VTS: From the Museum into the ENL Classroom

Abstract

Visual thinking strategies (VTS) is a museum-based technique with promising potential for English learners' (ELs') language development and content learning. Educators in museums and school settings have enthusiastically adapted VTS to their instructional repertoires in order to bolster students' aesthetic appreciation, literacy development, critical thinking, language learning, and content learning. In this article, the authors present a vignette from a high school classroom to illustrate the powerful potential of VTS for classroom use with linguistically diverse learners. The article also considers how language teachers may modify typical VTS to constructively scaffold ELs’ learning.

Keywords

• museums
• English language teaching
• visual literacy