posit students as arbiters of a critical visual praxis in their additional language
and about the literary cannon/tradition thereof.
Location: Seneca High School - Tabernacle, NJ
(part of Lenape Region High School District)
Subject: AP Italian Language and Culture
Student Demographic: 10 students – 7
females, 3 males; white; 16-18 years old; all
seniors
Languages of Instruction: Italian (85%) and
English (15%)
Languages Spoken by Students: primarily
English L1, however one Italian/English L1
bilingual
How does a multimodal pedagogy affect student agency
during literacy acquisition in the additional language
classroom?
Abbiamo letto in classe un libro senza parole. Per applicare la nostra conoscenza in
crescita costante, Bang (2000) descrive un’attività artistica dove gli studenti fanno
un’entità illustrata (CF: student reading inventory - “SRI”) in cui dimostrano la loro
comprensione della storia. Discute che l’illustrazione offre gli studenti una
opportunità di esprimersi in un modo comprensivo creativo ed alloca un tipo di
potenza di “riscrivere” la storia nelle loro voci. Dopo avere letto un libro senza parole,
completate un “SRI” d’accordo i principali che Bang ci spiega.
In class we read a wordless picturebook. In order to apply our constantly growing
knowledge, Bang (2000) describes an artistic activity where students illustratively
demonstrate (CF: student reading inventory – “SRI”) their comprehension of the
narrative. Describing the illustration affords the students an opportunity to express
themselves creatively while reconstructing their own interpretation of the plot. After
having read the wordless picturebook, you are to create an SRI according to the
principles spelled out by Bang.
Focused Investigative Question
 Consensus:
1. Thomas (2015) defines a critical visual praxis as a place where teachers allow their students to
analyze images by the same function as they do the written word. Students, then, come to
understand how they create meaning in relation to the semiotic world around them. In an
additional language classroom, this praxis would also include the development of language for
expression and opinion.
2. Sipe (2008) asserts that this “semiotic perspective provides a foundation for viewing children’s
literary understanding of picturebooks not as a deficient form of adult understanding, but the
beginning of the same process of sign interpretation used by adults” (pp. 16-17).
3. “…students are able to focus their attention and powers of interpretation. As a result, they read
images at an impressively deep level and are able to connect ‘local’ meanings within the panel to
‘global’ themes throughout the book” (Versaci, 2001, p. 98).
4. Herein, students “‘must learn to look for specific, significant objects rather than do what seems to
be more natural for prelinguistic beings and give equal attention to the entire picture plane’” (as
cited in Sanders, 2013, p. 62).
5. Siegel (2006) argues, “…literacy development should be theorized as participation in the vital
work of childhood, that is, learning about and acting on their world and their place in it” (p. 67).
 Contention:
1. “[C]hildren”, Nodelman asserts, “are nevertheless not yet fully formed. They are pliable, and
therefore, highly suggestible, and they are prone to dangerous experimentation…[They] are
egocentric…And they aren’t interested in matters outside their own immediate experience” (1996,
p. 73).
2. Bettelheim (1989) would agree in arguing that “[o]nly in adulthood can an intelligent
understanding of the meaning of one’s existence in this world be gained from one’s experience’s
from it…as if mature understanding of ourselves and the world, and our ideas about the meaning
of life, did not have to develop as slowly as our bodies and minds” (p. 3). In other words, children
need “most particularly to be given suggestions in symbolic form about how [they] may deal with
theses issues and grow safely into maturity…[despite lacking] experience in moral education” (pp.
8-9).
3. Adapted literature, therefore, “emasculate[s] the classics, condense[s] them (leaving out
everything that makes the book great), [is] just as badly printed and inartistically drawn
…and…do[es] not reveal to children the world of good literature which has at all times been the
mainstay of liberal and humanistic education. [It] conceal[s] it” (Wertham, 2004, p. 55).
