Pinterest Possibilities with Vocabulary

Provide an authentic and engaging project for your students while tapping into their critical thinking skills!

By having students create their own Pinterest board (think of it as a visual bookmarking site) to show their knowledge of new vocabulary words, they employ critical thinking skills while collaborating with others.

Here's a Pinterest board that I created for an upcoming vocabulary unit in English 7.  Here’s another one I created for a Spanish I class.  I signed up for a work account using my school email.  I also used the Pinterest App on my iPad--it's seamless!* Quick disclaimer- I currently teach in a 1:1 environment with iPads so their use is incorporated into many of my lessons.

Create - After creating a board you can pin pictures directly from a Google image search or repin from Pinterest itself.  (Pinterest does not store the entire image file but it does 'pin' the URL that your picture comes from.)  

Communication - You have the ability to comment (500 characters max) on each picture so you could include an explanation for each.  Another cool thing - if you put a link in your comment section it will automatically hyperlink it when you save it.  I left one in (check the chess pieces in my Ron Weesley board- more on that board later) so that you can see what it looks like.

Collaborate - Students can repin images from other students and add them to their board; so students could work together in a group creating pictures for the whole vocab unit.  Four kids could work together, creating only 5 pins on their own, through sharing they could have a board of 20 words.  Students can also comment on one another's pins.

Critical thinking - There are a few ways that kids could use it w/ vocab:

• A picture that illustrates the vocab word

• A picture with the synonyms or antonyms listed & they have to guess the vocab word
• Pictures with English word descriptions for a particular word/phrase (ex: el vaso de jugo de naranja) - specifically for world language vocab
• Pictures that represent the word - then I explained why I chose it in the comment section
• Pictures that were antonyms to the word - I explained why I chose this picture as well

* Well...ALMOST seamless.  At this point, on an iPad, you can't create a public link (in Google Drive or in Skitch) so that your own picture (that you took with your camera) has a URL.  So I had to upload the Skitch photos from my laptop, not my iPad.  Also, on an iPad, if you want to pin an image you find in a Google search you need to go through Safari & not use the app.   Repinning pictures while in the app works great, however.  The app is really easy to use!