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Best For: Early Developing Language Learners (Add more words to visuals as they develop)

Description: Using images to explain to the students, especially useful if the images were something that the students had encountered before in their own culture.

Or

Draw chapter summaries when reading novels. Drawings include pictures and words.

Ranking: A great strategy to tap into the strengths of language learners (drawings) and allow them to show understanding in pictures, rather than with the language of instruction.

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Best For: Any Language Learner

Description: Every time I introduce a new important word in Spanish class, I try to draw a mind map on the whiteboard to relate the new word to similar words they know until we create the whole "lexical family".
Then, depending on the unit and the class, you can broaden this practice by completing a "lexical set" (a group of words that share the same topic or theme) or all belong to the same part of speech (they are all nouns, all verbs, all adjectives). Those are great activities to introduce and review the vocabulary incorporated in the unit. This is supported by research since, we tend to remember best when we create systems.

Ranking: It helps students, but not always in context to their world, but one good system to use.

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Best For: MYP and DP, Upper EAL students
Description: Brainwriting is simple. Rather than ask participants to yell out ideas (a serial process), you ask them to write down their ideas about a particular question or problem on sheets of paper for a few minutes; then, you have each participant pass their ideas on to someone else, who reads the ideas and adds new ideas. After a few minutes, you ask the participants to pass their papers to others, and the process repeats. After 10 to 15 minutes, you collect the sheets and post them for immediate discussion.

I tried the Brain-writing strategy with my Grade 11 Visual Arts students. I divided my 13 students into two groups based on their specialties (e.g. technical competence, communication of ideas, conceptual qualities, cultural values, languages, and general struggles), and they wrote their final piece plan on a lovely pink paper. I gave them the simple instructions like “write about your focused culture(s), skills/techniques, and sketches if you want to.” I was worried in the beginning because as this cohort have high-achievers, they might not be able to provide constructive feedback nor not sharing their personal ideas on the final piece. (Monica Hwang)

Ranking: This strategy is quite good, though not as much on EAL strategies involved, still a great chance for students to do some visible thinking!

Stir the Pot
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Best For: All grades
Description: This learning is great for introducing vocabulary at the start of a unit or discussing and sharing ideas during it.
Divide the class into groups with a number 1,2,3,4,5
All the ones sit together, twos etc
Each group is given a different word, sentence, idea to discuss.
They prepare what they are going to say to teach the other students in other groups.
Once prepared the groups mix up and share their knowledge. The teach each other and discuss ideas.

Reflection at the end of the lesson.

Class comes back together in a circle (pot) and discusses the meanings of the words, sentences etc that they have learnt.


Ranking: 5 Stars because this strategy is very flexible, adaptable to all levels and can include a wide variety of learning engagements. This works well for non written learning experiences. Good for making everyone speak and learn to share their knowledge.

Dana's Post 

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Best For: ALL!

Description: Empowering students with the tools to decipher the images and “learning to see” in their daily lives can allow them to express and communicate in much of the same ways that writing can…and it transcends language barriers. Thanks to Dana Carney for this information, you can see her much longer post on this here.  

Resources to promote visual Literacy

1. Using photos to build vocabulary, take on new perspectives, or tell stories.  This article shows practical ways to do all of the above using photography in the classroom.
2. Analyzing and interpreting visual images using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is something we can all do on some level in our classrooms.  This is especially pertinent to using VTS with Common Core.
3. Art criticism activities can be translated through the lens of any subject matter that has images to describe, analyze, interpret or evaluate.
4. Using visual literacy techniques to navigate advertisements and propaganda.
5. Another blog post that explains the value in teaching visual literacy.

Ranking: This has so many strategies that it is hard to rank. Visual literacy is amazing! So finding the right visual literacy strategy for what you are doing is key! Look through the strategies above to pinpoint one that works for you.

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Best For: Phase 3+, MYP

Description: This activity was done by Chelsea Woods, as seen here: Chelsea's Post. Her actual activity was really to get students to sit together and talk through their analysis rather than do it on their own. She recognizes how this needs prompting at times, and how we need to focus these activities and discussions. By getting students to sit around a big poster with a task, we find they showcase several of the ATL skills (Collaboration - delegation of roles, e.g.) as well as building up group vocabulary and ideas. Putting EAL students within these groups and just raising the expectations for contributing within the group can prove to be very powerful. Combining this with other EAL Support, such as a TDOIE to build up vocabulary for students contributing would make this activity more powerful.

