One Word Images
A TPRS technique where teachers build extended stories and discussions from a single word or image, creating rich comprehensible input through detailed descriptions and personalization.
In working with one word images, it is useful to imagine that we are sculpting the character out of invisible “clay” in the space in front of the students. We have to be very specific about the space and its boundaries there in front of the students. The more specific we can be, the more […]
I recommend starting any school year with this simple, fun, and powerful strategy. We would of course have Questioning/Circling with Balls involved in a big way in our first weeks of instruction, but the potential to bring great instruction all the way through to May by using one word images as a launching pad for
Tina just sent me a link to a series of videos she took this week in her Spanish One class. For those of us working with One Word Images, this series of videos shows a sequence of instruction that leads the class from the image-creation process through the next day’s review of the artists’ work,
Steven Ordiano in this report from the field adds still more new information to our deepening understanding of one word images. Thank you so much as well to Kathrin Shechtman in Germany, our artist in France, who first made the connection between OWI and the Invisibles. For those who are deep into the Invisibles, this
The use of the hands to describe the imagined object being created is key, as described in the previous article. Here, Craig West further describes the subtlety of this work with one word images: …I need to learn to let the class create the material that is level appropriate by just asking them the next
We learn to use our hands more and more when we build one word images with our kids. What does that mean? It means that in the same way that a sculptor puts her hands on clay and then steps over to the big lump of clay that she is working with, so also do
I just wanted to make a comment into a post in case anyone wants the latest information, learned this summer in the workshops, on One Word Images: There is an art to deciding on the object. It must be simple and not have many moving parts. Ask for size, color, name and add a face,
I have a One Word Image video posted at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H47hWgbAN6Q Also, during the workshop Monday, I crammed in a short five minute demo of how to do one at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fhn5rdU5D38 I had forgotten in this workshop about the camera so you can’t see what the groups are actually doing, which almost
I haven’t tried One Word Images this early, here at the end of the first week of instruction, but it works, with the qualification that the kids can’t handle more than the first three questions on the prompt list, maybe about ten minutes of circling. So, just to share with those who might be doing Circling
I have always felt that a viable option to starting the year with Circling with Balls has been to use One Word Images (described, along with the Circling with Balls activity, on the resources page of this site under workshop handouts). Kristy supported my idea in an email today. She said: “Okay, so I get overwhelmed with trying to
I want to begin setting the table for next year for those newer people who are not completely confident about how to start the year. It is not too early to start really taking a close look at what we do in the first four to eight weeks of teaching using comprehensible input. One of the
Here is another blog for our “beginning the year” category. It is a third thing with potential to help start the year next year – one word images. They do such a good job of embellishing the vocabulary and creating a sense of fun right away, not to mention providing perhaps the very best activity
