Images are a powerful tool to build language
PIPPA Hetherington is a photographer and communications specialist who runs her own sustainable development photography archive called Earthstock. Here, she shares her views on the role of pictures in the growing literacy of a child . . .
As a photographer and someone who is passionate about early childhood development, I believe photographs can play a great role in early literacy for kids.
By the time I became a photographer, my son was about eight years old, so I never used my own photography in conversation with him in his early years. But I used other people’s photography all the time.
For instance, when he was five, I bought stacks of old magazines and we paged through them and cut out photos of people (that he chose) from different parts of the world and then stuck them up on the wall.
We used to talk about the people in the photos and discuss the continents they came from, the language they spoke, and the kind of life we thought they may have lived.
We then used those conversations to chat about his own life and what was important to him.
I think this helped his emotional and social development and encouraged him to talk about his feelings in relation to a photo. It’s a simple connection between the sight sense and the brain.
Young children learn language by learning the names of things. Whether it is a photograph of a family member, a building or an object like a ball, photos offer children a connection to reality and help them understand a more concrete perception of the image.
Children have a natural thirst for language acquisition and a need to contextualise images in their own world, so using photographs as a tool to build vocabulary is also very effective.
Giving them control over a camera can also be a useful way in which to open up conversations about things that interest them, what they care about and what the meaning of the images are to them.
It’s a beautiful way of accessing a lens into their view of the world, where it’s uninhibited or predetermined by an adult.
Also, parents in low-resource settings can’t always get their hands on books, so photographs become a great resource to bridge that gap.
One of the most effective ways of using photography as a way of engaging a child in the learning process is to go on a “picture walk”. It can be around the block in their own neighbourhood, to a local park, or to the shops etc.
Stop at anything that interests the child on the way – a tyre, a dog, a pair of socks on a washing line – and snap the images.
Then sit down and ask the child to tell you a story about each photo. This helps them with understanding their own environment, nature and building memory.
Reading and telling stories with your children is a powerful gift to them – it builds knowledge, language, imagination and school success! For more information about the Nal’ibali ‘Stor y Power’ campaign or to view Nal’ibali’s powerful PSA promoting mother tongue languages, visit www.nalibali.org