What Role Should Pictures Play in Teaching Reading?

Tim Shanahan

Teacher question:

In the current era of readily available teacher-created materials through open marketplaces, and given the critical importance of print materials for beginning readers—particularly for multilingual learners and students with disabilities—what does current research indicate are the best practices regarding the optimal amounts of extraneous visuals to truly support their literacy development effectively?  

Shanahan responds:

I hope most teachers are not spending a lot of time “creating” instructional materials. Some do, of course, but they tend to be a tiny minority. I’d rather their time be spent on figuring out students’ learning needs.

Of course, there are those cut-and-paste artists who create “new” materials by photocopying other people’s work (there’s plenty of that on Teachers Pay Teachers). I wouldn’t want to encourage that kind of thing.

On the other hand, teachers do, themselves, purchase materials or serve on curriculum selection committees that make those choices. The kind of information you requested could be of value to them.

My main interest is with how we can best teach children to read. Accordingly, my answer is aimed at guiding teachers about how to work with pictures in reading instruction. I’ve written before about that kind of thing when it comes to science reading. This entry is focused more on teaching kids to read.

One big issue with graphics has to do with teaching words – both in terms of the memorization of sight words and the mastery of word meanings (vocabulary).

What role, if any, should pictures play in these lessons?  

I know some people will get their backs up about the idea of having kids memorize words (there is a “science of reading”, after all).

Even with decodable text, there may be a need to introduce words kids won’t be able to sound out. An example of this is high frequency words with unusual spelling patterns like of or the.  

Also, sometimes, to keep decodables interesting or comprehensible, some words are introduced that, though decodable, are not yet decodable by the kids at whom this text is aimed – instruction hasn’t yet introduced those patterns. Depending on grade level, time of year, and specific decoding curriculum, words like dinosaur, monkey, plane, garden, or soccer could require some teaching.

Whether the word is the or monkey, I hope publishers will be sure to use those words frequently (Hiebert, Martin, & Menon, 2005). There is no point in teaching a word that won’t be used often. Also, teachers should introduce such words prior to the reading, that way kids can focus on the decodable patterns that they’re supposed to be practicing with those decodable texts.

Obviously, we won’t use a picture with a word like the, but we might with monkey.

However, according to scads of studies, such pictures provide more distraction than support (e.g., Harzem, Lee, & Miles, 1976; Samuels, 1970).

We learn to remember and read words by looking at the words, that is by looking at the combinations of the letters of which the words are comprised (and that’s as true for those exception words as for those that share common patterns).  

Six-year-olds are more interested in looking at pictures of monkeys than at the letters m-o-n-k-e-y. Consequently, when presented with word and picture, they peruse the graphic rather than studying the letter sequence. At best their attention is split, reducing the likelihood of learning.

If your aim is to build vocabulary knowledge however, the picture is a bit different (yes, an intentional pun, forgive me). For this, pictures can be beneficial. Studies show that providing a graphic representation of words – even of abstract words – can increase understanding and retention (e.g., Coyne, McCoach, Ware, Loftus-Rattan, Baker, Santoro, & Oldham, 2022)

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