Every teacher knows the importance of using visual aids in addition to text in the classroom. It’s directly linked to memory, it bypasses vocabulary limitations, it makes things brighter and simply more fun… Their importance cannot be overstated. It’s hard, sometimes, though, to incorporate them into student work. How do I gauge student understanding based on their art? What about students with physical impediments to art, or who just plain aren’t very artistic and find the process a struggle?

I don’t have a perfect solution, but I’ve just found another tool to use! Foldplay.com has the simple interface that I love to see when finding teaching tools. To look at it, you’d assume it’s geared towards the K-6 grade set (and it might be), but I could make real use of it in a self-contained 7-8 grade setting. One of my priorities when creating self-contained lessons is to teach the interface the least and the content the most, which is easily done on this site. The text-light nature takes some of the pressure off and makes it fairly fun to use, too. In the end, you have a physical graphic organizer that you can quickly refer back to during assignments. I’ve done my own example lesson with the internal text structure unit, but I could see this being used for science mnemonics and even quick-access math formulas, too!

An example foldplay.com lesson using internal text structures

Image Credits:

Anelka. (2015). fruit-712729_1920 [Digital image] Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/photos/fruit-apple-vitamins-sweet-oranges-712729/. CC 0.

Hope, D. (2015). collaboration-1106196_1920 [Digital image] Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/photos/collaboration-collaborator-book-1106196/. CC 0.

Mark, D. (2014). general-store-269539_1920 [Digital image] Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/photos/general-store-california-nostalgic-269539/. CC 0.

Mittermeier, F. (2017). pocket-watch-2061228_1920 [Digital image] Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/photos/pocket-watch-time-clock-time-of-2061228/. CC 0

Pexels. (2016). blur-128365_1920 [Digital image] Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/photos/blur-blurred-book-book-pages-1283865/. CC 0.

Sch, E. (2016). wave-1913559_1920 [Digital image] Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/photos/wave-atlantic-pacific-ocean-huge-1913559/. CC 0.

Schutz, L. (2019). book-3996723_1920 [Digital image] Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/photos/book-pages-book-page-heart-paper-3996723/. CC 0.

Wollesen, C. (2015). cobweb-921039_1920 [Digital image] Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/photos/cobweb-dewdrop-web-insect-case-921039/. CC 0.