Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers; Nonlinguistic Representation; Summarizing and Notetaking

This week in class we covered three additional strategies that will help students learn:  Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers; Nonlinguistic Representation; Summarizing and Notetaking.  All three of these are designed to help students absorb more information in class, specifically by presenting that in different ways.  People learn through different methods, and teachers can improve their class results by helping students to look at the same information in a different format.

The first strategy involves enhancing student's ability to use text to organize and use information about a topic.  Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers all allow students to drill into ideas and arrange that information so that they will remember more and be able to apply that information better.  Although I have used all of these strategies, I am most familiar with the use of Advance Organizers in the classes that I have taught.  Because I usually teach adults, I like to try and leverage the experiences of the class.  One activity that works very well is a Post-It note brainstorm.  I will post a topic on the board and distribute Post-It notes to the class.  Students can then write their ideas on the notes and stick them under the topic.  We will then organize the notes into like categories, and talk about the themes that emerge from these groupings.  It is a great way to get different perspectives from the class, and it allows all students to contribute ideas , even those who might not speak up during a discussion.

The second strategy involves the use of Non-Linguistic Representation.  I am particularly interested in this strategy as I am a visual learner.  I would much rather see a graph, picture, or diagram than a long page of text.  This is also an important strategy for students who might not have English as their primary language.  The exercise that I mentioned above can also serve as a method of Non-Linguistic Representation.  Once all of the students have posted their ideas and they have been grouped into themes, there will usually be several that have many posts, and several that have very few.  By looking at the size of the groupings, the instructor can illustrate to the class which points are most important.  The instructor can also use the smallest groupings as discussion points.  "Why do you think this topic received the fewest posts?"  The visual of the different sized groups of ideas will teach as much as the ideas themselves.  There is more about Non-linguistic Representation below where I compare and contrast several tools.

The final strategy for this week involves Note Taking and Summarization.  This is a skill that is not always developed.  In fact in our study group only half the people had actual formal training in note taking; the rest of us learned it through practice.  We all agreed that providing a method of note taking to the class will improve overall results, as everyone will be able to work using the same methods and at the same pace.  Summarization skills will also teach the students how to glean the most critical pieces of information from a lesson, without getting lost in less important details.  Since most of my teaching is for adults, I have not used these strategies much in my classroom.  However I definitely can see that providing summarization tools could help the class.  This could include distributing worksheets that have the some concept headings filled in, then ask the students to list the key ideas under each concept.

Compare and Contrast Three Graphical Organizers

For the last part of this week's blog entry we were asked to compare and contrast three different tools, specifically looking at functionality and ease of use.  Since I am a visual learner, I focused on three graphical organizers that will help to present concepts using a picture or diagram.  To this end I even created a Comparison diagram, based on a template from one of the sites:  https://docs.google.com/a/wolfmail.stritch.edu/drawings/edit?id=1E9r9bS1TlSMo2hv4pfv3c_18o90A7N7vgPkJUdRsPh0&hl=en&authkey=CITZpkc

The first site I looked at was Exploratree.  This site has a number of graphical organizers that can be completed on-line.  This was one of the best features of the site.  Students can pull up one of these templates and immediately start adding their thoughts by typing directly on the diagram.  The site was also very easy to use because the templates are broken out by the type of activity that the student need to to, such as Map Your Ideas or Solve Problems.  One other interesting feature of this site was that it provided templates in Welsh, although perhaps this should not be surprising since the site is based in the United Kingdom.

The second site I looked at was the Education Oasis.  This site was similar in that it also provided a large number of templates for graphical organizers.  I actually liked this site better because it has a much larger selection of templates, and the categories are more aligned to content type, such as Cause and Effect, Character and Story, and Compare and Contrast.  This is the site where I found the template that I used above to compare these tools, and this type of categorization will make it easier for teachers to find a template that works for their lesson.  The biggest drawback to this site is that the templates are all PDF files that must be printed and filled in by hand.  They can be edited using Adobe Acrobat, but this will still be more difficult than the templates available at Exploratree.

The final site that I looked at was CMap, short for Concept Map.  I am familiar with the idea of concept mapping.  In fact the Post-It note activity that I referenced above can be used as the starting point for a concept map.  Once the class ideas are grouped by theme, the different concepts that emerge can be identified, and the relationships between those concepts can be defined.  The CMap site allows teachers to do this same activity electronically, by creating a concept map that identifies key entities and the relationships between them.  Of all the tolls this seems like it would be the hardest to use, as the software might need to be installed on a local server.  Once installed there will be a learning curve until teachers and students can quickly and efficiently capture their ideas.  It might be easier to just use a Smart Board or drawing program to achieve the same goal.  Once some is familiar with CMap however, this toll could be incredibly powerful as the class will be able to link numerous concept maps and look for patterns across many elements.