Let’s face it, even as adults having a visual representation of something is much more engaging than reading a text-only article. Colors, interesting fonts, and the organization of the graphic makes us want to read on.
Graphic design would be valuable to my classroom because many of my students, too, are visual learners. We have been recently learning about text structures in reading. Not the most exciting thing to teach! I was brainstorming ways to teach this information in our non-fiction unit and decided to split the students up and have them create a Google slide on ONE of the text structures. Students were given a rubric of the information to be included. The class was required to collaborate when creating these slides which will later be presented to the class. Of course, the first thing they did was find and image/graphic to represent their text structure. It’s almost as if this graphic helps them to scaffold the information they are learning and later teaching others about.
Incorporating graphics helps us to support the learners in our classrooms in so many ways. For example, when we watched a movie
about the southeast
, I said a way they could take notes is to draw 
pictures of what they see in the video. Rather than writing down a sentence about oranges being a main fruit coming from that region, many of them drew an orange 
with a quick label. I feel this benefit all students but particularly students with 504’s and IEP’s. The actual act of reading 
and writing 
tends to be most difficult for these students. If I could give them a different strategy of learning the content, just representing it in a different way, it will allow them to be on the same playing field as their peers.
about the southeast, I said a way they could take notes is to draw pictures of what they see in the video. Rather than writing down a sentence about oranges being a main fruit coming from that region, many of them drew an orange with a quick label. I feel this benefit all students but particularly students with 504’s and IEP’s. The actual act of reading and writing tends to be most difficult for these students. If I could give them a different strategy of learning the content, just representing it in a different way, it will allow them to be on the same playing field as their peers.
Next week we are beginning our Midwest region unit. Before talking about the others states in the region, we focus on Illinois. Students are required to choose a landmark, person, or important representation of Illinois and write a paper and create a poster. As a way to introduce the unit, I could easily make a Google Drawing, and plan on doing so for the graphic design assignment. Through this introduction, I can highlight some of the interesting facts about Illinois to engage the students as they consider their own topics.
Jessica-- What a great idea to point out that many students (and adults) and adults are visual learners, thus the importance of graphic design. I had never thought to introduce this topic to my students, but it fits nicely with the topic of graphic design. I think it's important for my students to understand how they learn things best, especially at an early age. Great idea to add the key icons to your instruction pages! I do this regularly in my kindergarten classroom.
ReplyDeleteJessica, What a great way to make learning facts more interesting and engaging for your students :) I'm very much a visual learner and I'm thinking that I would remember the facts so much more easily by visualizing the outline of the state of Illinois and then zooming in on the different areas of Illinois and "seeing" the facts. Would you ask your students to create their own representation of the state of Illinois or other Midwest states as a way of sharing out what they found in their research?
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