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today we're going to be talking about the link between color and learning and my name is Ana Caballero as you can read here but I'm also known as Anna Del Norte or Anna from the north um because of my cartoons since this this is one of them before we begin I will kindly ask you to relax I mean you had a great session with Emily it was amazing it was very dynamic and now we're going to relax and you're going to focus on the colors you have blue and green you're going to listen let's take a few minutes to relax

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okay breathing count one 2 3 hold your breath one two three and Bre out look at how the colors merge in this beautiful blue and green water color and how you feel right now there is a light of blue color going around your body as you bre in again one two three and and breath out I know there might be many distractions but do not focus on them focus on you and your feelings and this colors if it's hard to to look at the color use your imagination and think about something that is related to these

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colors for example the sea or some grass or a tree whatever makes you feel better again inhale one two 3 hold it one two three and exhale are You Ready for today's session relax and enjoy okay today I'm happy and I'm green I actually saw some of the some of your comments before Emily's session and most of you said you were feeling green or the color green came to your mind um I created this so you could relate emotions to Colors so I'm going to ask you right now to type in the chat

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box whatever you feel and the color as I said I'm green and I'm happy what about you green green green Green Happy People wow pink and relaxed okay oh romantic very good thank you so much I want to share a story with you remember um this is me about well 15 years ago was 12 or 15 years ago I was a teacher at an only girls school it was secondary I loved playing with my students and I got a job at this very strict and special school this is a group this is one of the groups I used to teach

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and here they look happy but this happened after a Breaking Point the first day of school well I am I started working in the middle of in the middle of the school year so when I first walked into the classroom they looked at me and said hey you're going to be our third third English teacher this school year the other two ran away because they couldn't handle us I mean it was just like talking to Regina George and Mean Girls and I was scared to be honest I was around 20 something years old and but I was determined to

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take that challenge um there must be something that could have that could be done and I was willing to try pretty much everything I mean I tried changing teaching approaches I did PPP TBL um text based I also tried playing music for them in the class I tried playing games um I also asked them to you know talking to them and oh gosh have you ever had those students or those groups that you don't know what to do but you try to do pretty much anything to change the conversation here yep I must confess that every time I

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walked out of the that classroom I would cry my eyes out in the bathroom because I thought it was impossible but one day as a teacher as an artist as an illustrator I wanted to use a different strategy how many times thank you teachers I'm in Mexico I decided I was going to use colors in the classroom to have them reflect on something I used some cards to draw some alphabet letters I gave each student a letter I didn't tell them that this was a phrase but I told them to use the colors that represent them

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and their personality and they could they had x amount of minutes so they could decorate their card once they finished I told them well this is a phrase work together so you can put that sentence or that phrase together and tell me if you believe in this or not well it took them around 30 minutes because they had conflicts between them I mean it was a very very difficult group and they were willing to have me run away but after those 30 minutes they realized um I don't know if you can read it because the resolution is not good I

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mean this was the first time I did it with one with this group and with you know when teaching but actions yes exactly actions speak louder than words so now that they had figured out well there you go actions speak louder than words they had promised so many times they would become a better group that I told them well this time is each letter has a part of you each letter represents you so on the back of each letter you're going to write something you commit to during the rest of the school year so they did and

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this changed completely it was a game Cher so every time some students will start to misbehave the other ones will tell them hey actions speak louder than words and it became an important part of our school here and this is when I discovered and when I found out how important is to use color in the classroom even for something as simple as classroom management what do you think can you relate to this type of situation thank you so this is why I've been using colors all of these years even in

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classes and teacher training courses and well I have some questions well I have two questions for you guys number one how do you use color in your classroom I'll give you a minute so you can type the way you use color in your classroom please and how do you use it do you use it for grammar do you use said to um color coding good every class very good decoration highlighting good okay second question why do you use it just because like it or because there is a rationale behind it oh very that's nice

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Stacy teaching vocabulary you use it in groups you kids love coloring yes and coloring activates a different part of the brain which helps them focus better on different activities you get okay visual wow okay now that we are in the mood for colors I'm going to do some true or false okay color coding improves information recall by only by 20% is this true or false it it's false information um well it is false because color coding improves information recall up to 40% there was a study in which Learners

