Visuals are important to enhance student’s understanding of new information. Visuals are everywhere in society, so being able to understand what the visual is telling you, how to read it, and what to do with the information is worth teaching students. It is also vital to use your own visuals in your classroom. These visuals don’t always need to be as catchy as advertisements, or as colorful as most photographs. Using visuals in the classroom just enhance the learning process. For instance, using color only when it adds to the learning is beneficial, using drawings versus photographs is sometimes necessary to not take away from the learning experience.
I found this assignment to be difficult. I don’t know much about visual creating software, and I don’t know how to make appropriate visuals when I am not in my own classroom thinking about objectives and the most important information that students need to walk away with. So, I started with a lesson I am teaching next week on subject-verb agreement. I found a site called https://magic.piktochart.com/templates. This is what I created:
This site is just like Powerpoint to me, but I am proud that I found a site on my own. I made a flowchart for my students to start to understand the concept – subject-verb agreement. It’s not the prettiest, but I’m okay with it nonetheless. This visual falls under the organizational category.
The next visual I tried was making a cartoon to illustrate subject-verb agreement. I used toondoo.com and it was fun. I think it would be more fun if I could think of a more interesting topic!
I’m going to say this visual fits into the analogical category because it is shows a silly picture showing similarity to the lesson on grammar.
My last visual is a timeline. I decided to use readwritethink.org after reading Alex Shepherd’s blog. I decided to make it applicable to when I am teaching to demonstrate time management when completing a long project. I love assigning projects for students to do, because I love to see their creative abilities.
This timeline would fall under the interpretive category of visuals because time management is an abstract idea to many early elementary students.