Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to facilitate students in showing their thinking through a Color, Symbol, Image activity.
I came across this video recently (a 4 minute French video about how technology isn’t ruining our brains, but it is changing them!) and because I cannot turn my teacher brain off for any amount of time, my first thought was “this would be great for a CSI”! Then, I decided that this would be a great time to share a simple activity for having students demonstrate what they know.
What is CSI?
CSI is one of the many amazing activities in Making Thinking Visible (2011), which is, in my opinion, the best book to give to new teachers! This particular “thinking protocol” is perfect for language classes, in that it does not rely on written language.
Step One: Students read/watch a source text.
Step 1.5: Sometimes it’s helpful, before moving to the next step, to discuss any interesting, important, or insightful thoughts that students had while reading. Especially if it’s the first time doing this thinking protocol, generating a class list of ideas can let students focus on the next step of transforming their thoughts into CSI, instead of struggling with the text to begin with.
Step Two: Students, either individually or in a group, (or first individually, then in a group) draw one color, one symbol, and one image that describes the core idea of the source text.
A color is… a color. The authors of the book make the point that “the connections students make are highly personal and need to be understood in terms of the individual’s explanation. For example, one student may choose black to represent an idea because to them black represents possibility and the unknown, whereas another student may associate blue with the exact same idea because blue reminds him of the openness of the sky and infinite freedom and possibility” (pp. 119-120).
A symbol is a simple image that represents a larger idea. The way I introduce this idea to my students in talking about the apps on the home screen of an iPhone: an envelope represents the email app, a microphone represents the podcast app, the silhouette of a bird represents Twitter, etc.
An image is a drawing of a scene. Students identify a moment or idea that they want to represent through a drawing as a way to draw attention to its importance.
Step Three: Students share out, either in pairs, or the whole class (or first in pairs, then with the whole class) what they drew and WHY.
Step 3.5: This is an opportunity to have students moving around and practicing explaining their thoughts. For example, a group of 3 could do a CSI. Each student is assigned a number. All the 1s stay with their work (probably on a huge piece of paper) and the rest of the students wander around the room looking at the other groups’ work and asking questions of the students who are with the paper. Then it’s time for the 2s to stay with the paper, and the others wander, etc.
Why does it work?
Students are asked to think metaphorically and synthesize their understanding of the text. Not only are students asked to go beyond simple recall, but they need to transform their thoughts from one medium to another. Furthermore, in explaining their choices they are developing important oral communication skills.
CSI can work with all content areas, but for language especially, it’s fantastic for allowing students to express themselves in a deep way without needing a lot of vocabulary to support it. For example, lower-level students who just have a vocabulary of colors and adjectives can do the “C” part of CSI for any texts they encounter.
CSI can also be expanded beyond responding to texts. Students can use it to respond to events, future plans, or how they feel about other people/objects/places. Basically, if you want students to be thinking about something, and want to give them enough structure to feel confident, but not too much structure that they can’t think freely, CSI is a way to do that!
Feel free to share in the comments if you use CSIs or any other visual thinking protocols! If you’re interested in more of Harvard’s Project Zero thinking protocols, you can check them out here.