There are many learning and teaching tools available to parents and educators, one of them being moodboards. A moodboard is an interactive, visual display (sometimes called a working wall) that combines colours, textures, and images to support different lessons and learning objectives. Moodboards have become popular over the past few years because of their ability to improve engagement and comprehension, allowing young children to express ideas, emotions and concepts in a way that engages their senses and fosters creativity. Their versatile nature helps them address several developmental areas simultaneously, making them valuable assets in early childhood settings and classrooms.
Moodboards are Perfect for Visual Learning
Children have a natural tenacity for processing information of different complexities through images. For example, educators can create a moodboard that tracks the weather to help children learn about things like the sun, clouds, and rain elements. Used this way, moodboards can be a great tool for teaching pattern recognition.
Young children, especially those still developing language skills, can use moodboards to communicate ideas and feelings they may not yet have the words for. Educators can use colour-coded emotional boards to help children identify and be able to sort through different scenarios and expressions or select images and materials that resonate with them emotionally to help educators understand their thoughts and emotions.
They Can Help with the Development of Emotional Intelligence
Children can gain emotional intelligence faster if exposed to moodboards specifically created to help them identify different feelings and emotions. Boards for this purpose can include varying body language, facial expressions, and different situational images that can all help children build and improve their emotional vocabulary. For example, children can express moods or feelings such as happy, sad, excited by using colours or images - helping them to recognise and label emotions.
Children can learn to identify various feelings and emotions in themselves and others by matching their feelings and what is displayed on the moodboards. For slightly older children, group discussions centred around specific emotion moodboards can help build empathy as children share their experiences and personal stories while recognising similar experiences shared with their peers. Using moodboards in this way aligns perfectly with social-emotional learning objectives children should meet at young ages. Additionally, this approach has been shown to help children process complex emotions, crucial during significant life transitions or challenging periods.
Moodboards can Support Language Development.
Educators can use moodboards as tools for language acquisition by using ones that provide visual context for new vocabulary. Some pupils can benefit greatly from the direct association between images and words, and it is up to educators to determine what to include on specific moodboards to ensure the best outcomes for all children.
Teachers can also use themed moodboards to inspire storytelling. When doing this, they should encourage the participating children to create narratives around different visual prompts. This combination of verbal and visual learning can be crucial for helping children understand and retain new vocabulary. It can also be a vital tool for helping foster creativity and narrative skills that become important as children grow older.
Another common use case of moodboards in supporting language development is in multilingual classrooms. Here, teachers can use moodboards with labels in different languages. These labels can connect different words in specific languages that mean the same thing or cover the same concept. Doing this can help create associations between words children know in their primary language with new ones in the new language they are learning. Studies show that this type of teaching and learning can accelerate language acquisition rates by over 30% compared to other methods. However, the success of such strategies depends on how well teachers can leverage this and other teaching tools available to them and how well they can engage the children they are teaching.
They Can Inspire Engagement In Learning
Learning outcomes are often dictated by how engaged students are. In the world of flashy things and short attention spans, teachers have to use every tool available to ensure adequate engagement levels.
Moodboards can help make learning more engaging because they can provide a hands-on and visual approach to learning that leads to higher engagement levels. Teachers can create cross curricular moodboards combining literacy, art, and social-emotional learning for better outcomes. Teachers can also engage children to see what subject combinations they are most interested in. An approach that is less hands-on than this is trial and error where teachers create different moodboards based on what pupils resonate with best.
While this approach might require more time to implement, the result is more personalised moodboards that better align with the needs of the children in a specific classroom. Moodboards can support multiple developmental concerns simultaneously. Their use in the classroom has accelerated due to their positive impacts on emotional intelligence, visual learning, language development, creativity, and collaboration. All these and other benefits have made them an invaluable tool in today’s modern classrooms.
