Manipulative Visual Language™

Abstract

Manipulative Visual Language (MVL)™: a new tool to help crack the code of English.

A team of Deaf and hearing Middle School teachers in Maine has been developing a new and exciting approach to teach English. The results so far are very positive.

In our classroom, nouns, verbs, adjectives and other grammatical parts come to life. The main parts of speech are visible (and divisible!) everywhere in 2 and 3 dimensions, and by shape and color. This means for example that students are not told about verb tenses; instead they can see, feel, and touch them. If they don’t know whether to use ‘was’ ‘is’ or ‘were’, then they can get up and get their hands on these verbs. In a classroom where nouns, verbs (in their many guises), adverbs, adjectives, and so on are all visible, tactile and divisible, then the English language becomes a real experience. As a result, students are developing a strong sense of the structures of English, and when they begin to break the code, reading and writing skills improve. We have students who never read or wrote until this year, while others have clearly demonstrated improvements in their overall literacy skills.

We conduct teacher and parent workshops with extensive traning on how to use MVL in the classroom and at home. Currently in use at three schools for the Deaf, MVL will be taught to teachers at several more schools in the next few months.

All of us are visual learners. We have all bought things that come with complicated manufacturer’s instructions. But what do you prefer, to go through the manual page by page, or to find an expert and say ‘just show me’? With MVL, we can show the students how the English language, at its basic level, all fits together, in ways that are colorful, fun, and meaningful.