To get better at show and tell, start by being clear about the action that should flow from your problem solving and findings: the governing idea for change. Then find a way to present your logic visually so that the path to answers can be debated and embraced.

– Six Problem-Solving Mindsets for Very Uncertain Times

Go down to the two palm trees, then turn left. Go over the bridge and turn left again for the swamp. Turn right and go on until you get to the cave. Then go back to the beach and dig by the black rock. Perhaps it was a pirate’s parrot. Perhaps these were directions for finding the pirate’s treasure.

– Bee-Bot on Pirate Island

Big books have a strange allure. Is it the big, glossy pictures and the catchy sentences in large font? Is it the interaction between the two? Are big books used only because children up to the age of nine are still developing ability to access real books without pictures? Are the pictures in this sense like training wheels?

The language ability of adults and older children is in some domains, judged on how well words are used to communicate concepts and representations without use of any gestures, facial expressions and pictures.

Consider the following description:

Maize is stacked in narrow cribs, and rice is spread to dry on broad straw mats, and between the banana and papaya trees big calm spiders hang against the sky.

This was written by Peter Matthiessen who undertook a journey up the forbidding mountains of Nepal to reach a monastery on Crystal Mountain. Feasting eyes on his words, the reader feels like she is at the rugged terrain with him.

Consider another description:

an article of furniture consisting of a flat, slab like top supported on one or more legs or other supports

This is the definition of the word ‘table’ from dictionary.com.

A skilful user of language would be able to, using words only, convey just about any tangible and abstract concept. Students could try describing what they see around them without using the names of what they see to develop skill. For example, how can ‘chair’ be described without using the word ‘chair’?

Developing language ability to an extent that its use on its own, is sufficient for every end is a worthy goal. However, the effect of the most adroit use of language on its own would pale in comparison with that of images and words. Students should therefore not come to the view that communication through other means is in any way reflective of incompetence.

On the contrary, the most powerful vehicles of meaning are multimodal. This is the thinking behind photojournalism where “visual ways” are used “to tell the story” (Kobre, 2017). A photograph which encapsulates a story, is taken and meaning is enhanced with a caption.

From pictures and the written word, we now also have videos and animated graphics to enhance meaning and delivery. Big data visualisation is a case in point.

Data has been referred to as the most valuable commodity of today and the foreseeable future (Bhageshpur, 2019). Marketing professionals used to design collateral based on their expectation of a target group. Now with data, there is no need for a hypothetical customer; products and services along with marketing efforts to push them can be based on real people and their preferences.

Data helps in other ways. We get to spot trends and other types of insight. Processing aside, there is also the matter of presenting these insights to effect behaviour or secure buy-in.

Big data visualisation is the use of a graphic or animated graphic representation to complement words in presentation of insights gleaned from processing. Using animated graphics requires among other things technical skills. This does not mean, students at the primary school level cannot also begin to include use of graphics to enhance presentations and in contexts, traditionally considered to be words only domain such as letters and compositions.

Memory is stored in images. In Moonwalking with Einstein, Foer explains how to memorise just about anything, including entire books. One of the techniques he demonstrates is that of using images in the mind.

Ally and Budson (2007) found that images were more useful for recall. They used the examples of an image of an ant and the word ‘ant’. They say that when a student looks at a picture of an ant, she links it to a range of possible semantic associations such as, “ant, bug, insect, arthropod”. When the student sees just the word, ‘ant’ though, the range of pictures which can be generated in her mind will be very much more limited.

In other words, it may be useful during revision to represent what has been learnt with graphics. These could be in the form of unique drawings which to a student represents the words she has read in notes, graphs, mind maps, Venn diagrams and so on.

Also, when attending an interview or making a presentation during a competition, students could harness the power of images to their advantage. What decision makers would find easier to retain, more than the quality of reasoning, might be a simple and powerful image. So, students could frame answers in the form of metaphors which are easy to visualise.

In Anne Frank’s diary, she wrote about Mr Keesing her Mathematics teacher. Mr Keesing asked Anne to write an essay titled “Chatterbox” because she was talking too much in class. When she continued talking after handing in her essay, she was asked to write an essay titled, “An Incorrigible Chatterbox”. Anne did not stop talking and Mr Keesing was not about to write her off either. He gave her a new title, “Quack, Quack, Quack”.

This time Anne wrote a poem depicting a father swan who ate his ducklings because they quacked too much. Though Anne had in both previous essays attempted to convince Mr Keesing through reasoning for example by arguing talking was an inherited trait, she did not manage to bring him round. This time however, Mr Keesing took very differently to her approach and stopped scolding her altogether when she spoke too much in class. He even shared her poem with other students.

Ally and Budson (2007) also found that, “participants may automatically form a mental image of a word at study”. When a word is read, it is processed into an image in the mind. This may not always happen especially when reading an argument or some other form of reasoning. However, on many other occasions such as when attempting cloze passages or open-ended comprehensions which describe scenes, visualisation will aid meaning making.

If an open-ended comprehension text involves directions, such as in the quote from the children’s book, Bee-Bot on Pirate Island, it will be difficult to follow the sequence of events or to place oneself in a character’s shoes without actively trying to convert words in the text to pictures. Where this proves difficult to do mentally, making sketches would be very useful.

Given how images are central to meaning making, students should learn to communicate meaning through pictures along with words. This of course highlights the importance of art lessons. Even when someone is not particularly given to making elaborate images by hand (which is very useful to encode meaning for the purposes of recall), a cursory perusal of data visualisation graphics would reveal how very basic shapes can be very useful.

Even if there is an aversion to art, pictures are not limited to drawings. To enhance delivery of meaning, props can also be used. A simple prop used skilfully can be a powerful image. This article, shows how a successful pitch to secure funding for an oyster reef conservation project was done. The presenters arranged around the meeting room, seventeen buckets of water. When asked why the buckets were there by decision makers, the presenters told them “each oyster filters seventeen buckets of water per day”.

Indeed, words in and of themselves are only one of a possible range of tools to deliver meaning. Though emphasis is placed more on the written word as children grow older, their early learning encounters with language involving big book reading or Show and Tell are not merely to compensate a lack of language or to encourage expression.

Big books and Show and Tell are social, interactive experiences. They invite engagement. If students bring the same story tellers voice, pictures and props to presentations at work, they might be able to capture the imaginations of their audience the same way their teachers did when they were young.

A quack might be worth more than a thousand words.

The Brain Dojo