Стаття на тему "Візуальна грамотність у соціалізації через навчання та викладання "англійської мови

Ventyna Kovalenko,

scientific supervisor

senior teacher of foreign languages dep.

philology faculty

DSPU

Yaroslava Derevyanko

3rd year student

groups "UA"

Faculty of Philology

DSPU

VISUAL LITERACY IN SOCIALIZATION THROUGH ENGLISH LEARNING AND TEACHING

Visual Literacy is the ability to understand, create images and socialize. In English classroom is a great space to help students develop both visual literacy, English and social skills. Doing so helps students communicate effectively through social images.

With images on display:

•             Students with visual literacy can use images to exchange ideas and interact with others.
•             English language in teachers who integrate images in their instructions help their students develop both English skills and visual literacy.

Young learners present a special set of challenges and opportunities in the English language classroom. Younger students tend to have shorter attention spans and can lose focus more easily than older students. They may require more frequent breaks or opportunities to move around and also benefit from structure and routine. Often, younger students learn best by physically doing things and interacting with peers. As with students of all ages, young learners need to feel connected to what is being taught and involved in their own learning process. Additionally, young learners can present a special set of behavioral challenges if a classroom is not managed well.

The thought of addressing all of these needs may seem daunting, but with some careful consideration and planning, working with young learners can be a very rewarding experience for both teachers and students. The English language classroom for young learners provides opportunities to incorporate hands-on activities, music, movement, and visuals. Younger students learn best when content is presented in a consistent manner and repeated frequently, which can actually make preparation a bit easier for teachers.

There are four ways to increase your success in teaching young learners in the English classroom:

1.          Creating a Visually Rich Classroom.
2.          Using a Daily Routine for Language Practice.
3.          Incorporating Opportunities for Interaction and Sharing.
4.          Using Music, Chants, and Movement

The main goal of the suggestions is to create an interactive, content-rich environment where young learners will be engaged and have fun as they are learning.

1.          Creating a Visually Rich Classroom

Language teachers already know that students learning a new language need visual support, but it is especially beneficial to young learners. Visual support helps young learners associate images with new vocabulary, grasp concepts, and understand classroom routines. Visual support is especially important for young students who are still learning to read.

There are several ideas for classroom materials, ideas on how to encourage students to interact with each of them.

Illustrated Posters

Many stores that sell educational materials sell pre-made posters that illustrate key vocabulary, concepts, and even classroom routines. However, if you do not have access to a store like this, posters can easily be created for this purpose. The poster should present images and/or content for students to learn in an organized way. Words and images should be clear and large enough for students to see from far away. Vocabulary such as color words, shapes, sizes, numbers, the alphabet, animal names, types of weather, and seasons are commonly displayed in classrooms for young learners. As content is covered throughout the school year, teachers can add posters to illustrate concepts such as daily routines, the water cycle, and animal or plant life cycles.

While posters create a colorful and visually stimulating environment for young learners, simply hanging them on the wall does little to support language development. Instead, teachers should try to incorporate the posters into lessons. For example, if you are teaching a unit on fruits and vegetables, you can incorporate a discussion about colors into the lesson. Ask students to locate the color of each fruit or vegetable on the poster with colors as you discuss each one.

Anchor Charts

When teaching new information to young learners, it is helpful to create a visual representation of ideas or examples as you discuss content. To do so, it helps to have chart or poster paper on an easel or hung on your chalkboard so that you can easily create illustrated lists or diagrams.

Continuing with the fruits and vegetables theme, you can begin by asking students to name fruits and vegetables that they already know in English. As they raise their hands, you can quickly write down the name of each fruit or vegetable they say and then draw a picture. Even phonics concepts, such as letter sounds, are a great opportunity to create illustrated lists. If you are reading a book with your students, create a graphic organizer on the chart paper to review the events or concepts from the text.

The charts you create can be displayed in the classroom to help learners recall concepts and information throughout the year.

Word Walls

The vocabularies of young learners grow very rapidly and word walls are a great reference tool and visual reminder to use throughout the school year. A word wall is an area of your classroom where vocabulary words are displayed in an organized format. The most common ways teachers choose to organize them is alphabetically or by theme/unit.

For each set of vocabulary words you introduce, create an illustrated card for each word.

Depending on the age of your class, you can ask your students to create the vocabulary cards that you will display on the word wall. They can find pictures for the cards in magazines, newspapers, or on the internet, or create their own illustrations. For students at the higher end of the young learners age range, you can also include brief definitions on the vocabulary cards that will be displayed on the wall.

