Explicit pedagogy that focuses on visual design and composition principles can affect students' responses to and understanding, interpretation and analysis of images, as well as the creation of their own visual representations. This article considers the why, the what, and the how of teaching various visual elements of art and design to students…

Picturebooks were one format of multimodal text used during the classroom-based research that is featured in this article. Although the research conducted with a class of grade 7 students had several overarching purposes, the two most relevant to this article were to investigate student development of visual meaning-making skills and competencies…

During two multifaceted, classroom-based research projects, Grade 7 students had opportunities to develop their understanding of metafictive devices and art and design elements by reading a selection of picturebooks and graphic novels. The students also had the opportunity to apply their knowledge and create their own multimodal print texts. This…