Post pandemic many of us have extolled the virtues of visualisers. Myself included. Yet many teachers I speak to still don’t know how effective their use in the classroom can be. I wrote more about this here. But in this post I share my top 5 tips for using this amazingly simple, but transformational tech.
1. Exemplify
At the start of a lesson, show the whole class what you hope they will achieve. Rather than just stating your learning intentions and success criteria, show them. Place your completed learning exemplar (a drawing, an essay, a paragraph, a graph, a maths example) under the visualiser and talk through what you hope they will learn and how you know they will be successful – referring to specific aspects of the work.
2. Demonstrate
Use the visualiser to demonstrate the steps which learners will need to get to where they are going. In real time, go through the process you want them to use, narrating your internalised thinking and pointing out the pitfalls. Allow learners to watch you skilfully work through the learning to show how achievable it is for them. This is typically the ‘I do’ stage of ‘I do, we do, you do.’ Good teachers do this every lesson – it’s the traditional exposition part of the lesson when you might normally be explaining how pupils should complete the task. But imagine how powerful this can be, when coupled with the large scale visual of you actually demonstrating this, visually. Practical subjects are very good at this, but even then, a demonstration without a visualiser means that it can be difficult for all pupils to see. A visualiser allows every tiny detail of the learning to be magnified for pupils to see without them even having to leave their seat. Pupils are now able to visualise the learning as well as hearing your teaching points.
3. Model
Use the visualiser to model specific techniques or skills you want the pupils to learn. This could be the layout of a maths problem, the way you hold the paintbrush or the structure of a diagram. Additionally, as the expert, you understand the common pitfalls and misconceptions which pupils will undoubtedly encounter. Model these under the visualiser by making mistakes and showing how to avoid them, fix them or learn from them. Again, great teachers do this verbally, but the power of pupils seeing the written response being laid out and modelled is so powerful in learning.
4. Improve
Use the visualiser to live mark. With the pupils watching, go through a completed piece of work and discuss with learners ways to improve it. Every pupil in the room will be able to see the work, in detail, on the projector and can be engaged in the process of how to make it better. Rather than just explaining how to improve, the visualiser allows you to show visually how to make the work better. Aspects can be highlighted, annotated, or reworked to improve.
5. Feedback
Use the visualiser to give feedback to pupils. Teacher feedback given via the visualiser is incredibly powerful as well as being an excellent tool for peer feedback. This requires a strong positive relationship with pupils and an established classroom culture where it is the norm to make mistakes and improve. In my experience, pupils love to bring their work up and place it under the visualiser but don’t assume , always ask their permission to share. With the work magnified for the class to see, you are able to pick out the strengths and encourage classmates to feedback on the successful demonstration of learning they observe. It can also be effective to look at how the work might be improved next time – giving specific targets to work on in future. Laying an acetate over the work or photocopying it in advance, allows you then to annotate, underline, or highlight aspects to draw attention to. Again this gives pupils a concrete example to put this into practice with, rather than words and instructions with nothing to relate it to.
So much of this is merely building on good practice which teachers demonstrate day in day out perhaps on a white board or promethean board. However, the power of a visualiser is the ability to see ‘actual’ work. As well as this, unlike the white board which eventually needs to be scrubbed off and cleaned, all of the work you do in demonstrations can be kept, photographed, shared with absent pupils, uploaded to digital classrooms or revisited at a later date. For each class I teach, I keep a sketchbook or copy of the pupil booklet as a teacher copy. I work directly into it and keep all of the examples and work for that class in one place. I find this makes it easier to share with pupils.
I hope this post has been useful. Obviously I am coming at this from a practical subject perspective, but sometimes I find it even more useful when teaching written work. I would be interested to hear how teachers of other subjects teach using a visualiser. But for me, I wouldn’t be without mine now.
Have a great week everyone. Especially those of you who have a half term break from the classroom!
Perfectly imperfect educator 