Visual Narrative

Using visual language to construct and communicate meaning

COUNTRY:
SPAIN (Malaga)

WHO IT IS FOR:
Early years, primary and secondary education

DATES: Coming soon

Download the course brochure (Coming soon)

NOTE: All dates are provisional and subject to change.

To book your place contact the team at info@leaponline.eu

Course summary

This course is aimed at primary and secondary teachers of any subject, teaching assistants and other educational school staff.

Images are a language. Children read pictures long before they read words, and they grow up surrounded by them: picture books, comics, adverts, games, video. Like any language, visual language has a grammar that can be learnt, practised and taught, and its real power comes when you use it yourself. This course does both: participants learn how images make meaning, and they make images that communicate exactly what they intend.

Most of the week is spent making. Participants draw, take photographs, plan storyboards, build comics, and shoot and edit short films, using the phones, tablets and free tools that schools already have. Each making task comes with a principle of visual communication: how images signal meaning, how words steer what a picture says, how a sequence carries a story, and how framing, staging and body language direct attention and emotion.

The two strands grow together. Every principle is put straight into practice, and every new skill builds on the ones before it: a single photograph becomes a sequence, a sequence becomes a storyboard, and a storyboard becomes a comic or a film. By the end of the week participants are planning and making visual narratives with confidence, and they know why they work. Each participant keeps a visual diary throughout, joining words and images in a way that works just as well with pupils.

In the second half of the week the host town becomes the raw material. Working in small teams, often with colleagues who teach the same age group or subject, participants gather images and stories locally and turn them into a finished learning resource, such as a comic, a photo story or a short film, designed so that colleagues back home can use it too. The week ends with each participant planning how to bring visual narrative into their own teaching.

During the week, the group visits a local school to see how Spanish colleagues use images, media and storytelling in their classrooms, and to compare notes with teachers working with the same age groups.

What you'll take back to school
• A working grasp of visual language: how images, words, sequence and framing combine to make meaning
• Practical skills in drawing, photography, storyboarding, comic-making and video, built up step by step and ready to teach
• At least one finished visual learning resource, made during the week and ready to use with your classes
• Your own visual diary of the week, and ideas for using visual diaries with your pupils
• A bank of activities for storytelling, literacy and media work, adaptable for different ages and subjects
• An action plan for bringing visual narrative into your teaching, and contacts with teachers across Europe

Cost: £1760 ( twin/shared accommodation)

This professional development event includes:

• 6 nights in shared accommodation

• Training sessions

• A school visit

• A welcome reception with refreshments

• 6 breakfasts, 5 lunches and 2 evening meals as specified in the detailed programme.

NOTE: Travel to and from Spain is NOT included in the price above

What participants have said about this course