Chapter 5

NONLINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION

"Nonlinguistic" refers to mental images and physical sensations as opposed to language ("linguistic"). This enhances students' ability to use mental images to represent and elaborate on knowledge.

Word Processing Applications

• Positive with English language learners because clipart and photos can easily be inserted, which helps them to understand the content better. Children also get more out of notes when there are pictures with them.
• Word processing applications put a new twist on note taking and makes it more interactive and interesting for the children. It's also easy to make copies of the final document of notes and give it to the children.

Spreadsheet Software

• These are beneficial to use when you need graphs and charts.
  This might be better for older students for the most part. It would be a really good idea though, for teachers in classrooms with older children to work with graphs and charts with them, transferring data from one form to another and seeing the different ways to view things.

Organizing and Brainstorming Software

• This software gives students and teachers ways to create a variety of description patterns to build an understanding of new words and complex systems. This will favor students who are visual learners.

Data Collection Tools

• Technology provides students opportunities to go beyond traditional ways of collecting data.

Multimedia

• This is one of the most effective forms of non-linguistic representation. Movies and videos help students become engages in contend.
  

CLASSROOM IDEAS:
One good idea would be to use an organizing and brainstorming software like Kidspiration to get younger elementary students started on reports or other assignments. You could get them started by filling in several of the bubbles and leaving some for them to fill in themselves. It would be a good way to give them direction for where they should go with their assignment. It would also help them to get used to the program so that they can do more with it later as opposed to starting from scratch with it.

Another idea would be to have the children make videos about their unit. They could set it up as interviews, skits, news reports, or anything else they can think of (as long as it's ok'd by the teacher) to demonstrate their knowledge on the unit. These could be shared with the class. It would be fun for them to have their classmates watch a video they created, and their learning could be reinforced by watching their peers videos, because it could help them remember the material.