Chapter 5 Nonlinguistic Representations

This chapter was all about the visual. I do believe that the more senses a student can use when learning something, the better he'll learn it. So including pictures for sight to my speaking the lesson is a great idea. And of course the movement involved in making a movie is great for all students, not just the kinetic learners.

I especially liked the idea of using clip art for learning vocabulary. In my foreign language class I really do want the students to see a picture and think of the word in the target language. Usually they think of something in English and then translate it. I think with the pictures it will be a lot easier for them to come up with the new word, compared to seeing the word written in English and then having to come up with the new word. I do not want to re-enforce the idea of translating, I want them to think in the target language as much and as soon as possible.

I also liked the time-sequence pattern organizers in this chapter. Of course for my literature student he could make a time line of authors and when they wrote their work. Or he could use it to illustrate the order of periods of writing styles - such as Golden Age, Renaissance and Baroque.

I also thought students could use this to keep track of their own learning. For example they first learned subject pronouns and regular present tense verb conjugations. Then they learned verbs with spelling changes, then they learned irregular verb conjugations. So by the end of the year they could use it to review and to see how much they've learned.

I also like the idea of the students making their own movie. I once had a small class that all worked together to create a movie of a short story they had read. We all brought in props and did the filming during class time. The students seemed to enjoy the project and they did a wonderful job on it.