As with posters, to promote language development, word walls should be incorporated into lessons and classroom activities. You can refer to the word wall when teaching, have students come up and read words from the wall, or use the wall to play matching games.

Props and Realia

Young learners enjoy when teachers bring concepts and stories to life with real objects or props. Not only does this provide real life examples of content, it also helps learners feel more connected to the information they are learning.

Incorporating these types of visual support can be quite easy, and you can even involve your students in the process. For example, if you are reading a book or story with new vocabulary related to a particular topic, you can bring in the items from home or have your students bring them. For example, if you are reading a book about morning routines, bring in a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, a towel, and a hairbrush. Interacting with these objects will bring the story to life for young learners, and they will make connections to the content. If you are studying the names of different clothing items, use your students’ clothes as visuals or ask them to bring in items to associate with the words.

By including visual representations of the content young students are learning, you will enrich their learning experience and create a visually stimulating classroom environment. If your young learners are old enough, you can also get them involved in the process of creating materials.

2.          Using a Daily Routine for Language Practice

Young learners benefit from a structured environment. Routines help students feel connected to what they are learning. For language learners, routines also help lower the affective filter (feelings of anxiety or self-consciousness) by providing structured, familiar activities in which they can easily participate.

One of the best ways to take advantage of the benefits of structured activities for young learners is to have a daily routine. If you work with the same students all day, this can be a morning meeting where you gather students together in one area of the room each day to complete a repeated series of activities. If you have different groups of students throughout the day, you can use this structured practice as a warm-up at the beginning of each class:

1.          Monthly calendar. A classroom calendar can provide a wealth of activities to include in your daily routine. It should be posted in the area where you hold your morning meeting or gather students for the class warm-up. The calendar can easily be created on a chalkboard or whiteboard by using tape to make the grid. Then, you can use chalk or a whiteboard marker to fill in information directly on the board.
2.          Weather chart. As with a calendar, you may be able to find a weekly weather chart at an educational supply store. You can also create one on the board or from paper. The chart should have a section for each day of the week your students attend school. Non-school days can be included as well if you want to incorporate them into your routine.
3.          Daily schedule/agenda. Creating a daily schedule or agenda to include in your routine works best if you have the same group of students all day long. When working with multiple groups of students, rearranging the schedule between classes can be time-consuming, especially when the content you teach differs from class to class.

The schedule will, of course, be based on how the school day unfolds. You can simply write the times on the board and then create cards with a word and picture for the different activities your students do during the school day. 

Each card should have a picture so that students can associate the image with the word and activity. The appropriate card should be placed by each chunk of time noted in the schedule. For young learners that are a bit older, you may choose to write a sentence starter next to the card that says something like, “We will learn about ________.” You can complete this based on what you will teach in the lesson.

4.          As the school year progresses, young learners will become so familiar with the daily routine that you should be able to designate one student per day to lead the activities. You can also adapt some of the content that you use in the routine to reflect what you are teaching at the time, such as adding a song about weather or shapes. If you do so, it is suggested that you spend a month on each song or concept so that learners fully grasp the material before you move on. Once your learners are able to lead the daily routine, you can observe and take note of any common errors or difficulties with pronunciation. 

A daily routine provides young learners with a structured activity to learn basic vocabulary and concepts. The routine provides a safe, familiar environment where learners become more willing to take risks and practice new language.  

The most important aspect of using classroom routines is to repeat the activity the same way each day so that students know exactly what to expect. The language used in the activities should also be highly structured, repeated the same way each time the routine is completed, and posted in the classroom for students to see.  Below are some ideas for classroom materials to include in a structured daily routine for young learners. Following this, there is a sample outline of a daily routine using the materials described.

3.          Incorporating Opportunities for Interaction and Sharing

The attention span of young learners is a lot shorter than that of older students. Young learners need frequent opportunities to move around, take breaks, and interact. They also love to share information about their lives and experiences. We will examine some simple ways to incorporate movement and interaction into any lesson in the young learners’ English classroom:

Turn and Talk

Turn and talk may already be familiar to some teachers, but it is very significant when working with young learners. In this strategy, students have a partner toward whom they physically turn and talk about a question asked or topic stated by the teacher. For instance, the teacher could say, “I want you to turn and talk to your partner about something fun you did over the weekend.” Then, partners turn to each other and discuss the topic for a set amount of time. This simple strategy is great to use with young learners because the more frequently you provide opportunities for young students to share about their experiences or opinions, the more they will feel connected to content and valued in the classroom community.

