This is a guest blog written by Bethanie Drew. You can see more of her work here and follow her @lovemysummer.
If I had to pick only one resource to inspire inquiry and curiosity in my classes, it would be images. Whether it’s fine art, a video from social media, a doodle, or even one of the thousands of photos I’ve taken in my travels over the years, imagery always evokes a response in the viewer. This reaction can be a powerful motivator to connect curiosity with communities and cultures, which strongly aligns with our goals in the world language classroom. After all, as one of my mentors has often reminded me, our classes should be built around interesting topics of discussion.
The PALMSSS Strategy
A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but what do we do when our students only seem to have a few things to say about it? I love the PALMSSS strategy. I first heard of the concept of PALMSSS on teacher Twitter and it piqued my curiosity for multiple reasons. First, I love a good template that supports students with scaffolding. Second, I’m continually seeking strategies that are low prep for me — especially those that are versatile across levels and languages — and highly engaging and effective for students. Finally, I’m very interested in strategies that equip students to say what they actually want to say, which motivates them to keep wanting to say more!
PALMSSS is an acronym for
- People
- Action,
- Location,
- Mood,
- Seasons,
- Senses, and
- Symbolism.
Essentially it gives us a template to follow for exploring an image and then talking or writing about it. PALMSSS guides us through a process of examining an image at progressively deeper levels of interpretation and moving past a superficial reaction that might result from a first glance. By considering each piece of the acronym, we give students a gentle hint to direct their observations. Teachers can also provide some nudges to dig deeper by asking questions for each category. For example,
- P(eople)—how many people are in the image? who are they?
- A(ction)—what are they doing?
- L(ocation)—where are they?
- S(season)—what season is it? how can you tell?
- S(enses)—if you were in the image, what would you smell/taste/feel?
- S(ymbolism)—explain symbolism that you see.
Depending on the image, we might look at the whole image all at once and work through building a description of it. As always, modeling is important!
Adding an extra level to PALMSSS
Sometimes, though, I want to up the inquiry level another notch. In this case, I only show fragments of an image at a time and apply the PALMSSS formula to those segments before showing the complete image. I recently used this strategy in my AP Spanish Language & Culture class with the painting La Tamalada by Carmen Lomas Garza. The fragmentation option was particularly effective with this piece of artwork because there are so many intriguing details in the painting that contribute to the story that it tells but are easy to overlook at first glance. Using PALMSSS as an overall guide to the types of questions to ask students, we explored questions for the fragments such as…
- Who are the people in the painting?
- What are they doing?
- Why are they doing this together?
- What season is it?
- What can we interpret about the family’s religion?
Answers to all of these questions were found with close examination of the image.
After discussing relevant PALMSSS-inspired questions for fragments of the painting, we then progressed to considering the painting as a whole. Again, PALMSSS was our guide. It’s fascinating what students see when we’ve used this strategy to steer their observations. In La Tamalada, for example, a discussion emerged about what season and location was portrayed based on observations of the trees in the window. These kinds of observations often naturally flow into conversations about culture, communities, and connections, bringing us back to the core tenets of our classes.
Adjusting PALMSSS to match learner levels
While the example I described above is one from my AP course, PALMSSS is a strategy that is easily adaptable to other levels. In a novice-level course, we might only use a few “letters” from the acronym, like P, A, and L. This is an appropriate adaptation because it correlates with the language they have at their current skill level.
However, in my IB classes, which are much more advanced linguistically, the speaking component of their standardized exam is a discussion based on a photo stimulus. As a result, we start with PALMSSS and enhance it with additional connections and comparisons. In my department, we have adopted and adapted this strategy across levels as another layer of scaffolding. Students are exposed to PALMSSS in lower level classes and continue to use and expand on it as they continue in their language study. This familiarity serves as a comfort as well as a building block leading to increased confidence and sustained language study.
Whether we use PALMSSS as a questioning guide for discussion or a template for preparing to speak or write, PALMSSS is a helpful tool for all involved. While we might not reach the “1000 words” that a picture is worth, it definitely helps us to take major steps in that direction.