Exploiting Visual Material

 

Picture taken from: blogdematerialdidactico.blogspot.com

Hello everybody,

In this new post I am going to talk about how Teachers can exploit visual materials and the importance of using them in the classrooms. Also, I will mention some advantages using them and disadvantages too. In the same manner, I am going to share with all of you some useful activities using this kind of material in your classes.

First of all, Do you know what is a visual material?

A visual material according to Leslie Rose (2008) she said that “A visual aid is an object or representation that may be used to clarify or enhance understanding of a concept or process. The best way to ensure success in learning is to present information in different formats for different learners”. In my opinion I think a visual material can be defined as the representation of some tools which can be used to teach many different things with the purpose of making people respond in a different way. I noticed that when teachers used visual materials most of the times they catch the student’s attention and interest too.

Picture taken from: colorearyaprender.com

For this reason I am going to mention some advantages I had noticed using this kind of material:

• Visual materials can be any kind of material you find; we need to be creative in order to learn how to use it in our classes.
• Visual materials can be represented since a single piece of paper; just Teachers need to use your imagination to make it work.
• Teacher can use this material for any moment during the class, I mean; we can use it for the warm up stage, to introduce a topic, to do exercises, to complete activities, for consolidation, for homework, etc.
• Students feel interested and motivated which is very important.
• For visual students this kind of material is very useful for their learning styles.
• Teachers catch the student’s attention.
• If the material is very attractive and colorful your students will love it specially children.
• Teachers can laminate this material and it will work for a long time.
• Visual materials can be pasted on the black board, on the wall, on the floor, everywhere you can just try it. Also, if you have the possibility to have a computer and a projector you can find a lot of visual material which can be projected onto a screen.
• This kind of material can be obtained from magazines, newspapers, books, catalogs, calendars, posters, advertisements, coloring books, comic books, postcards, prints, travel brochures, etc. all of these materials can be used as visual materials and if we as Teachers use our imagination we can exploit them.

But, on the other hand there are some disadvantages using them for example:

• Sometimes this kind of material is expensive.
• Some Teachers do not like to carry these materials like: big posters, thousands of flashcards, colorful papers, images, pictures, etc.
• Sometimes Teachers waste time, hours and hours creating beautiful, wonderful and fancy visual materials which at the end just have one purpose.

Picture taken from: picture-book.com

I believe there are more advantages than disadvantages using visual material, for this reason, is very important to know and understand that we as Teachers can be very creative people but we have to be careful when we are going to design a visual material because we should have a always a purpose and we have to think how many times we are going to use it and how many things or activities we can create with just one visual material, also we have to have in mind if the material we are going to create can be use in different settings, from classrooms to board rooms, and everywhere.

I want to share this video with all of you, it talks about that visual aids very interesting:

These are some activities that I had used before and I think they can be interesting for all of you:

• Students create a crazy story using a poster.
• Students make a colash and use it for different speaking activities.
• Students draw and create their own flashcards and later use them for other classes in order to reinforce vocabulary.
• Using recycle material students are able to create visual material.
• Students can create a news paper using magazines and old news papers in order to practice grammar structures and reading exercises.
• Students can bring to the class their favorite photographs in order to practice simple past tense.
• Using some photos or pictures students can create and explain their autobiography in order to use simple past and simple future.
• One student describes a picture orally to a partner who then repeats the description, using the picture as an aid for recall.
• Two students tell a story using a picture. One student tells what happened before the scene in the picture and the other tells what will happen afterward.

Picture taken from: http://picture-book.com/taxonomy/term/87?page=8

  This is another video about great reasons to use visual aids, check it is very interesting!

There are many different activities in which you can use visual materials in your classrooms but as I mentioned before, we have to be creative and always have a purpose and think about how many times we are going to use it in order to exploit our visual materials.

Picture taken from: flashcards4kids.com

         That’s it for today, have a nice day.

Good Bye!