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.
- Draw a picture or symbol of the word
- Write as many words as they can that they associate with that word in the target language:
- 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:
- Create a TPRS story
- Have the students write sentences
- Have the students write a story
- Play bingo (check out Martina’s version of this called STRIP BINGO)
Word Clouds for a Gallery Walk
- 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!).
- You could also create the word clouds if step one is too much prep.
- 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
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