Frame the Lesson Using Visuals
After the warm-up or bell-ringer exercise, prepare students for the lesson by having them preview visuals related to the day’s vocabulary, as well as have them preview the final question of the lesson. This question can be exit ticket or closure of the lesson. Often an easy way to find a good question is to take the final (inferential) question of the main vocabulary word of the lesson. For example, for the word “activation energy,” the final question “How does an enzyme affect the activation energy of a reaction” can serve as the closure, and activation energy, enzyme, and substrate can serve as the key vocabulary.
When the visuals for these vocabulary words and the final question are displayed, students can preview them by discussing with their partners or groups using any of the following sentence stems:
I think the question is asking…
I think the word _____ is related to the question because…
I think the word _____ means… because…
The picture makes me think of… because…
Guiding Student through a Visual
Structured visuals often have a lot of detail, and it can help students to guide them through key parts of it. An easy way to start is to point out the places on the visual in which the vocabulary word is labelled. If you see any brackets, arrows, or lines that are purple, or any images that have a purple glow around them, that indicates the vocabulary word. For example, in the visual for the GI Bill, there is context shown before and after the passage of the GI Bill, but the GI Bill itself is a scroll of parchment with a purple glow. Having students focus on this as they think about the question can reduce intimidation and give more refined, thoughtful responses.