Rebuses and Icons in English

I saw this in the August 2013 National Geographic.

It reminded me of when I taught 6th grade English. I used rebuses quite a bit. It was a fun way to help reluctant readers and writers. The National Geographic article sparked a few new ideas though.

First, using The Noun Project as a source gives you and your students a huge repository of icons to use for games like this.¹

The portion of the article that got me interested was the idea of intentionally misinterpreting the rebuses or reading them from right to left so they tell a completely different story. It feels like there are some opportunities there.

Take a series of icons and –

• summarize a book, article, or poem
• make a rebus palindrom
• make a rebus when read right to left means the opposite of the left to right reading (I can’t find the opposite of a palindrom)
• create a famous quote (bonus points for how fast your classmates figure it out)
• use them for simple writing prompts (add variables for student interpretation (e.g. look at this literally, read it left to write, interpret is like a surrealist). That way you and your students are not bored and they have a reason to read other students’ interpretations. At this moment in time, I’d build a random viewpoint website and add lots of options to it.
• use them as a gateway to synonyms

This was just a random four icons taken from the browse section.²

In the anti-understanding vein-

I was slapped in the face and for what? It was the best drawing of a tornado I could manage as I was in a hurry. I had to be halfway up a mountain range by dawn.

From right to left-

Life is a downward plunge. The clock started long ago. It’s a downward spiral. No one hears your screams.³