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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.

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: Grade 1 - 10

Description: Padlet allows students to collaborate online using one platform. Students can record their thinking by writing or recording themselves, they can link website and upload files. Students are able to comment on each others notes and can be used on a range of devices. This allows collaboration from school, home and can be used to connect with other schools.

Ranking: Padlet is an easy way for teachers to see students oral responses, thought process and levels of collaboration. It can be used at a range of different levels and in all subject area. 

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Best For: Phase 1 & 2, PYP

Description: This activity can work well in terms of students learning new words from their reading, and then taking those new words and piecing them together in new sentences, etc. This would be especially powerful for new language learners.
Simon Templeton describes how it has worked with a student he has, see here: Simon's Post.

Ranking: This possibly deserves more stars, but is not an activity you can use often. Time consuming and really for our Phase 1 and 2 students. Still, can be worthwhile.

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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: All Grades

Description: For my last unit of inquiry I took a different slant on the traditional word wall and asked students to find the unit words in their mother tongue as well as a picture that best represented the word to them. With all this information we created a word wall. A word wall is generally in a highly visible location so students have easy access to the words, it is interactive and designed so the students can use them to help with their writing and reading. For more information on word walls see here.

Ranking: I gave this strategy three stars as I don't feel it was independently used by the students as much as I would have liked. Getting the students to translate the words from English to their Mother Tongue was valuable and finding a picture also helped develop students understanding of the words. Throughout the unit I needed to remind students to refer to the wall when they were trying to spell a word. I would have liked to have seen more independence from the students in using the word wall. I also feel it is important that the students are involved in the creation of the wall to enable them to have ownership over the wall and so it has meaning to them.

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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: Grades 2 and above
Description:
This activity was under taken in stages.
Stage 1 Two classes of Grade 3's used visual images from the unit of inquiry to create questions. The questions were created via a 'bus stop' session where the students walked around sharing their questions. EAL's were supported to write questions with scaffolds of sentence starters that included the starting words What, Why, How etc
The questions were reviewed and discussed by the classes.
Stage 2 The third Grade 3 class took the questions the other classes had created. They read them and decided that many of the questions were 'thin' questions and not the sort of questions that would help you inquiry deeply into something or research an idea. They then took the questions and created 'thick' research questions. They worked in pairs and discussed ideas together. EAL students were grouped with students who could model what was needed and could help guide them.
Once they had suggestions for deep thick questions the groups orally presented their ideas to the class. As a whole the class they chose the most effective question for each image. Discussions were had about what made the questions effective or not. All members of the group shared their ideas for questions.
Stage 3 The questions the students had created were used in collaboration with the librarian to research using key words for all Grade 3 students.

Ranking: 5 stars. This modelled visible thinking, developed questioning skills, modelled collaboration, scaffolded learning and made authentic integrations with technology and research skills.