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Volume 1 • Issue 1 • Fall/Winter 2012 ISSN 2169-2777 TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE Volume 1 • Issue 1 • Fall/Winter 2012 2 Editorial Catherine Kurkjian FEATURE ARTICLES 3 Design Elements of Picturebooks: Interpreting Visual Images and Design Elements of Contemporary Picturebooks Frank Serafini 10 Strategic Looking: Using Reading Comprehension Strategies with Pictures Kathleen O’Neil 16 Close Reading with Graphic Novels Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher 23 Insuring Student Independence in Meeting the CCSS Expectations Donna M. Ogle DEPARTMENTS Children’s and Young Adult Literature 32 Spotlighting the Literacy Needs of African American Males Jane M. Gangi Critical Literacy 39 Possibility of Hope: The Meaning of Critical Literacy Cara Mulcahy Teacher Research 44 Action Research in Connecticut Schools: Excerpts From Four Teacher Research Projects Joanne Cunard New Literacies 57 Cornerstone of a New Literacies Curriculum John G. McVerry 59 Online Collaborative Inquiry: Classroom Blogging Ventures and Multiple Literacies Judy Arzt 72 Online Content Construction: Students as Informed Readers and Writers of Multimodal Information W. Ian O’Byrne 79 Reading Digitally Like a Historian: Using Multimedia Texts to Facilitate Disciplinary Learning Michael Manderino 83 Reviews of Professional Books Jane Logie ISSN 2169-2777 The Connecticut Reading Association Journal • Volume 1 • Issue 1 ABOUT THIS ISSUE ABOUT Dear Readers, It is my pleasure to present to you the Connecticut Reading Association Journal (CRAJ). The birth of this exciting new Journal follows our 61st Annual Conference. It is peer-reviewed and will be published twice yearly (fall and spring) as one of the many benefits of your Connecticut Reading Association (CRA) membership. CRAJ is in keeping with CRA’s mission to 1) promote literacy for all by improving the quality of reading instruction through the study of current reading research methods and practices, and 2) serve as a clearinghouse in disseminating reading information. Our intent is to provide our members with valuable professional resources and cutting edge articles on a wide range of important topics including the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The Journal’s five rotating sections include Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Critical Literacy, Teacher Research, New Literacies, and Reviews of Professional Books and invited and peer-reviewed feature articles. Additionally we have a Children’s and Young Adult Literature resource available in the CRAJ section of the CRA website that will provide you with a wide range of useful resources and children’s books. FEATURE ARTICLES This inaugural issue features national authors who speak to issues of visual literacy. The first two articles are compan- ion pieces and center on visual images in picture books. Serafini’sInterpreting Visual Images and Design Elements of Contemporary Picturebooks provides us with a metalanguage for thinking about and discussing picture books while O’Neil’s Strategic Looking: Using Reading Comprehension Strategies with Pictures has a more practiced-based teaching focus that will help us to be strategic observers of images. While still focusing on visual literacy, the second two articles make direct connections to the CCSS. Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher turn our attention to the concept of close reading as we apply it to graphic novels in Close Reading with Graphic Novels. Next, Donna Ogle’s Insuring Student Independence in Meeting the CCSS Expectations targets visual literacy in light of content area reading and gives us strategies to develop and implement content area curriculum that are congruent with the CCSS. In particular, she shares the PRC2 reading-discussion unit framework and walks us step by step though the process. DEPARTMENTS Our section editors make their debut in this first issue. For starters, Jane M. Gangi provides us with ideas of what’s to come in the Children’s and Young Adult Literature section. She then spotlights the important subject of literacy needs of African American males. When you visit the Children’s and Young Adult Literature Resources page, you will find hundreds of titles and a wide range of ideas to use in your classrooms related to this topic and others. In Possibility and Hope: The Meaning of Critical Literacy, Cara Mulcahy lays the groundwork for understanding what is meant by critical literacy and in doing so she paves the way for what is to come in our upcoming issues addressed in the Critical Literacy section. The Teacher Research section, edited by Joanne Cunard, writes about what teacher research entails and offers four real life excerpts of research by Connecticut teachers. Department Editor of the New Literacies section, John G. McVerry brings us