How To: Use Pictures & Emojis for Vocabulary

• Lesson Objective: Enhance comprehension of key vocabulary through contextual application

• Methodology: Students think critically about vocabulary by answer "thumbs up/down" questions, analyze depictions and non-depictions of terms, and associate emotions with terms.

• Duration: Varies depending on format and number of terms. I'd allow up to five minutes per vocabulary word.

  
  

"If it's not in a text with emojis, you kids can't read for ****"--Dana from The Pitt

Anyone else a Pitt fan? I swear I may have gotten the idea for this lesson during this scene! If you haven't seen it, some co-workers misread a doctor's note and the veteran discharge nurse let them know her thoughts.

Anyway, below is a Gen-Alpha friendly way for students to interact with vocabulary. While I sometimes may make these prompts silly, I often aim to make them applicable to real life. I consider my students' limited background knowledge and what they need to know to be functionally literate.

🖍 How the Routine Works

Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?

I ask a few questions related to the vocabulary term. I intentionally word the questions so that they aren't all yes or no to help prevent guessing and encourage close reading. Alternatively, youcould, of course, do this orally in Every Pupil Response style.

Picture Analysis

I often prefer to require students to eliminate the wrong answer so that they see numerous correct examples. This can be a great opportunity to tie in other disciplines, as seen below with geometry, biology, and government examples. We play Pictionary with our vocabulary words later in the unit and I can reference this activity if they aren't sure what to draw.

Emojis

 Research has long proven the relationship between emotions and our memories. It's my hope that associating feelings with our vocabulary will help move these terms into long-term memory. At the very least, it should help students determine if the word has a negative or positive connotation, or if it depends on context, such as the term "decreasing."

Check out the Interactive Unit Guides to see how this lesson fits within each unit. I typically include all of these activities in the same packet with word sums and cloze sentences.