Assignment #10: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 10: Cues, Questions and Advance Organizers.
Remember: Although your course packet asks you to post to blog for parts A, B, C, and D…we are asking that you only post part C and D. We’re trying to make the blog easier to read and more user- friendly. Thanks!
A. Self Assessment of Current Beliefs and Practices: This component asks you to reflect on how and why you currently use the instructional strategy of Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers in your classroom. The intent of this is to activate your prior knowledge of your strategy use so that you can make comparisons as you read the chapter. Below are the questions to help you complete your self-assessment.
• What is your purpose of using cues and questions in your classroom?
• Study the research results in Figure 10.1 for "Cues and Questions." In your experience, what makes some experiences with cues and questions better than others?
B. Read & Reflect “Research & Theory”: This portion of the assignment asks you to read chapter 10 and reflect briefly on your thinking after reading the “Research and Theory” section for Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers. You may want to consider the point below in your reflection.
• Many teachers who are aware of the research on the use of "wait time" will confess that they do not use it often enough. What do you think are some of the reasons that might explain why teachers do not use this strategy systematically and effectively?
C. Practice: Choose one of the specific “classroom practice” strategies or techniques shared in this chapter to try out with your students (If you are not currently teaching, you may share how you would use this strategy in your classroom). Please post a brief reflection of how this went to the posting labeled Week Ten: Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers. Click on the “comment” link below.
D. Final Strategy Reflection: Use the following sequence of questions/prompts to reflect on what you’ve learned about both the strategies presented in the chapter and what you’ve learned about yourself as both a teacher and a learner. Please post your brief reflection to the posting labeled Week Ten: Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers by clicking on the “comment” link below.
How has the information you read in this chapter on Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers effected your thinking about teaching and learning? What have you learned about yourself as a teacher and learner? Use the following questions to assist you in writing a brief strategy reflection:
• Research confirms that advance organizers are powerful when they help students focus on what is important, not on what might be unusual. All the different types of advance organizers described in this chapter, however, require up-front planning on the part of the teacher. How would you respond to a teacher who complains that there just isn't time to prepare the organizers?
• What will you do to improve the effect of using cues, questions, and advance organizers in your classroom? – Will you make changes?
• How might you monitor the effects of cues, questions, and advance organizers on student learning?
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8 comments:
Cues and Advance organizers
c. This last week I was reading a non-fiction article on snakes with my second grade students. Because non-fiction is sometimes more difficult to understand, and the article had lots of statistics, I asked my students lots of questions to active their prior knowledge both before and during the reading of the article. For example, one of the snakes we were reading about was 30 feet long. I didn't think that many of the students knew how long 30 feet was, so before reading that page I did a quick questioning on length. I had the students think about getting on a school bus and talked with them about how long a school bus is. I also had them spread out their arms to think about how the size 4 feet. Then we read the page about a snake being 30 feet long and compared than length to the length of our classroom. By making lots of connections to their previous knowledge, the students were better able to understand the statistics in the article.
I did similar connections to real life with the statistics on each page. Although it took significantly longer to read the article (3 days vs. 1 day for a similarly sized story in the past), I think the students enjoyed this article more and really understood more of the concepts. The student didn't mind read the article slowly and all of the questioning made the article come alive to the students.
d. I noticed that the book talked about skimming as a form of advanced organizing. I think that I would like to teach my students to skim and assume that this skill must be taught, just like summarizing needs to be taught. I use skimming every day when I am reading. Sometimes I skim news stories of other written things to determine if I will read the information, and other times I skim prior to doing a more in-depth reading of something. I know this is a useful skill and would like to teach it to my students in the future.
Thank you so much for this class. I really enjoyed learning about the different classroom strategies that can help students learn more and hearing about how other people were applying these techniques. I hope everyone has a wonderful spring and summer.
C.
In my science class, I tend to use cues and questions on a daily basis.
I constantly find myself asking why, how, what if, who knows questions in an effort to get students engaged to what is going on in class, and create a personal connection to the lesson.
In our current unit on forces and motion, I have used analytical questions in particular to talk about seat belts and airbags, and their effects on people in an accident.
Students were asked to think about first, then discuss with their table group, the following questions:
Why do you feel some people believe seatbelts/airbags to be more dangerous than not using them at all?
Why do you feel (using what you have learned thus far in the unit) that airbags/seatbelts are safe/unsafe?
These questions get students thinking about real life experiences with these items, cue them in to either personal, or secondhand accounts that they have, and allow them to draw inferences based on these accounts.
I feel that using cues really clues students in to the fact that they have some buy in or vested interest in a topic.
D.
