Emojis help children understand shakespeare - Tutor Hunt Blog

Emojis help children understand shakespeare Emojis help children understand shakespeare Emojis help children understand shakespeareSecondary SchoolsTeachers are turning to Emojis to help children understand Shakespeare A growing number of teachers are using emojis as a tool to help their pupils understand Shakespeare. There are many reports that the icons can help children engage with the great playwright`s work. Charlotte Hodgson, an English teacher at the Avonbourne College in Dorset is enthusiastic in her support of this new teaching aid, and countered the view that it is `dumbing down` the text: `The emojis are not used by themselves - there is always some kind of verbal or written explanation that then allows you to check the pupils` literacy, writing skills or speech skills.` It would of course be a concern if emojis were over used in the classroom, but Ms Hodgson was emphatic that they are only utilised to help pupils understand specific points in the text. `The emojis just give them a starting point that they understand.` When I first heard about this story my initial reaction was one of opposition - is there nothing so sacrosanct that these modern maniacal yellow faces can`t intrude upon? - for they certainly seem to be everywhere! What next - sacred texts translated wholesale into the newspeak of smiles and frowns? Marriage proposals composed entirely out of jaundiced decapitated heads? With a little consideration I have revised my opinion however - teaching aids of various kinds are used in a variety of subjects - and the reason for this is that they are effective. I can recall how the image of a see saw`s was used during my own school days in maths lessons, in order to help us learn how to balance equations. This simple tool, which was nothing more than a line and a triangle drawn on the blackboard, was extremely effective in helping us understand the seemingly intractable problem of algebra. If emoji`s can be helpful, then they should certainly be used in the classroom to help pupils understand Shakespeare. Great literature can often be difficult - and literature from 400 years ago can pose specific problems. Good teaching often entails presenting the difficulty in a slightly different light - and if the use of emoji`s can help in the teaching process, then why shouldn`t they be used? Of course an over reliance on teaching aids can be detrimental to the learning process. If my maths teacher had spent the whole year drawing see saws on the blackboard, attempting to use them to help overcome problems to which they were not applicable, this would have been a misuse of the teaching aid. Though ideally suited to balancing equations, the tool would have been less effective in the domain of trigonometry. In the same way emojis will have application to some areas of literature, but not others. A study of the play Hamlet may lend itself particularly well to an interoperation aided by emoji`s. The eponymous character certainly goes through the whole gamut of emotions - elation, mental confusion, rage, despair - and the use of emoji`s to delineate his turbulent and mercurial state of mind could well be helpful for pupils. Not everyone has full support for this teaching aid however. Clare Sealy, the headteacher of St Matthias School in east London, is against very much against using emojis to teach. `As educators, we have not a single minute to waste teaching trivia, such as emojis. How will such learning help bridge the word gap? How can we help disadvantaged children gain the sorts of powerful knowledge that children in, say, the top public schools have? Not by devoting precious curriculum time to the detritus of youth sub-culture. That would be fiddling while Rome burns.` Of course images have been used as a way to assist understanding and explanation throughout the history of mankind. Maps have been used for centuries as tools for navigation, as they assist the mind in understanding terrain at different scales. A map can provide spacial representation of a building, a country, or even the planet as a whole - each different scale of rendering providing useful graphical information. Construction blueprints are helpful in all areas of engineering; while anatomical diagrams have a wide variety of uses in medicine. Rebus books have images in the actual text of the story - usually emoji like pictures - and are used to help children learning to read. Sometimes the picture will be used in place of a word, and the child will be encouraged to read out the names of the images, while the adult reads the actual text. Some teachers encourage their students to construct emoji summaries of a book they have read. The beginning middle and end will be expressed concisely with just a few images - in this way the book can be seen as a whole, and its meaning clearly understood. The enduring appeal of Shakespeare is that his that his message is universal - it reaches across cultures, across hostory. Betrayal, ambition, jealousy - these are global, timeless concerns, intrinsic to the human condition. Since he has travelled this far down the ages, enduring all the fickle changes of fashion, the bard will have no difficulty surviving these disembodied little yellow heads. 21 months ago0Add a Comment