While ‘table’ and ‘chart’ suggest a numerical element, ‘diagram’ raises the expectation of illustrations showing structures like part of a machine or vehicle or processes like food chains or life cycles. Computer technology now provides the opportunity to see machines and parts of the body working. For a detailed analysis of visual forms in electronic texts like the Internet and CD-ROMs, I recommend Tina Sharpe and Elizabeth Dieter’s chapter ‘Visual literacy and the Internet’ in Image Matters, an interesting publication from Australia edited by Jon Callow, 1999. There are two things to remember about diagrams and other visual forms. First they are, like written texts, culturally situated – our cultural experiences affect how we view them. Second, visual kinds of literacy need to be taught – particularly the relatively new electronic forms.
But will electronic forms make print texts redundant? I think not – for one thing print texts are in some respects more flexible in that they can be carried to many locations. And reading a book is a distinct experience. So, rather than replacing books and print diagrams, new technology has energised book production and made possible highly effective computer-enhanced diagrams and illustrations, particularly in children’s information and reference books.
What qualities make a good diagram, particularly for children? Apart from accuracy, clarity and attractiveness, good labelling like that in David Macaulay’s book The Way Things Work (in print and on CD-ROM, Dorling Kindersley) is essential. There also needs to be good linkage between diagrams and the accompanying written text. If children look at and talk about quality diagrams they are more likely to be inspired to construct their own in a clear manner.
Cross-sections are a particular kind of diagram often encountered in texts written for primary school children. They are a feature of texts in several subject areas: history where the internal structure of the buildings of a period may be studied, for example a medieval or Tudor house; geography when soil layers or rock structures may need to be shown; science where the internal structure of part of the human or an animal body needs to be revealed. If you want to introduce cross-sections to the under eights in an entertaining way, I recommend Manning and Granstrom’s What’s Under the Bed (Franklin Watts, in small and big book format), a highly original story about the imaginary journey of two children and their cat through the layers of the earth right through to the burning centre. The big book version would be particularly helpful in showing how a key works – there is a splendid example of a key on the page showing the structure of an ant colony.
How much detail should a cross-section show? Of course it all depends on your purpose. One of my students worked with six year old on a series of lessons on mini-beasts and noted that they found the simple, uncluttered cross-section of a spider in French and Wisenfield’s Spider Watching (Walker Books) very helpful at the beginning of the work. However, when their questions about the spider’s structure became more detailed, she brought in Ted Dewan’s Inside the Whale and Other Animals (Dorling Kindersley, 1992). They needed a lot of help in understanding the enormously detailed cross section of the spider but became deeply absorbed and asked the teacher to read the labels and annotations about the spider’s tarsal claws and spinnerets. So, where children have got some foothold in a topic they can tackle difficult text and diagrams, with help of course, to feed their curiosity.
I find older primary children enjoy Stephen Biesty’s work, in print or on CD-ROM, in which everything – pictures, labels, annotations and longer written accounts – is beautifully interrelated. A teacher using Biesty’s Incredible Cross Sections: Castle in Year 6 history work praised the great attention to detail Biesty shows – for example on page 11 even a small corner of the cross section shows how castles were built and the workers’ authentic tools. Opposite the picture Biesty provides the fruits of his extremely conscientious research, telling us about the nature and origins of the materials used to build the castle, the structure and function of the different tools and even the procedures necessary to get permission to build the castle in the first place. The sheer fun and wit of the pictures draws the young readers in, but they find that the information both pictorial and written is far from superficial.
Bearne, E. and Wolstencroft, H. (2007) Visual Approaches to Teaching Writing: Multimodal Literacy. London: Paul Chapman.
Callow, Jon (ed.) (1999) Image Matters: Visual Texts in the Classroom Marrickville, Australia: PETA, The Primary English Teaching Association (www.peta.edu.au).
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