In response to the first question regarding time...the first time I set ANYTHING up, it takes a lot of time. Once it is set up however, the only time involved after that is small amounts of tweaking time from year to year. Something there is major tweaking to do, but overall, when you have a polished product, it's well worth the time put into it. (also, beg, borrow, and steal comes to mind here...don't reinvent the wheel...take someone's idea and tweak it to work for you).
I believe I use cues enough, and not being a textbook teacher (more of a notes/hands-on mix), advance organizers don't really seem to fit well with my curriculum.
One way I would change how I use things, is to give pre-tests in addition to my summative tests at the end of each unit. This could give me an idea of how effective the use of cues is in the classroom. This might require a few cue and non-cue units before I see any useful data, but pre-testing in general would allow me another avenue to tap into pre knowledge and help me use cues more effectively.
Suzie Kabeiseman - Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers.
C. Before a lesson, a movie, a new unit, a field trip, a guest speaker, a play - I would use an advance organizer to help build the background knowledge, scaffold the information and, hopefully, spark interest.
In the computer lab there is not much time for higher level questions or narrative organizers. What I do is expository in nature, quick and usually gets to what is important.
Technology is a great way to use an advance organizer. If you have a smart board or projector you can easily prepare students for information they are about to see. Photos, video, power point, are tools that really can build knowledge. This is especially powerful for ELL learners.
Finally, I'm a strong advocate for wait time and consciously try and talk myself into slowing down, before calling on students. Invariably more hands shoot up the longer I wait. A good thing.
D. This chapter was another good reminder in what is good teaching practices. Building that knowledge of information and preparing students for the learning to come is so important. What did they used to call it? "The Anticipatory Set"
Although I do a lot of these things naturally, I really need to work on ensuring that my questioning is at a higher level. This is challenging for me. I hope I don't give 150 questions a half hour, but I'm sure I'm guilty of lame questioning strategies.
We have to make time for these practices to help build the knowledge and prepare the kids for new information. The effort is worth it and essential.
C. When beginning a chapter about health and related issues in my Spanish 3 class, I started out by putting some questions on the overhead to get them thinking about their own views and priorities regarding health, and to hopefully get them to brush off some of their vocabulary in the target language regarding the issue. Students enjoy talking to each other about their own personal issues, so this is always a useful tool. In fact, most of classroom management at the high school level is finding ways to make students stop talking about their personal views and issues, so giving them an avenue through with to express them is usually productive, as long as we can keep them narrowed down to the topic. After allowing them to talk in pairs or small groups, we convened as a class and students shared their answers. Then, they were ready to learn vocabulary related to the theme as they realized also just how limited their vocabulary was, so I was able to give them the vocab list, which they quickly filled out. We read the chapter intro, then they were given more questions to relate the intro to their own experiences, which they now had the words to discuss. Very productive beginning!
D. I have used pretty much everything mentioned in this chapter in some form or another. Just the other day, before reading this chapter, I had my Spanish 4 students watch a series of video clips of Mexican talking about the recent “war on drugs” that their government has declared. I provided them with a framework for each video clip, words to look up beforehand and some blanks to fill in as they watch the video. This type of advanced organizer definitely heightened their understanding of the monologues, which were only about 45 seconds each, but pretty fast and some were difficult to decipher because of their accents.
As far as a teacher who claims that there isn’t time to make graphic organizers, that’s a major copout in my book. The power of an advanced organizer actually saves time in the long run because we spend less time having to review and re-explain everything to students who aren’t paying attention 100% of the time, which is most students... Advanced organizers not only dust off prior knowledge, but they can remind students of what was learned in class when they look back at them later. This will lead to high levels of understanding and, most importantly, more information will stay with them in the long run, after the test.
One thing I haven’t done much of is graphic organizers. I’d definitely like to find more ways to use them in my classes, apart from just brainstorming vocabulary before starting a unit. I will continue to explore the possibilities in this area.
Chapter 10
C.
I liked the sound of the narrative advanced organizer. I have used this in literature frequently, before reading a story with the student/students to open up their background knowledge and build a connection with the book.
I have not thought of using a narrative story/experience before other types of lessons. In fifth grade I teach a unit on oceans/sea life. I think sharing a personal story about an experience I had exploring a tide pool before beginning the unit would be interesting. I could even sprinkle some vocabulary words into my story. This would make the unit more personal. It may be interesting to have the children journal about their own beach/ocean experiences prior to the unit as well. A narrative advanced organizer of their own.
Providing a narrative advanced organizer would give the children a connection to the ocean, before the learning begins (either through my story, or one of their own). Sprinkling vocabulary words into my story would give them a preview of the words meanings, and a little experience with the words before they are actually introduced. Sharing stories is always fun. It is usually hard to get 4th/5th graders to stop telling their own personal stories. Connecting to the ocean prior to the unit would definitely create enthusiasm, and connection to the lesson. I think this organizer would be a success.
