📋 Teaching Resources → 📄 Visual Text Analysis and Creation — Years 9–10
Years 9–10 Reo Pākehā / English
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Ngā Tuhinga Aro Mata · Visual Text Analysis and Creation

Design elements, purpose and audience, ethical media · Years 9–10

SubjectEnglish
Year LevelYears 9–10
StrandLanguage Studies
TypeStudent activity — classroom resource

Ngā Whāinga Akoranga · Learning Intentions

  • Identify the design elements visual texts use to communicate ideas, emotions, and messages.
  • Analyse visual texts for purpose, audience, content, and technique — including ethical considerations around media use.
  • Plan and create a visual text, making deliberate choices about language, structural, and stylistic features for a specific audience and purpose.
  • Evaluate and revise a visual text for effectiveness.

Paearu Angitu · Success Criteria

  • I can name at least four design elements and explain how one of them creates meaning in a visual text I have analysed.
  • I can use the PACT framework to analyse a visual text, identifying purpose, audience, content, and technique.
  • I can create a visual text with a stated purpose and audience, explaining my design choices.
  • I can identify one ethical issue related to a media text I have encountered.

Hononga Marautanga · Curriculum Connections

This activity addresses the following English curriculum statements (Draft 2025, Phase 4 — Years 9, 10):

  • Language Studies — Visual Texts: Visual texts communicate ideas, emotions, and messages through design elements to convey meaning. They are designed for specific purposes (to entertain, inform, or persuade) and take various forms — including moving images that incorporate oral language. Ethical use of media and digital content applies when creating and sharing visual texts.
  • Language Studies — Creating a Visual Text: Planning and developing a visual text using language, structural, and stylistic features for a selected audience and purpose. Evaluating and revising the content, structure, style, and language features of a visual text for effectiveness.

Wāhanga 1 · What is a Visual Text?

A visual text communicates primarily through images, layout, and design — rather than through written or spoken language alone. Visual texts are everywhere.

Still images
  • Advertisements
  • Infographics
  • Photographs
  • Posters / flyers
  • Political cartoons
Moving images
  • Film / TV
  • Music videos
  • Documentaries
  • Social media reels
  • Animations
Multimodal
  • Websites
  • Social media posts
  • Graphic novels
  • Presentations
  • Memes

Design elements — the tools visual texts use to make meaning:

  • Colour: creates mood, symbolism, hierarchy
  • Layout / composition: guides the eye, creates emphasis
  • Font / typography: tone, formality, personality
  • Space: white space focuses attention
  • Image / photography: angle, subject, framing
  • Scale: size signals importance
  • Movement / editing: pace, cuts, transitions
  • Sound: tone, music, silence

Choose one design element from the list above. Explain what it communicates in a visual text you have seen recently:

Wāhanga 2 · Analysing a Visual Text — PACT

Use the PACT framework to break down any visual text systematically. Ask: What does this text want me to think, feel, or do?

Visual text I am analysing (title or description):

P — Purpose

To entertain / inform / persuade (circle one). Specifically, it wants me to:

A — Audience

Who is this made for? How do you know?

C — Content

What is included? What is left out? What viewpoints are represented?

T — Technique

Which design elements are most powerful? How do they create meaning?

Ethical lens: Does this text represent all people fairly? Could it mislead, stereotype, or harm? Who produced it, and why?

One ethical issue or question raised by this text:

Wāhanga 3 · Creating Your Visual Text

Before you create, plan deliberately. The most effective visual texts are intentional — every choice carries meaning.

My topic:
My purpose:
My audience:

My form (circle): Poster   Infographic   Social media post   Short film   Presentation slide   Other: ___________

Plan your design choices — fill in at least three:

Design element My choice Why this choice serves my purpose/audience
Colour palette
Font / typography
Layout / composition
Image / photography

After creating your text — what would you change and why? (Evaluate and revise)

Aronga Mātauranga Māori · Te Ao Māori Lens

In te ao Māori, visual communication has deep roots. Tā moko (facial and body markings) encodes whakapapa and identity. Whakairo (carving) and raranga (weaving) carry stories, genealogy, and values through pattern, form, and material. Kōwhaiwhai — the scroll patterns in wharenui — communicate meaning through shape and colour.

These are not decoration — they are texts in their own right, designed for specific audiences (the community, the ancestors, future generations) and specific purposes (preserving identity, asserting mana, transmitting knowledge). When we analyse visual texts, we should include and respect these traditions as sophisticated examples of visual communication.

Choose one example of Māori visual communication. What is it communicating, to whom, and through what design features?

Tuhia ōu whakaaro · Write Your Thoughts

We are surrounded by visual texts every day — advertising, social media, news, entertainment. Who controls which images we see? Whose stories get told visually, and whose don't?

Ngā Rauemi Tautoko · Resources already provided