Visualizing Vocabulary?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by svinks on August 30, 2009 at 2:13pm

Sometimes I try this site http://www.senteacher.org/Worksheet/6/PECS.xhtml. It does not always give me the visuals I am looking for, but you can keep on clicking 'change picture' until you are satisfied with the result. I tried your words and the only word it could not visualize was 'bother'.

Hope this helps.

Permalink Reply by MariaD on August 30, 2009 at 5:53pm

The easiest thing to do is to ask kids to create collaborative posters. Each pair or small group can take 5-10 minutes to draw a simple cartoon about the word, and then everybody tapes them together onto a large piece of paper with the large word in the middle.

Permalink Reply by Katherine Bolman on August 30, 2009 at 7:01pm

Given that this is a huge thing for every year what about putting our heads together to find pictures that will work with the words. I feel stupid because I don't know how to set up a file to upload. And we can figure that out.

Permalink Reply by Louise on September 9, 2009 at 3:57am

I teach Kindergarten and find it difficult to provide images for some high frequency words too e.g., are, have, etc., so I created a Notebook file with a big bus on it and put a word on it. I recorded the music teacher playing 'The wheels on the bus" and inserted the sound file. I duplicated the bus and music 5 times ( we treat 5 new words each week) and typed a different word on each bus. We sing ... 'the word on the bus is have, have, have etc., Each week I just change the words and the saved files are good for revision. It's been a fun way to practise for those struggling readers.

Permalink Reply by Marek Bennett on September 18, 2009 at 8:04pm

You can definitely unlock a LOT of creative energy by inviting the kids to create their own graphics for the words (as they learn them). I like to use quick, single-panel cartoons or 2-4 panel comic strips incorporating one or two vocab words at a time.

In once class, we had a "Homophone Handbook" where students who discovered homophones could create a single panel cartoon that used both (or all 3) of a homophone pair/set. For instance, for HAIR and HARE one might draw a bunny with a big afro or something memorable like that. I did set the requirement that they had to USE all the key words CORRECTLY in separate word bubbles, so the rabbit would have to be saying something like "How do you like my hair?" and another rabbit might answer, "You're a hairy hare, all right!" Students pick up immediately on how fun this kind of text-play is, and they love to create their own versions of the pairs.

Having the visualizations come from the students clearly helps them internalize their learning, too. BOTHER... what does BOTHER look like? What BOTHERs me? What do I do to BOTHER my brother? &c.

I know that's not inherently tech-based, but kids could use clipart/found art, add word bubbles via a comics program, and post the resulting graphics to a class blog... &c.