American English
Teach and Learn
American English
In this Teaching Tip topic, Lauren Whitaker
will present Visual Thinking Strategies or VTS
and two examples of VTS you can use with young
English language learners.
Welcome back, Lauren!
Hi, and welcome!
I'm Lauren Whitaker, and I'm looking forward
to speaking with you today about Visual Thinking Strategies.
Let's get started!
If you missed Part One of the series
where I talk about three activities you can use
to engage young learners, be sure to check it out here.
Today I'll show you what Visual Thinking Strategies are.
Following that, I will explain two examples of
Visual Thinking Strategies that you can use with your
young ESL or EFL learners.
Visual Thinking Strategies, or VTS, is a method
in which the teacher leads the students
in a detailed discussion of a picture or photograph.
Through VTS, students develop a willingness
and ability to present their own ideas while respecting
and learning from the ideas of their peers.
I find that incorporating VTS into my lessons
can be incredibly beneficial.
It's a really helpful support tool in aiding
the comprehension of unfamiliar words and concepts.
Other benefits include:
activating students' prior knowledge,
engaging them in meaningful interactions,
and pushing them to use more complex language
structures in order to express their observations and opinions.
Students create meaning through images by making
individual choices, and photography
brings life and realism to lessons.
Let's begin by taking a look at an example photograph.
What do you think makes a photo engaging?
This is a good time to pause the video,
and think about what makes this photo interesting or engaging.
As you might have noticed, the most memorable photos
have a little strangeness to them, and
include people and a sense of movement.
One major element of VTS is the discussion of an image
in which teachers support student growth by guiding
them either in pairs, groups, or as an entire class.
To do this most successfully,
teachers should use the Three Open-Ended
Questions Framework.
What's going on in this picture?
What do you see that makes you say that?
And what more can we find?
Students are asked to first look carefully at an image,
and talk about what they see.
Next, they should explain their ideas
using evidence found in the picture.
They should then use their observations to
form assumptions about things that are
not seen in the picture.
For example, what might happen next, and why they that.
What happened before, and why they think that.
Lastly, they should listen to and consider
the views of others and discuss different perspectives.
Let's try it!
What do you think is happening in this picture?
Please take a moment to pause the video
and think about or write down your response.
Responses might include:
there is a race,
they are in the Olympics,
the men are running.
For the second step, we need to provide support
for our first observations.
One might say, I think these men are racing
because they are wearing special running clothes
They are also wearing numbers and running on a track.
A lot of people are watching and cheering.
The next step requires us to make an assumption
based on something we cannot see,
such as something that will happen next,
or before the picture was taken.
For a fun twist, we can take an image
and cut it into three or four sections for
a VTS extension activity.
Each section should include a few objects
for the learner to observe and predict what
the rest of the picture might consist of.
After individual observation and group collaboration,
learners will create a story based on their
interpretations.
In Step One, learners will get into groups of
three to four, depending on how many
sections you divided the image into, and
each learner will choose one section.
They will observe sections carefully,
using a chart to help them organize their observations.
The chart should contain three things to observe.
As you can see, I have listed people, things, and actions.
But, you might also choose topics such as
colors, shapes, and textures.
Let's try it out!
What do you see in this section?
Write your list of words down on a piece of paper.
Here's an example of what your chart might look like.
Many of you probably listed all or some of these words.
Great job!
In Step Three, students place their sections together
to form the entire picture.
Students shared the items on their list with their group.
Once they finish, the other group members have an
opportunity to add additional observations.
In step four, the teacher provides each group
with a sentence.
For example, "After school the boys went to the beach."
The sentence can be written down on a piece of paper,
or told to the group orally for them to write down.
In Step Five, the group will sit in a circle,
and each student will orally contribute a sentence,
and then write their sentence down on the shared
piece of paper.
In the last step, once the story is complete,
each group will share their picture and story
with the class.
Please pause here to check out this list
of great photo resources available online, including
resources from American English and other sites.
Summing up, today I showed you what
Visual Thinking Strategies are, and two examples of
Visual Thinking Strategies that you can use
with your young ESL or EFL learners.
Thank you so much for joining me today!
I hope you enjoyed learning about
Visual Thinking Strategies.
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videos found on the American English YouTube channel.
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