In introducing illustrated texts to the Italian secondary classroom, teachers redefine the
confines of literacy. Literacy becomes more about socialization into language rather than
inorganic techniques of reading and writing. “‘…[I]t is a matter of structuring a practice
among a group of children in which readers, or listeners, can claim a story as their own so
that they remember this story, it becomes part of their repertoire of living memories’” (as
cited in Lewison et al., 2002, p. 217). Students’ intellectual growth via illustrated texts
preponderates a sense of comfort and makes learning an additional language interactive
and fun. This type of classroom environment pushes students to explain ideas and points of
view tangentially over focusing on rote memorization of verbal paradigms or nominal
phrases. The purpose of including illustrated texts into the Italian secondary classroom,
then, is to afford students the opportunity to understand the curriculum through a different
means. With these visual texts, students “…see what [they] learn to see, and the act of
viewing a picture involves [their] active construction of its elements in a meaningful whole
rather than a simple passive reception” (Sipe, 2008, p. 18). Therefore students are not
subject to chaperoning of knowledge and now can express their knowledge in many
formats. So, when trying to incorporate illustrated texts into the Italian as a foreign language
classroom, teachers must address the following inquiries: How will students attain
sociocultural knowledge via illustrated literature? Are there ways in which L2 literacy
instruction can be multimodal? What needs must be met for L2 literacy development via
illustrated texts? Can students express their ideas in L2 more effectively when discussing
an illustrated text versus traditional prose? Why are illustrated texts more apt for the L2
classroom as opposed to bulk-text excerpts?
Student Voice, Engagement, and Expression: The Importance of the
Illustrated Text in Italian as a Foreign Language Secondary Classrooms
Brandon Epstein
Graduate School of Education, 2016 MSEd Candidate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
1. Smooth, flat, horizontal shapes give us a sense of stability and calm (p. 42).
2. Vertical shapes are more exciting and more active. Vertical shapes rebel against
the earth's gravity. They imply energy and a reaching toward heights or the
heavens (p. 44).
3. Diagonal shapes are dynamic because they imply motion or tension (p. 46).
4. The upper half of a picture is a place of freedom, happiness, and triumph; objects
placed in the top half often feel more ‘spiritual.’ The bottom half of a picture feels
threatened, heavier, sadder, or constrained; objects placed in the bottom half also
feel more grounded. An object placed higher up on the page has ‘greater pictorial
weight’ (pp. 54-56).
5. The center of the page is the most effective ‘center of attention.’ It is the point of
greatest attraction. The edges and corners of the picture are the edges and
corners of the picture-world (pp. 62-66).
6. White or light backgrounds feel safer to us than dark backgrounds because we
can see well during the say and only poorly at night (p. 68).
7. We feel more scared looking at pointed shapes; we feel more secure or comforted
looking at rounded shapes or curves (p. 70).
8. The larger an object is in a picture, the stronger it feels (p. 72).
9. We associate the same or similar colors much more strongly than we associate
the same or similar shapes (p. 76).
10.We notice contrasts, or, put another way, contrast enables us to see (p. 80).
References
• Bang, M. (2000). Picture this: How pictures work. San Francisco, CA: Chronical Books
LLC.
• Becker, A. (2013). Journey. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.
• Bettelheim, B. (1989). Introduction: The struggle for meaning. In The uses of
enchantment (pp. 3-19). New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Lewison, M., Leland, C., Flint, A. S., & Möller, K. J. (2002). Dangerous discourses: Using
controversial books to support engagement, diversity, and democracy. New Advocate,
15(3), 215-226.
• Nodelman, P. (1996). Common assumptions about childhood. In The pleasures of
children’s literature (pp. 67-90). White Plains, NY: Longman Publishers.
• Sanders, J. S. (2013). Chaperoning words: Meaning-making in comics and picture books.
Children’s Literature 41, 57-90.
• Siegel, M. (2006). Rereading the signs: Multimodal transformations in the field of literacy
education. Language Arts 84(1), 65-71.
• Siegel, M. (2012). New times for multimodality?: Confronting the accountability culture.
• Sipe, L. (2008). Picturebooks and Children's Responses. In Storytime: Young children's
literary understanding in the classroom (pp. 13-35). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
• Thomas, E. E. (2015). Literacy and illustrated texts: Picturebooks, comics, and graphic
novels.
• Thompson, B. (2010). Chalk. New York, NY: Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books.
• Versaci, R. (2001). "Literary Literacy" and the Role of the Comic Book or "You Teach a
Class on What?" English Journal, 91-111.
• Wiesner, D. (2010). Art and Max. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Wertham, F. (2004). Seduction of the Innocent. New York, NY: Reinhart and Company.