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enjoyed most of the class because they were using colors and it was easier for them to remember what they were learning um using colors can help improve memory retention this is particularly useful for students who struggle or who have problem problems to retaining information presented in a more traditional way different colors activate different parts of the brain true or false wow you're getting an A+ in this test true color processing is connected to areas of the brain responsible for emotion

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this is why architecture is so important this is why if you go to McDonald's you feel like you have to eat and go that's why they use it in fast food or if you go to H&M you feel like you want to stay there for hours because everything is so neutral and so peaceful and you just want to spend your money there next one using color can have an emotional response true or false very nice ding ding ding true I mean blue promotes calmness and and concentration I mean green Ines con concentration as well and reduces

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anxiety um this is why some hospitals are light blue or green and they use this color palette I mean pink can have a caling effect on the nervous system and well I don't know if you knew this but green can increase memory for positive words exactly Ernest Ernest um different colors can evoke different emotions specific emotions and you can set the tone for an entire lesson and we have a classroom here which is green and blue now students behavior is not affected by color this is fals color can regulate energy levels or

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it can influence productivity I mean if you use Jello it stimulates Al activity and optimism or if you have a classroom full of color mean that is oversaturated this could cause Learners disrupt their learning process I mean we have classroom one and classroom two in which classroom do you think Learners will be able to focus better exactly number one yes sometimes we have classrooms that are very colorful they're very nice but whenever we are trying to teach something students are like teacher car and they point to the

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card that where they have the car right and we also have um kids who who have autism and those students need less colors and less stimul so they can focus yep exactly Amalia other reasons to use color in the classroom well we can use it to strengthen memory Pathways this is why in in Mexico and I can see that we have me many Mexican teachers here we we have this joke plumon uh girls who always use their markers to make notes complex information becomes more manageable when colorcoded again I was

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that girl I loved using different colors to have to grammar grammar items or vocabulary items and so on yay we have many girls who love markers here um strategic use of color can increase attention span certain colors help maintain sustained Focus for example classrooms that have more neutral colors um have a better focus from Learners and color zoning helps organize cognitive tasks if you have workstations that are labeled in different colors you can have Learners move from Station to Station so so they know what to do in each stage

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of the class okay when it comes to physical environment design I have three pictures three settings how would you feel in any of these scenarios or in any of these classrooms Could you type them in the chat box I mean you can choose one or you can just talk about the three of them calm focused mhm relaxed yep nice well if we go over the first classroom the green classroom with with earthy tones green is usually associated with well-being with Harmony nature um students can relieve stress reduce fatigue and relax in this type of

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setting I love Windows too um blue is usually associated with the ocean and sky and sky and incre it increases productivity and it also helps regulate heartbeat and breeding and purple well well for me I mean this is a personal opinion purple is like the best from Two Worlds I mean when you have the mixture of red and blue something warm something full power and energy um and color psychology shades of purple can communicate originality and Visionary thinking purple lovers okay so we can use the setting of our

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class just to set the mood of our lessons okay we also have active learning spaces um some spaces as you can see here we have two classrooms in this case they're using Co they're using colors you can't see anything that's weird can the rest of you see my screen can you see my presentation okay so if you we use warmer colors like soft yellow for collaborative areas we can also incorporate color intensities to Define different activity zones like in this case we have a maap and we have

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there is a seting chart where Learners can sit and read um we can design visual boundaries using colorcoded floor spaces and I know this looks ideal in a perfect world but sometimes I mean not not sometimes the goal here is to create a space where every student feels seen supported and capable of success right wait what I don't have a classroom of my own I have to share my classroom with five other teachers and I'm I'm from Mexico and most teachers would say pretty much that I don't have a classroom of my own we

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don't have a budget to decorate classrooms um but again don't worry this is a good moment to work with your colleagues and if you share your classroom with five other teachers you could come to an agreement and say well this is the best for students we're going to use half of the classroom for English and half of the classroom for Spanish or science or whatever um this is going to be the reading area or the caling area when there is a will there's a way exactly um we have we have a saying here

