The Power of Image

If you are a non Spanish speaker does this mean anything to you?

LA ESCALERA

You may have noticed that the word starts with "La" and is feminine, that the first letter is "e" and the last letter is an "a". But does it mean anything to you? Most likely it doesn't and most likely you've already forgotten it.

Now if I add a picture to this word:

LA ESCALERA

Voilá. Instant. "La Escalera" means staircase. It is through the power of the image that the word becomes real. Now that you see the image of someone climbing a staircase, maybe this will allow you to see the word "scale" in the middle of the word and help you to remember that you "scale" a "staircase".

Using images and pictures with kids has always been an integral part of providing comprehensible language input in order to facilitate language acquisition.

As a world language teacher, I know that a picture really is worth a thousand words. The bridge that connects words to meaning is constructed with images.

Using images to teach new words is valuable, but using images just to teach a list of vocabulary words is limiting. The power of using images in the classroom comes from their potential to spark great conversations. Pictures give kids something to talk about.

Take this image:

I plan to use this image in class to have multiple conversations. As a warm up, I can put this image on the smart board and ask surface level questions such as "what colors do you see?" "How many monsters are there?" I can also engage kids in deeper level questions such as, "How does the blue monster make you feel?" or "What would you look like if you were a monster?". All of these questions fulfill the same goal, to get kids speaking to me and to each other in Spanish. Without the image, the conversation seems contrived, it lacks an anchor. Kids learn best when they are having fun and let's face it, monsters are fun.