This strategy is quite easy to integrate throughout the school day and requires very little preparation. The most important aspect is to rehearse procedures and expectations with your students. This will train your class to start and stop talking efficiently so that you can get back to your lesson. This strategy can be used with any topic or content.

When you introduce this strategy in your classroom, you will likely have to review procedures many times and remind students of your expectations. However, if you remain consistent, students will master the procedures. For very young students, it is helpful to assign partners ahead of time and have them seated next to each other. Initially, you may also want to plan and write 2 or 3 turn and talk questions into your lesson plans where you see opportunities for students to share information. Once you have done this several times, you will be able to quickly come up with turn and talk questions while you are teaching or when you feel that students are becoming restless and need to interact.

Think-pair-share

Think-pair-share is similar to turn and talk because students have time to think individually before they discuss a question or idea in pairs. As with turn and talk, the more well established the procedures are, the more efficiently this strategy can be integrated into your teaching. The difference here is that pairs have an opportunity to share with the whole class after their discussion. After students finish their discussion, each pair should have time to share their ideas. For this reason, this strategy works best when you give students an opinion question, a question with specific answer choices, or when you ask them to make predictions. Again, if you are reading students a book, a question to ask for a think-pair-share is, “What do you think (character’s name) will do next?” or “Do you think (character’s name) is right to feel so angry?”

Once you have followed the steps above, you can quickly restate the question and then call on one student from each pair to provide the answer or conclusion reached during the partner discussion. To make this run smoothly, you can pre-assign partners (as noted above) and designate one partner as A and the other as B. Give each pair a number. Then you can easily say, “We are going to share, starting with pair number one. I would like partner B to tell the class what you and your partner predict (character’s name) will do next.”

If you rehearse the procedures each time you use this strategy, it will become another easy way to quickly give your young learners a chance to interact and share their experiences.

Stand up/Sit down (or Thumbs up/Thumbs down)

You can also give young learners a chance to share opinions or information nonverbally. You can ask learners to stand up or sit down, or show thumbs up or thumbs down according to their opinions and experiences. This is a very easy strategy to integrate, and the questions can be simple, such as:

•             Stand up if you like ______. Sit down if you do not like ______.
•             Show thumbs up if you have been to ______. Show thumbs down if you have not been to ______.
•             Stand up if you think (character’s name) did the right thing. Sit down if you think what (character’s name) did was wrong.

The more frequently you can include opportunities for young students to move around, talk, and share ideas, the more they will learn.

4.          Using Music, Chants, and Movement

Background or Transition Music

Perhaps the easiest way to begin using music with your students is to play it in the background during times when you are not providing direct instruction. Soft, instrumental music works nicely to create a calm atmosphere when students first arrive to your classroom. You can also play this type of music when students have time to work independently.

Another simple way to use music is during transitions. You can use specific songs (or portions of them) to signal students that it is time to change activities. Using music like this is also great for getting students in line, packing up materials at the end of class, or any other transitions your young learners have to make. It is much easier and more effective than verbally telling students how much time they have left to complete a task, a concept that can be difficult for young learners to understand.

Music for Teaching Content

A great way to teach young learners content that you include in your daily routine is to use songs. For students learning the alphabet, letter sounds, numbers, shapes, colors, or other basic vocabulary, there are many songs available on the internet for free. Some songs include visuals such as videos or pictures that you can use if you have a way to project them in your classroom. If not, you can still use the songs in combination with your classroom posters and materials. It is important to preview the content you plan to use in your classroom to be sure it is appropriate.

Using Jazz Chants

The basic rhythm of jazz chants makes them easy for young learners to follow and learn. They also provide an opportunity to incorporate movements such as clapping, snapping, tapping on knees, or marching. You can also consider including instruments such as a drum or tambourine when you use jazz chants. For more information about how to use jazz chants with young learners, you can order a free video featuring Carolyn Graham through the U.S. Embassy.

REFERENCES

1.          American English. URL: https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/teachers-corner-teaching-young-learners#child-2154
2.          American English. URL: https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/teachers-corner-teaching-young-learners#child-2169
3.          American English. URL: https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/teachers-corner-teaching-young-learners#child-2175
4.          Burmark, L., (2008) Chapter 1. Visual literacy: What you get is what you see. In N. Frey, & D. Fisher (Eds). Teaching visual literacy: Using comic books, graphic novels, anime, cartoons, and more to develop comprehension and thinking skills. Corwin Press
5.          Dudeney, G., Hockly, N. & Pegrum, M. (2013). Digital literacies. Pearson
6.          Hughes, J. (2016) Visual literacy activities in language learning https://www.myetpedia.com/visual-literacy-activities-language-learning/