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in Mexico do what you can with what you have this is pretty much it I mean and as someone said before in the chat box when there's a will there is a way okay you can even use cardboards oh if you don't have uh a budget to paint the classroom because that's not um part of school year the school Year's budget you can use some cardboards to designate some areas or you can even use masking tape to use this area to read or this homing zone or whatever we can also use color based sensory tools I'm going to talk about

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preschool and Elementary I mean in preschool we have some examples like these poored beans poored beans that they can use to relax and feel better um they can reduce anxiety and they also help Learners develop fine motor skills we have a this flexible fidget toys that can help them calm down whenever they have a tantrum or sensory overload in elementary well you could have some fidget toys that they can spin them um let's face it after covid and after so much screen time we have faced a different reality where Learners are

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easily distracted they become more anxious and they need this spaces or these tools so they can relax and come back to class something else we could do is use color as social emotional support and communication for example this mood meter in which Learners can just say how they feel you can use it at the very beginning of the class or at the end of the class I highly recommend to make a routine with your learners using something similar to this because if you use it as an exit ticket they put they

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can stick their name on the top or they can use their own version depending on what you need or this could be part of your welcome process when students walk into the classroom and they can change it as class go yeah as class go goes by we also have this wheel um problem problem conflict solving wheel in which we can help Learners wait wait okay I'm getting so distracted by this chat box okay but I'm so so grateful to have so many comments thank you for participating it's not like talking to

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the wall it's like there's a conversation here so we can use this type of will so Learners can have different choices to make whenever they have a conflict in the class um you can even integrate them into this activity creating their own Solutions and of course like we did at the beginning I don't know if you felt better after the our mindfulness session after or our meditation with color how do you feel about that after that did you like it did you enjoy it it took only like two minutes and I think it was a good way to

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set the mood of the class and to focus exactly there are some cross-curricular activities for example in mathematics we can use color to teach equations or solving problems or just underlining the most important important information in each problem in science and color we can use well we could create their own mind maps or correlation between data and of course in Curious Kids one of our materials in McMillan we have some Le some lessons in which art is included yay I mean this is for I think it was

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for first grade and they're using primary colors to make secondary colors and there's also this curiosity Corner um here it says some squirrels are different colors so we can put this together with how are you're feeling and maybe you are um a green orange squirrel you're happy and you're surprised exactly kids love this activities some activities for English language teaching well we can Implement rainbow writing to reinforce morphology or phology spelling and patterns in terms of spelling poing

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poing parts of speech like this worksheet that we have here um we can also I mean I used to teach literature many years ago when it comes to simul and metaphor they can use colors to underline or to Circle to identify by each of them we also have some of the patterns I mean they're using this is this is also from Curious kits um they're using different colors to for the letters s w so they can trace and write for visual vocabular organization we can use this type of wall for emergent l language or for language that

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vocabulary we going to introduce during the lesson so Learners know how to classify them depending on the letter they start with I highly recommend that students use different colors to try the same word and well do you use the same color to stick it on the on the word wall M here um we have here we have um some writing uh writing task in which Learners had to use different colors and this is helpful for D dialectic Learners because sometimes when we use the same color they don't know the difference or

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the order on how letters go so this would be a very good idea for them exactly writing the same word with different colors exactly um we also have a mind map here I created this one about holidays so Learners could brainstorm some ideas in which they could they could use later on to prepare for a writing task we have different groups and all words related to each group we can also teach descriptive pH Braes using my maps and using colors of course and EDS related to colors I mean we could use this as a warmer or as a

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closing activity or just uh something to set the mood of the class or to activate the schemata and so on for skills I recommend using this wheel this wheel so they can spin the will and decide what to book what book to read next or uh the next right writing assignment will be about a horror story or a sad story guided conversations this can be um modified depending on your learner's level for example I don't know if you have taught very very young learners have you taught Young Learners okay so you know you know that

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whenever you're trying to teach something there's always a question that has nothing to do with your class topic right teacher my I don't know why my cat is doing this no is making this noise okay so you can have this cards and tell students okay so write your question and write your question here and we'll go over it during the week so Learners don't feel ignored but but they are addressing this question later on you can have question cards answer cards or even the new topics that they