Ranking: The ideas behind this activity are 5-stars, but perhaps this time around Chelsea admits was only about 3 stars in how well it went and truly thinking about EAL learners. This was also geared towards older students, as PYP classes are probably more consistently doing activities like this, so more of a reminder for the Secondary to implement these wonderful ideas!

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Best For: All

Description: This idea (and photo) comes from Ben Wiggins (2016), and he gathered some of these strategies from Gibbons (2009). The overall focus is to basically make rich tasks and include our language learners in these from the beginning with support as needed. By giving students roles within these tasks, and then supporting them with the language needed to fulfill their role in an apprenticeship type task (such as coaching) then they will be able to develop the language more quickly. Bottom line is that to treat the students at their academic potential, not by their deficiently in English (Gibbons, 2009).

Ranking: Most of the PYP and MYP is geared around these types of tasks, the key is to actually give our EL Learners bigger roles within these and support them as needed.

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Best For: Phase 3+ and Grade 5+

Description: WriteWell is an app that helps students write in chunks. Now this app could be used by all students, but may be extra helpful to our emerging language learners, as the teacher could use this to help them chunk their writing into meaningful paragraphs. Watch this video:

Ranking: This app gets a five star because it is easy to use add-on to enhance writing. I put for Phase 3+ and grade 5+, as they would be doing longer pieces of writing at this point, where they would be more focusing on chunking their writing in this way.

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Best For: All Grade levels

Description: Think pair share is a well known collaborative learning strategy. This strategy promotes individual thinking, collaboration and speaking. The first step of this strategy requires the teacher to poise a question or statement to the students. The students then think individually about the question or statement and come up with their own answer.  In my case the students were asked what they believe is needed in an city. The next step is for students to pair up with one other person and share their answers together.

Teachers can then ask students to share with the whole class or pair up with a different partner. In my example this was an excellent strategy to encourage all students to share their ideas in a small group.

Ranking: I gave this strategy 5 stars as it is a well know strategy, easy to use and adaptable to all age groups. It can easily be extended and adapted to suit the needs of the class and individual students. 

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Best For: Phase 2+

Description: This activity works well after the class has competed a jigsaw type activity such as TDIOE. My students each completed the table for two words. They then took on responsibility for one word each. Students were given numbers 1 and 2. Numbers twos were asked to come and make a circle up the front bringing their vocabulary flashcard (see mix and match). Numbers ones were asked to come and make another smaller circle each facing a number two student. Students were given one minute (30 seconds each) to explain their word to their partner and ask questions to clarify. After one minute the outside circle rotated one place to the right and the activity was repeated. After three rotations I explained that this time the students were going to swap words at the end of the minute so they needed to ensure that they really understood what was being explained to them. We continues the activity swapping words every time until we had complete a full circle.

Ranking: This is a quick and efficient way for students to be exposed to a lot of new vocabulary. By having to explain it themselves they had to take on responsibility for ensuring they knew what the word meant. Swapping the words later in the activity meant that students had to listen actively and ask questions if the explanation wasn't clear.

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Best For: Phase 1+ Any Grade Level

Description: This is a quick and fun activity to start a lesson focusing on pre-teaching vocabulary. It does take a bit of preparation but the flashcards can be re-used for other activities or displayed on the wall. The teacher needs to make and print flash cards with the target vocabulary. One card with the word and one with a matching picture. Each student is given a card at random and then asked to find their partner. Students move around the classroom looking at each other's cards and trying to find the picture or word that matches theirs. Once they have think they have found their partner they check with the teacher. Once competed the teacher may collect the cards and redistribute and repeat the activity 2-3 times. Once the activity was complete I asked the students to sit with their new partner and we moved on to another activity called TDIOE. Each pair was responsible for completing two words int he shared document.

Ranking: I gave this activity 4/5 stars because it does take a lot of preparation time compared to the time it takes to complete the activity. The students were engaged, moving and around and discussing their interpretation of the pictures with their fellow students. A good activity to start a new unit.

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Best For: Phase 1+ Any Grade Level

Description: This is a standard Gini technique where students could work together or individually to create this doc with the Tier 3 (specific to this unit) vocabulary. This really helps students take the vocabulary and create context for themselves (Mother Tongue and own example and image) to understand the words.

Ranking: This only gets 3 stars, because it is a written (typing) one, and we are looking for non-written practices. It is good for understanding and helping students understand, and going back to this and making and practicing flashcards with different games from this is a quite good idea.