You Gotta BE the Book Chapter 5

     In this chapter my favorite section was the section about visualization activites. I think the Symbolic Story Representation is a great idea. This is an activity where students make cardboard cutouts of characters from the book, and act out the scenes. For students struggling to get into the story and envision the story, this activity could help. Being able to see the scene acted out may help clarify the text. This activity is also beneficial to the students who are understanding and following the book. They may have a lot of fun getting to bring the content to life, while making reading more enjoyable. Like I have said, I believe if students do things that make reading fun for them, they are more likely to read on their own time.
     I also liked the idea of visual protocols. This is when students stop and draw/describe a scene after they have read it and pictured it in their head. It is suggested to allow students to do this on their own, or write/draw when the teacher says to. I feel this is really beneficial because it gives the students time to process what they just read. Instead of just rushing through the chapter and possibly being confused on parts of the book, the students can have time to focus on just one part. I feel like this would also help because the students would have the option to look back on their drawings at a later time if they needed to be reminded of a certain scene.
     I read an article called "7 Easy ESL Visual Aids You've Gotta Use in Your ESL Classroom". This had some really useful ideas of visual aids to use in English. One example was using pictures to teach verbs.
Example:
"He's dancing at the party" vs.
"He danced at the party"
Draw a picture of a person dancing, and then a picture of someone that just finished dancing to show the difference. Another idea was using celebrity/current trend pictures to help teach a lesson. This may help teenagers get interested and remember what you are teaching. This article also says visual aids can help learning by assisting students with remembering information, and cutting down on teaching talking time (despite how much we love it(: ).

Source:
http://www.fluentu.com/english/educator/blog/esl-visual-aids/