Pedagogy First. Technology Second.

Keep Words Near Images

The strategy, as published

Exactly as it appears on the card

Part of Multimedia & Dual Coding in 05 Explanations & Modelling, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.

Why you might use it

The problem it may help with

Each stretch of screen between a label and the thing it names has to be crossed by the eye and bridged by memory. Mayer's spatial contiguity principle keeps words next to the images they describe, so nothing needs holding during the journey.

A numbered key below a diagram is the classic offender: accurate, complete, and in the wrong place.

What it might look like

One version of it, in a classroom

Laying out a slide on the parts of a flower, a teacher places each label beside its structure with a short connecting line, rather than listing the names in a panel down the side. Reading the slide and reading the diagram become the same act.

Try it

A way to begin

Scan the resources for your next topic for separated captions, keys and label lists, and move each word next to the thing it names.

What to notice

Reading what happens

  • How long it takes pupils to find a named part on the diagram.
  • Whether questions about the diagram use the labels' vocabulary.

Things to think about

Before and while you use it

  • The principle applies wherever words and images share a surface: worksheets, wall displays and textbook pages, not just slides.
  • For a resource you cannot redesign, annotating it live under a visualiser puts the words where they belong.

Inclusive practice

The lens this connects with

Through the inclusive practice lens, this is one of the approaches that may reduce barriers around:

The wider thinking

Where the evidence sits

Spatial contiguity is one of Mayer's multimedia principles and shares its mechanism with Sweller's split attention effect. The card’s attribution stands as published: Mayer.

The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Explanations & Modelling.

Keep exploring

Where next?

Back to this strategy in 05 Explanations & Modelling, across to what you're trying to improve, or into all 144 at once.

Want to take this further?

Support is available

Pedagogy First gives you a starting point. If you want support exploring how approaches like this can work across your school, trust or professional learning programme, that work is available.

Work with Mark