C. Practice
For my practice I did a little tweaking on a lesson I have done in the past. In my five senses unit I have always made a poem with my class. We create a poem with each line using one of the five senses to describe what we are writing about. For example I read a book about the ocean where a little girl uses her senses to explain what she loves about the ocean. In the past I have then made a class poem following similar rules.
After this chapter I decided to use one of the advanced organizers to help set the scene for each student to then go to their tables and create their own poem instead of one class one that we all create together. In years past I didn’t go into depth enough for my students to be able to do this on their own. This year I created a graphic organizer/advanced organizer with them in whole group to sort out our ideas about a topic. I allowed them to pair and share and try as a pair to come up with one example for each sense and then we shared them with the rest of the class. In the end we created a chart that listed out about eight different ways to use each sense on a line within our poem.
I was a little worried that this would be a disaster and end up a waste of time for them, but I was pleasantly surprised. I did pull a few of my strugglers and ESL kids to sit and work through the assignment with me but everyone else was on their own. Each student created a wonderful poem and blew me away with their talent. They were all individual ideas and wonderful word stretching I was amazed by their level of success. I think that the graphic organizer helped them organize their ideas and thoughts and gave them time to go deeper into the lesson than I had in the past. I’m really happy with the results.
D. Reflection
This chapter helped me remember the importance of setting the scene for learning. Whether it be connecting them with their prior knowledge, giving them time to share ideas, or organizing new information to set them up for independent application, it’s important to get them ready to learn.
There were many things in this chapter that I already do. I feel like my questioning strategies are strong but could be a little more thought out at times to ensure they are asking for higher-level thinking. Red Curly Haired mentioned the importance of the anticipatory set. This is one of my favorite things about creating a lesson. I think teaching kindergarten allows me to turn to the ridiculous side of things to grab kids interests and get them thinking. I highly recommend being as ridiculous as possible. I also agree with what she said about the wait time. I find that this is so important. It’s easy to get moving along too quickly when you know the answers. I need to make sure I’m doing more of this. I kind of put wait time and pair/share together. For my level of thinkers it’s a great tool to front load them for being able to participate more. It’s key for my students to learn from each other as well as from me. The other big ah ha for me was using questioning to gain an idea of where the students are coming from. You can’t teach a unit from one year to another exactly the same. Each group of students is different and brings different information in with them. I am a huge fan of the KWL. I love using these to get us going and then returning to them in the end and charting out all the information we have learned. Plus these are great tools for reference later on through the year.
I got some great ideas from this chapter and plan on carrying them with me. We can’t be successful teachers if we don’t know what our students’ background knowledge is. This chapter helped remind me of the different ways to find that information out and also ways to help the students access that information themselves. It’s so important for us to teach that relationship to our students. It’s all about foundation and how we use
Great thinking everyone - Sacha - you are so right, the more students can connect new learning to something already known..the more they are capable of learning. I loved Henry's use of an everyday experience (seatbelts/airbags) to bring the concept of force and motion to life. Pretests are a great way of knowing what the kids already know, and where the real need for teaching is!
Suzie - you are in a unique teaching situation, but I think it is a great goal to see how you might incorporate more higher level thinking into your curriculum.
I loved Karen and Kay's ideas - what a great way of getting kids involved in a topic - they'll now have a more invested interest in what you have to teaching them!
Carrah - it was a great idea to created a graphic organizer/advanced organizer with them in order to facilitate a way to sort their ideas about a topic beforehand...especially as you said for the ELLs!
D.
There is something special that happens when the students are eager to learn more, answer questions they have, and feel connected to the subject matter. Using an “anticipatory set”, cues, questions, and advanced organizers all help ensure that the students have a sense of wonder about what they are going to learn. I know that as a teacher, I love to see the questions arise in the students eyes while setting up a lesson in such a way. I also can think of times that cues, questions and advanced organizers were used in workshops that I have taken, and how much deeper the conversations were that took place afterwards. As a learner I certainly appreciate an instructor that takes the time to prepare those cues, and questions.
Teachers that may feel that there is not enough time in the day to prepare, may not have felt the satisfaction gained from a successful anticipatory set. It is hard to not find enough time for the practices that truly instill wonder in our students. If there are gains, then there is time.
How to monitor the effects of cues, questions, and advance organizers seems to be a tricky area. I am not sure that it could be measured by the standard test or quiz. Surely it could be measured by the number of questions that the student can think of prior to learning about the subject matter, but after the cues, questions, or advanced organizers. It could be measured by enthusiasm for the topic, and willingness to learn. I will have to think about this a bit more.
I can improve on using this technique by broadening the organizers I use. I am a frequent user of the KWL chart (what you already Know, What you can to know, and what you Learned). There are so many types of organizers. Variety would definitely be beneficial.
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