Emily McCord, a senior early childhood education major from Asheville, N.C. held a presentation of her capstone project “Incorporating Visual Literacy in a First Grade Classroom: A Picture Dictionary Project” at the Laurens County Library on Thursday, April 28, 2016.

McCord explained that she grew passionate about photography in high school because she saw it as an empowering experience.

“I wanted the kids to know what that is like,” McCord said. “Being able to create pictures is a wonderful thing.”

McCord explained that the project takes the concept of visual literacy and adds it to a classroom setting through the use of concepts being taught to first graders. She introduced the project to students at Laurens Elementary with a lesson on how to use a camera. McCord then had the students take pictures of people, places, things, actions, and descriptions that corresponded to nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

Students took pictures from all over the school, and the photographs were then compiled into picture dictionaries.

“They were the ones who were able to pick which pictures they wanted and what they wanted the photo to define,” McCord said. “The students took to the cameras and were very excited to be able to use them. Not only that, the students’ ownership of the photos was more important than the dictionaries they created.”

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