The Power of Power Pics

I am in love with Power Pics.  Power Pics are pictures that correspond to content standards in both math and language arts.  Each Power Pic contains a question, an answer, a gesture, and a picture that the students can associate with the gesture.  Here is an example of a question and an answer taken from the Setting Power Pic:  What is a setting?  A setting is where the story takes place.  While students are answering the question, they are making the gesture associated with the concept and looking at the picture.  They then use "Teach Okay" to share the answer and the gesture with their partner.  This process activates all areas of the students' brains, because they are seeing, saying, hearing, and doing.  After the concept is taught, the Power Pic is placed on either the math or the language arts Power Pic wall and reviewed frequently using the answer and the gesture.  The result is better comprehension and recall of content, which I have witnessed first hand since school has started.  Below you will find a picture of what my Power Pics Walls, after eight days of school, looks like.  As you can see, we have covered a lot of content since the beginning of the school year.

When I first heard about the Power Pics wall, I associated it with my old "Words to Know" wall.  On it I would place key vocabulary words.  Although I usually included a picture with the vocabulary words, the kids were only seeing and hearing the content.  There was not much saying involved, unless you count repeating the definition after me, and there was definitely no doing.  The Power Pics wall is so much better.

One of my favorite Power Pic lessons so far this year has been open and closed syllables.  For these I created my own Power Pics.  I wanted the students to get the idea that in an open syllable the vowel hangs out and in a closed syllable it is sandwiched between two consonants.  So, I decided to use a sandwich for my picture.  For my open syllable pic I was unable to find a picture of a sandwich with one slice of bread missing, so after I printed the Power Pic, I just used a black marker to cross out one of the slices of bread.  To further bring home this concept I brought in a sandwich that I had made at home.  I associated the meat with the vowel and the two slices of bread with the consonants on each side.  When discussing open syllables I took off one slice of bread to demonstrate that the vowel was hanging out.  After two days 100% of my students were able to identify open and closed syllables and explain the difference between the two.  Of course, the gestures that they had learned were usually involved in their explanations.  I have created a link for both of the Power Pics if you would like to use them.  Just remember to use a jumbo black marker to cross out the top slice of bread in the open syllable pic.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/eixzkozfbz84ia2/closed%20syllable%20language%20art%20pic%20template%20-%20Shortcut.lnk?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vwxpchqm4iktxn3/open%20syllable%20language%20art%20pic%20template.pub?dl=0

I have also had a lot of fun with the Power Pic for a sentence.  Students are taught that a sentence is a complete message.  The picture is a phone ringing, and the gesture is pretending to hold a phone to one's ear.  Students are taught the "midnight phone call test":  Imagine that you are sound asleep and wake up to the phone ringing.  You pick it up and listen.  Then you ask yourself, "Was what I just heard a complete message?"  We had been working on this concept daily, and the students were getting very good at distinguishing between fragments and complete sentences. That's when I decided to put them to the test.  I wanted to see if they could tell where to place the periods in a piece of writing, by reading it and listening for complete messages.  So, I typed up a short passage for the students to proofread.  I left out both periods and capitals at the beginning of some sentences.  I chose to leave out the capitals, because we had also been using another Power pic to help us learn that every sentence must begin with a capital letter.  Right before the students began proofreading, I had a brainstorm.  I told the students to hold the phone to their ear, and when  they got to the end of a complete message, to hang up the phone and say "click".  It seemed like a natural extension to the sentence Power Pic, and I have to say that it worked beautifully.  Not only could most of them proofread a piece for periods, but when they wrote multiple sentences, most of them were doing a good job of knowing where their periods went.  Teaching kids what a sentence is and how to write in complete sentences has never been so easy.  Thank you Coach B. for the Power Pics.  They are amazing!

If you do not already have a Power Pic wall  up in your room, it is not too late to get started.  Create one space with a blue border for your language arts pics and one with a red border for your math pics.  You will also want to put letters and numbers along one side and on either the top or bottom of each wall.  This creates a grid system that makes it easy to find each Power Pic when you are doing review.  It also teaches kids how to read a grid.  Don't you just love those added bonuses?  You can find the pics themselves at the Whole Brain Teaching website.  The address is www.wholebrainteaching.com.  Be sure to register.  Once you do, you can go to downloads on the right hand side.  Within the download section you will find Power Pics for both math and language arts through the third grade.  They are yours to download and print.  By the way, did I mention that all of the downloads are free?