A Lesson on Visuals

One of the things that initially piqued my interest in the University of Eastern Finland was the K-12 practice school it has on campus.  For their teacher education program, the university maintains a practice school with real students, real classrooms, and real teachers.  As an education student, I am allowed to observe as many of the classes as I would like.  I don't need to arrange these observations weeks in advance, but rather I can just show up a few minutes before class and ask to sit in.  It's quite an opportunity!

So, the morning after I got a tour of the primary school, I returned to observe a sixth grade textiles class.  (This time, I came prepared to remove my shoes.)  It was during this observation that my love for VIPs was reignited.

At this point, I should probably pause and tell you what a VIP is.  At Breakthrough Saint Paul (an awesome teaching program I've worked with for the past few years), teachers are encouraged to use Visual Instructional Plans (VIP).  When using VIPs, a teacher breaks down a task into small, manageable steps.  Each step is written down and illustrated.  Here is a VIP for how to make VIPs (meta, I know): 

Ok, getting back to the textiles class...for the first ten minutes of class, the teacher was going on and on in Finnish.  Even though I had attended a whole two Finnish lessons earlier that week, I was still a bit lost.  Surprising, I know.  Anyways, at the end of the teacher's spiel, she wrote some instructions on the board with a complete set of pictures.  A VIP!  All of a sudden, I knew exactly what the students were working on!  I nearly laughed out loud I was so excited.  One of the many benefits of VIPs is in how they enable ELL students (English Language Learners) to better follow along with the lesson.  In this case, the VIP was helping an FLL student (Finnish Language Learner)!  Needless to say, while I've always been a huge fan of VIPs, my appreciation for them increased tenfold because of this experience.