articles on three key areas on new literacies; online collaborative inquiry, online content construction, and digital reading within the content domain of history. The articles by Judy Artz, W. Ian O’Byrne and Michael Mandarino offer us important ways to understand the ever-changing nature of new literacies. Finally, Jane Logie, editor of Reviews of Professional Books brings us critiques of interesting books to enhance your teaching to add to your professional library. This department will be available in the fall issue and will rotate with an English Language Learner Department which will debut in our spring issue. We hope you find the offerings in this first issue exciting and valuable to your work. Enjoy, Catherine Kurkjian, Ed.D Editor, Connecticut Reading Association Journal ISSN 2169-2777 The Connecticut Reading Association Journal • Volume 1 • Issue 1 FEATURE ARTICLE FEATURE FEATURE ARTICLE FEATURE DESIGN ELEMENTS OF PICTUREBOOKS: Interpreting Visual Images and Design Elements of Contemporary Picturebooks Frank Serafini, Ph.D, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ s the texts readers encounter ings in different ways and different As literacy educators working in A evolve from monomodal enti- contexts for different purposes. The schools today, we need to develop ties, dominated by written language, meaning potentials realized through instructional approaches to help stu- to multimodal ensembles, replete written language are different from dents navigate, interpret and analyze with visual images, sophisticated photography, and photography of- multimodal elements to ensure our design elements and hypertextual fers different meaning potentials students are capable of fully partici- features, the strategies readers draw from sculpture and architecture. pating as literate citizens in our soci- upon to comprehend these com- ety, now and into the future (Serafini, plex texts will need to evolve as Contemporary educators and literacy 2009). This does not mean that we well (Serafini, in press; Unsworth, theorists have described a shift from need to abandon the comprehension 2002). The competencies required the dominance of print-based texts strategies focusing on print-based of readers in today’s environment that rely primarily on written lan- texts that have become an integral have expanded from cognitively- guage to the emergence of print and part of many classrooms, it means based reading comprehension skills digitally-based, multimodal texts that that we need to expand the repertoire (Pressley & Block, 2001) to include contain visual images and other de- of strategies we teach our students strategies for comprehending the sign elements (Anstey, 2002; Kress, to address the changing dimensions visual images and design features 2003). In schools today, readers inter- of the texts they read and encounter. presented within and across multi- act with traditional, print-based texts modal texts, for example postmod- that contain multimodal elements, The evolution of texts, from print- ern picturebooks, magazines, news for example picturebooks, informa- based, monomodal texts to digitally reports, and webpages (Serafini, tional texts, magazines and newspa- rendered, multimodal ensembles, has 2011; Sipe & Pantaleo, 2008). pers, as well as digitally-based texts material, technological and social di- that contain visual images, hyper- mensions. Technologically, the most A multimodal ensemble is a text that text, video, music, and sound effects. prominent shift in the past few de- draws on a variety or multiplicity of Magazines, billboards, picturebooks, cades has been from the medium of modes, for example painting, pho- webpages, brochures, video games, the page to the medium of the screen tography, written language, diagrams advertisements and textbooks all con- (Kress, 2003). As this shift has contin- and visual design elements. Modes tain a blend of visual images, design ued, the image has come to dominate are socioculturally shaped resources elements and written language. These written text and visual design elements have begun to play a more meaning- ful role in multimodal ensembles. As As literacy educators working in schools today, we need to Kress (2003) asserts, we can no longer develop instructional approaches to help students navigate, treat language as the primary means interpret and analyze multimodal elements to ensure our for representation or communication, students are capable of fully participating as literate citizens and proficiency with written language in our society, now and into the future (Serafini, 2009). alone cannot provide access to the meaning potentials of the multimod- ally constructed text. This assertion for realizing, representing, interpret- digitally and print-based texts present has important implications for litera- ing and communicating

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