Edutopia recently highlighted the 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2020, and one of them jumped out at me because the findings were a great match for Clicker’s multisensory approach to learning. The study explored how using pictures and gestures helps students learn a language and greatly improves their ability to remember new words months later.
The ease with which you can include pictures, along with speech support, in Clicker activities makes it perfect for learning new words or concepts, particularly for English language learners. Using Clicker Books, for example, to creating a simple talking picture dictionary or virtual flashcards is a quick way to introduce target vocabulary to your learners. Children can see and listen to the word, and they have the picture to reinforce the meaning.
By adding a record button to the page, English language learners or early readers can record themselves saying the word as well. They can re-record as many times as they like, giving them time to develop their confidence in a positive, non-threatening environment.
To further personalize the book and reinforce the picture-based learning, you could add an additional picture cell to the page. Using the integrated painting tools, children create their own picture to represent the word. They can even use the letter stamps to practice writing the word.
Did you know that you can also record videos directly into a Clicker Book? This is a perfect way to incorporate the gesture-enriched learning described in the study. Get your students to add short videos acting out the words.
Other Clicker activities such as Matching, Talk, and Connect Sets can be used effectively to assess students’ new word knowledge. You’ll find hundreds of these types of resources and Clicker Books on LearningGrids; or see our tutorials to create your own sets which include multisensory strategies for language learning.