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want to address so you know that maybe teenagers they want to learn something about well if I say face Facebook they'll say that doesn't exist anymore that's for old people right um they want to learn something about Tik Tok so they can do their the new research on Tik Tok they can write an essay or they can um write about the Sue or pollution or whatever they have interested on they they have interest on for early writing support um I saw that Emily did something similar in the previous

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session so Learners could use color just to have a way of tracing letters more easily or they know that green always goes up and yellow lines always go down and red ones are just going across and so on projects and games well I found this uh from a mother's website she used this during the pandemic it was a scavenger hunt and I like doing this with my Learners as a warmer so they can look for items that are red or blue or green we can we usually do this in the classroom or outside the classroom or they even bring

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items from home and this can give you a a better opportunity to work on more emergent language of things they have around them it's not just vocabulary from the book and of course uh using a color story chain in which each learner adds a different bit of a story using a different color okay so I have observed over I can't remember how many but I think it's more than 3,000 teachers here in Mexico and one of the problems that that Shar with me the most is Anna we don't have time to complete all the

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lesson plan for some reason my students take too long to finish all the activities and for this I highly recommend you to do this Parts I know this won't work during the first week but if you exactly like in football or if you have a uh traffic light you can have students tell them okay this is the code whenever we have this card red card means stop whenever you have the Green Card means start whenever you have the yellow card it means that you have a couple of minutes to complete your task so Learners start getting used

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to see these cards they're like oh and they they get to become more aware of time management and that's pretty much that's better for them whenever they have to present a certification or whenever they work in real life because they cannot take forever doing things in real life right um we also have color-based word families we have color weekly color themes I love doing this with um very very Young Learners because they are very pretty pretty Visual and they're learning vocabulary such as tomato or

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strawberry or Sky okay um for feedback not feel bad um for feedback I highly recommend you to use this type of batches I mean we usually have like excellent good try but if we have something in color and you can even use them without the text you could have Learners work a bit more more on the on the orange ones or you can even use binders to separate their work depending on how they did so they don't have the you know that's Improvement they just have the color and they know what it means okay um some

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considerations that I want to share because oh yes I just shared many things right and suddenly you're like oh do you have to paint the wall you have to get materials what about feedback rainbow writing Parts oh and you want to do everything at the same time piece of advice starts small really don't don't try to overdo things because it might be overwhelming for you and it's going to be crazy for your students okay making the cards can be one thing you can try for a couple of weeks and

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then you can do something else and if it works great if it doesn't it's okay too because not all groups are mean all groups are different you have to consider accessibility as well as cultural differences meaning of uh colors because depending on the on cultures depending on the culture some colors have different meaning material management well maybe you need to to bring in some materials or maybe you can ask students to bring some materials for you assessment strategies well um every time you try something new it is always

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a good idea to assess it with your learners or maybe talk to your parents or talk to your peers or the principal or whoever your coordinator so you're on the same page there's communication is key um a few tips well con consistency this is not only for teaching this is for Life yep we have to be consistent it's not like oh today I'm going to try the cards and then tomorrow um tomorrow we'll try something different no kids well even adults when we have a routine we feel better because

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we know what's coming next Don't Go Over the Top don't try to do everything at the same time make it meaningful it's not just because uh it's not just because it looks pretty it must it must be meaningful for you and for Learners and of course if you can integrate technology that's even better I mean I due to my context here in Mexico um if I started doing something very fancy on the computer most teachers would have said well we don't have access to Internet but if you can and if if if you

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have access to it well go for it you can do this I'm here to Sher you up okay and from we talked about today I'll kindly ask you to share what are you taking to your classroom and what would you like to implement in the future is there anything you would like to take to take away a mood meter okay let's create the color Revolution yes thank you po week yep WEA po therapy okay I live in Mexico so this is these are the guys who bring water okay this is normal um you can find more information

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here and as I know some people uh well you'll get the presentation in your goodie bag right and well before we go uh to the questions and answers I want to say something can I keep systems simple and child friendly less is more and I want to thank all of you for being here for your participation um as I said before I didn't mention this before in this session but this is my first session coming back after having my baby so this is me and my baby and we're really thankful and we're

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grateful for you being here today