January Strategy: All About Visuals

Post date: Jan 21, 2021 8:16:54 PM

Strategy-In-Brief

· Visuals can take many forms: sketches (drawn by teachers or students), photos, manipulatives, icons, emojis, maps, etc.

· Visuals engage students and improve comprehension.

· Retention of materials increases by 29-42% if associated with a visual.

· Visuals can be used to develop higher order thinking skills, activate discussion, improve reading and writing, and spark curiosity.

Pro-Tips

· Use visuals where it would help students understand, engage, process, make meaning, or remember concepts or skills.

Ways to incorporate visuals:

· Illustrate a vocabulary word or concept

Teacher sketches to accompany directions.

· Student sketches to visualize a reading assignment

· Show a photo (not related to a concept or skill) and ask students to explain how the photo is similar to the concept or skill

· Use sets of photos (teacher or student gathered)

· Open sorts ("sort these in a way that makes sense to your group, then explain your reasoning whole class")

· Closed sorts (sort these in the correct sequence or into specific categories)

· Word Walls (visual, definition, sentence)

· List and Label (matching visuals with labels or students create own labels)

· Used as pre-, formative, and summative assessments

· Gallery Walk

· Create several collections of photos or sketches that have something in common

· Ask students to examine all the collections in pairs (breakout rooms)

· For each collection, ask students to take turns

· Making one observation

· Making one prediction about what is similar about all the pictures.

· Examples in Content Areas

· Sort the photos into two categories, utopian or dystopian (ELA)

· Arrange into food webs and label trophic levels (Biology)

· Arrange the photos by perspective or geographic location (Social Studies)

· Match the equation to the graph (math)

· Show the correct progression of form for a particular activity (PE)

· Students listen to a native speaker conversation and sketch what is said/done OR student given photos and must converse based on photos (world Languages)

Additional Visual Resources

The Noun Project

How Teachers Can Start Sketchnoting

8 Strategies to Make Learning More Visual

The Power of Visible Thinking in Virtual Learning

10 Brilliant Examples of Sketch Notes: Notetaking for the 21^st Century

Next Week

The next email will feature tech tools to make incorporating visuals easier during remote or hybrid learning.

Other New Resources and Ideas this week

6 Ways to Help Students Make Sense of the Capitol Siege

Be Kinder to Yourself

Questions? Comments? Successes? Learnings?

We would love to know more! You can find me at nelsonj@issaquah.wednet.edu