Using Wordless Picture Books to Support Language and Literacy Development
AUG 2025 — Lyn Westergard
Wordless picture books offer powerful opportunities for students to engage in meaning-making, regardless of their language proficiency or reading level. While often associated with early readers, wordless picture books are equally valuable for older students (Giorgis & Johnson, 2022). Their conceptual complexity and visual depth allow secondary students to engage in sophisticated interpretation, analysis, and storytelling. Because the narrative is conveyed entirely through images, students of all ages are invited to co-construct meaning, interpret character motivations, and develop language in context. This process supports culturally sustaining practices, critical literacy, and reading development (Honaker & Miller, 2022).
Wordless picture books promote inferencing, interpretation, and academic discussion across grade levels while also fostering creativity and confidence. They allow all students, including multilingual learners and those with emerging literacy skills, to participate fully in rigorous literacy tasks without the barrier of decoding written text (Arizpe, Colomer, & Martínez-Roldán, 2015). When paired with intentional scaffolds such as sentence frames, word banks, and structured discussion routines, wordless picture books become a powerful tool for language and literacy growth at every stage of learning.
Building Narrative Understanding
Wordless picture books help students understand the structure and genre of narrative by making key elements visible: character, setting, problem, and resolution. With no written text to rely on, students focus on how the story unfolds visually, developing a foundation for both comprehension and storytelling.
Elementary students can:
Identify the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
Retell the story aloud or act it out in small groups.
Match character feelings to key events in the plot.
Sequence mixed-up pages and explain their reasoning.
Secondary students can:
Map the plot using a story arc or narrative structure tool.
Retell the story from a different character’s point of view.
Analyze how the story builds tension or shifts over time.
Compare multiple interpretations of the same scene.
Scaffolding Written Expression
Wordless picture books provide a clear structure for students to generate ideas and focus on organizing their writing. Because the story is told through images, students can concentrate on developing sentences, expanding ideas, and using precise language.
Elementary students can:
Write a sentence or caption to a single page, or a series of images.
Add dialogue or thought bubbles to characters.
Sequence a few images and write a short story using transition and temporal language.
Use a word bank to describe characters, settings, or actions in writing.
Secondary students can:
Write a narrative based on a selected series of images.
Compose a character monologue or internal thoughts based on a key scene.
Use a graphic organizer to identify key plot elements.
Expand a short draft into a full narrative using visual cues.
Developing Language Through Talk and Vocabulary
Wordless picture books create authentic opportunities for oral language development. Through shared discussion, students practice academic language, build vocabulary, and strengthen expressive and receptive communication skills.
Elementary students can:
Describe images using complete sentences.
Practice new vocabulary through guided discussion.
Use sentence frames to explain actions and feelings.
Secondary students can:
Participate in structured academic discussions.
Use content-specific vocabulary to interpret scenes.
Support ideas with visual evidence.
Strengthening Visual Literacy
Visual literacy involves analyzing how meaning is constructed through images. Wordless picture books give students opportunities to examine an illustrator’s choices—such as color, perspective, layout, and symbolism—to better understand how visual texts communicate ideas, mood, and tone.
Elementary students can:
Identify how color choices show changes in mood or time.
Match body language and facial expressions to emotion words.
Compare two pages to see how the illustrator shows action or stillness.
Explain how illustrations show who or what is most important on the page.
Secondary students can:
Analyze how perspective, framing, or lighting influence tone or theme.
Annotate images to explain symbolism, visual metaphor, or repetition.
Compare visual storytelling techniques across different books or genres.
Evaluate how visual elements guide the reader’s attention and build meaning.
Deepening Inference and Interpretation
Wordless picture books require students to make meaning from images alone. By interpreting characters’ actions, emotions, and motives and justifying their thinking with visual evidence, students build key skills in inference, analysis, and comprehension across grade levels.
Elementary students can:
Predict what happens next using visual clues.
Draw a missing scene and explain what it adds to the story.
Choose a page and explain how the character feels and why.
Answer “why” questions using evidence from the pictures.
Secondary students can:
Write two interpretations of one scene and defend one.
Make a claim about a theme or character and support it with visual evidence.
Compare interpretations with a partner and revise ideas.
Analyze how the illustrator creates ambiguity or tension.
