Last week I had the awesome opportunity to hear Martina Bex. She is an expert in CI (comprehensive input), and sort of a celebrity to us bloggers and twitter users.

I learned so much in the session – but one idea that really affected my understanding of language was the idea of word imagery. Here is the gist: when you hear a word, like swim, you don’t just think of that action in isolation. Your brain fires off associated words and ideas like: water, sand, beach, summer, heat, in my case- my mom’s pool at her apartment complex. Martina called it a “mental representation”, and I imagine it like a word cloud that is unique to each one of us:

We are in the LEISURE unit. I created a few activities to help the kids develop word clouds in their new language.

Tech Free:

Word Clouds for INFO GAPS:

Activity one, day one:

I made a sheet with clouds and asked them to pick 9 target words to write into the “Palabra” section.

  1. Draw a picture or symbol of the word
  2. Write as many words as they can that they associate with that word in the target language:
  3. Do this for the remaining clouds. We did the first one together to model it:

 

Day two: Have students partner up and use their Spanish words to describe the target vocabulary. i.e. say “court, orange ball, 5 players, tall, I like the BULLS” Target word: BASKETBALL. Their goal is to have their partner guess the vocabulary word, go back and forth!

I have done this info gap many times, but I had made the clues for the targeted word. I liked having the kids create their own word clouds to connect to the language!

Interested in this pre-made? Check out my TPT SITE, all proceeds go to my students. 

Low Tech:

Word Clouds for Stories:

Mentimeter has a fantastic word cloud feature. As your students to answer a question – like “what sport do you prefer” (in Spanish).

Use the resulting word cloud to:

  1. Create a TPRS story
  2. Have the students write sentences
  3. Have the students write a story
  4. Play bingo (check out Martina’s version of this called STRIP BINGO)

Word Clouds for a Gallery Walk

  1. Using an application like wordclouds.com, have groups of students generate a word cloud with target vocabulary. Assign the vocabulary or have them draw words. Each group has to come up with 15 words (you can expect more because it is a think tank!).
  2. You could also create the word clouds if step one is too much prep.
  3. Screen shot their word clouds, number them, and hang them in the hallway/classroom:

4. Create a numbered sheet and have students walk around and guess what the targeted vocabulary word is