A Unit in Emojis

I recently stumbled upon these 60 Mexican Emojis, created by artist Eduardo Salles, and their meanings.  I absolutely love the little Frida/Diego and luchador emojis!  One could add these emojis to a Mexico-based unit, a technology unit, etc.  I think these could also lend themselves to a fun end-of-the-year activity.  Teachers can have students guess at or match the emojis’ meanings, or they could explore the emojis that weren’t created (according to the comments at the end of article).  Some of those missing elements at the time of this post’s date of publish include: la chancla, los frijoles, la rana, el Vick’s Vapor Rub, and el acordeón.

Here is Mr. Salles’ website and his Twitter account is @Sallesino.  His material alone warrants a post: tons of visuals for language learners, ample colloquial terms and phrases, and great cultural insights that non-native teachers might not know.  Use caution with these #authres, though – some items on his website and Twitter are clearly not school appropriate!

However, here’s my idea: what if you had students create emojis at the end of a unit that represent the unit?  I think this would make a great activity for those end-of-the-novel style projects that allow choice (like my Esperanza Choice Project), but it really could be done with any unit.  Students could create the emoji and justify why they have created it.  It would make a great visual of what your students are learning to put in the school newsletter!  In addition, you could take this one step further and have students send this in to Apple or Google for actual consideration!  Talk about giving your students an audience.  Google actually has a contest called Doodle 4 Google that this would be perfect for.  Could you imagine if your student won the $30,000 scholarship for this project!?  You could also seek out art competitions or technology grants to bring this idea to the next level.

I hope to share this idea (and more) with you at #iwla15!