Identifying and interpreting figurative language is a large standard for fifth grade students but is often one that results in the most confusion. It is especially hard when thinking about English language learners when they have to be able to go past interpreting phrases literally with a limited vocabulary. Therefore, visuals have been a crucial component of ensuring success in interpretation of figurative language. The lesson I focused on was on identifying and interpreting personification in given contexts. I also wanted to extend their thinking further by having them create their own posters describing and showing a personification phrase. I relied heavily on visuals for each phrase while creating the lesson.
I started by using the Visual Thinking Strategy which was created by Abigal Housen, a cognitive psychologist in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. According to her theory, students learn the most when they have opportunities to interpret visuals for themselves. So I put up the picture of the newspaper with a hand (the last visual on the “student handout” sheet). I simply asked, “what do you think this picture is representing? Why?” and had students do a turn and talk. I made sure there were no words on this flipchart accompanying the picture so students had the opportunity to understand that there were no right or wrong answers and to produce an authentic answer. Student responses included things along the line of “There is a newspaper that seems to be going somewhere or traveling”. After the class came to a consensus on this, I revealed the phrase next to it which said, “News travels quickly” and immediately got responses like “Wait, news can’t travel!” and produced a debate among other students about what this really meant. Using this visual opened the conversation about things being literal and figurative. This way students were creating the definition prior to reading the personification sentence. In a way, they already knew what the personification meant before reading the figurative language. They were working backwards relying solely on the visual.
After doing a few more Visual Thinking Strategies, students were able to create their own definition of personification. They realized that nonhuman objects were being given human like qualities. I then pointed to the visual of the lemonade poster/personification definition which hangs in my room. This visual aided students who were having a hard time grasping the concept by having a concrete definition there accompanied by another pictoral example. I then went back to the Visual Thinking Strategy and used the picture of the dancing flame (below). This time students were aware that we were looking for figurative language but responded similarly to the question “what do you notice?” All students were able to say a flame going back and forth. When I revealed the sentence “the flame of the candle danced in the dark” students were able to quickly make the connection that the flame was not actually dancing but it was flickering in the darkness.
The last visual I used was the personification handout (below). At first the words were covered up. Students were tasked with looking at the picture and guessing what the personification sentence might be and then checking it with the actual sentence. This forced students to try to create their own human quality for a non human object, going one step further than how I used the previous visuals. The visual aided them in coming up with a sentence but this was a lot more challenging for them than just interpreting sentence with visuals.
I used three pieces of evidence to gauge if visuals aided students. The first piece of evidence had students interpret the meaning of personification sentences. The evidence of student work below showed me that the student was effectively able to use the visuals and anchor chart I gave her to understand that the sentences were not literal and each object was given a human quality. The second piece of evidence had students create their own personification sentences given a prompt. The evidence showed that the student was able to take the visuals we discussed and create sentences based on what we learned. However, the evidence showed a misconception that wasn’t captured in the visuals we studied. In numbers four and five she wrote a simile rather than personification. Next time when considering which visuals I use, I’ll put a comparison visual up that contrasts a simile with personification. The third piece of evidence was a mini project on personification where students did research by coming up with a definition and picture to support their understanding. This showed me how they could create their own visuals to support their learning rather than just interpreting visuals.
Evidence:
Examples on flipchart:
Handout given to students:
Student created posters
Meghna, looking at your student work to see how effective your visuals were --and finding ways they were supportive as well as had gaps--is a great example of using student work to inform instruction. This is exactly the kind of work that will really support you in growing as a teacher--creating these little experiments where you try something, observing what happens, and then changing/improving your practice based on what you observed.
ReplyDeleteI also just have to point out how you were using the "Notice, Wonder" structure here. Using those same lesson structures across your day is not only helpful for students since they know what to expect and how to interact with the content and one another in the routine, but also makes planning so much more manageable for you! Take note of spaces where you see the same routine as useful. Make this something you cultivate intentionally in your class--name it--"We're going to start with a Notice and Wonder"--and use these to help make your planning manageable.