Developing visual literacy through WindowSwap
Photo by Rob Wingate on Unsplash
Visual Literacy is an important 21st Century skill, as it helps with creativity, problem solving and critical thinking, amongst other things. In this possible sequence of activities I bring together the use of visual literacy and graphic organizers. If you are not yet familiar with the benefits of graphic organizers you can find out more information here
Last year I became aware of an amazing website, in which ordinary
people from all different parts of the world have filmed short videos of about
ten minutes duration from their window, often accompanied by the sounds from
their environment. When you click 'Open a new window somewhere in the world', you are transported to a random view from
someone’s window and get to experience it as if you were there. It is very
relaxing and extremely fascinating as you never know where you might end up!
This resource is ideal for online lessons, and the possibilities are endless. I’m
sure you can imaging all sorts of uses for something such as this. It's even very worthwhile and fascinating to have a look for yourself if you are bored and in lockdown or just frustrated, due to the lack of possibilities for actual travel at the present time!
I am just going to share one way that this resource WindowSwap can be
used with different levels in your online classes. It is extremely easy to
adapt this activity to all levels from beginner to advanced, with the
appropriate scaffolding and support, and it can even be used for flipped
learning, with the video viewing being completed prior to the live class.
This is good for a cultural lesson, with a focus on
countries and nationalities. It is also good for description in general and would be useful as a more fun task to practice for any exams where the students have to describe pictures. You could use the picture to build up relevant use of vocabulary, such as, 'In the background I can see... ', 'In the foreground...', 'The picture shows...' etc.
For a lead in the students are told that they will be
watching the view from someone in a different part of the world's window. They are
asked to guess where they think it might be and to write their ideas in the
chat box. When the viewing begins they can refer back to this and see if anyone
was correct. This is an ideal opportunity to revise or to reinforce the English
words for the various countries and nationalities and to practice the
pronunciation of these.
The first main activity in this lesson is for the students
to use a graphic organizer to complete
the visual thinking routine, ‘see, think, wonder’ as they watch the short
video. I know many people are now starting to use graphic organizers and are
producing their own. If, like me, you are always looking for resources to inspire
you, or you are not yet that confident at making graphic organizers, you can
take a look at TeAch-nology.com which has a graphic organizer generator that
produces individualized printable graphic organizers of all kinds for you.
After watching, the students are split into groups in breakout rooms, where
they discuss and compare their answers to the three questions. During this time
they will be peer-teaching vocabulary to each other. The students return to the
whole group and share some of their ideas and relevant vocabulary is elicited
and clarified.
We turn then, in particular, to the third question, ’What do
you wonder?’ and focus on their answers to that. Hopefully, some of the students
have been wondering about the location of the window and what that place is
like, as that is what we are going to find out next. The students are divided
into pairs and are given the task of finding out five interesting or important
facts about that country/ area to teach the class. This will involve them in autonomous
learning, as they will have to search for relevant information on the internet.
The final aspect to this sequence of activities is for the students to have practice in writing a diary entry. This is a process writing task, which will consolidate the new vocabulary learned and will give further opportunity to repeat much of what they have talked about in writing. It is always good practice to repeat an activity in another form as it deepens learning, without boring the learners. The students are told that they should imagine they are the owner of the window they have just been looking through. They are going to give an account of their day in their personal diary. The students brainstorm in groups that kind of things they might talk about. Ideas are shared in the open class. Then they work in pairs to complete a joint writing activity and pass their writing to another pair for peer-correction. The final part of the activity is for the students to use all this information and support to complete a piece of individual writing. They take all the feedback from their peers and the first draft they did with their partner and complete the final draft. This is ideally completed in the student’s own time - after the live synchronous lesson - as longer individual pieces of work are definitely not the best use of the live class time.
Of course, one of the unique benefits of online learning is that very often the students will all be in different countries or locations, and it will give a wonderful and personalized aspect to the lesson if they feel able to show the other students the view they have from their own windows. I have used this particular idea as a warmer activity in the past, and it would make for an ideal initial lead in to have even a very quick look through some of the windows of willing classmates, before looking at the unknown person's window (time permitting!!) On one memorable occasion, the student suddenly turned his camera around and we had the most glorious view of the French Alps from his mountain hut which was located half way up a mountain!
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