In my classroom I use graphic organizers for many different subjects. Being responsible for all the major subjects for three different grade levels can be overwhelming at times so the use of graphic organizers really helps me. In this week's reading Pitler et al. gave examples of how to use graphic organizers and other technologies to enhance student's understanding. In the past I have always created the graphic organizers my students would use and had them complete it by hand, however after this week's reading I now see how to use something as simple as Word would enhance my students' learning. Having the students create and complete an organizer for pre-selected questions would allow them the opportunity to have some control over the information that is presented.
The section on summarizing and note taking really got my attention. I do many of these types of activities with my students however, I have never used the technologies they presented to do this. In the past I have used foldables to help my students organize the information presented to them. I started by completely creating the foldable down to the questions so all the students had to do was answer them. Further into the school year I began to have the students develop their own foldable for the information and gather what they thought was important. What I began to notice was that the students were just writing verbatim from the book. They did not really know how to take notes. After this week's reading I now have ideas on how to teach the students how to take notes. Using the track changes and auto summarizing parts of Word really grabbed my attention. This coming year I will start with teaching the students how to use these functions of word and other programs so that they will learn how to take their own notes.
All of the concepts presented in this week's reading relate to Orey's description of cognitive learning. Each of these concepts allows the students to move the information from short term to long term memory. It allows them different ways to store the information so that they can recall it at a later time.
References
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Cognitive learning theories [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology . Baltimore : Orey.
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
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Rachael,
ReplyDeleteI also thought the idea of filling in some of the concept map/graphic organizer could be helpful in streamlining the student's ability to take notes and comprehend the material. it's such a simple idea, surprising many of us didn't think of it!
By the way, what is a foldable?
~Erica Stianchi
Rachael,
ReplyDeleteI, too, was intrigued by the note taking concepts that were talked about this week. I am going to try to use the autosummarize tool to help my students create effective summaries. I have also noticed that students have a hard time taking notes, to which I think I am going to use the strategies presented to help teach them this as well. I like your foldable idea. I used to work with a science teacher that did foldables all the time, and I really liked the idea. I have yet to try them, but maybe, before I do so, it would be important to teach the above concepts, then transition into doing those. Excellent ideas in this post!
Jarrod Vance
Rachael,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you concerning note taking. I have used few graphic organizers in my teaching until now. When I have tried to stimulate note taking with primitive organizer the notes written down were verbatim from the text book with little if any real thought going into why. The concept mapping interest me and your foldables.
Rachael,
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of using a set of pre-selected questions and letting the students choose which they would like to answer. Choices are important for students and allow them to feel control over their learning. It will make students more will to complete the task. I will have to try that idea in my classroom.
-Carrie Young