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READ THE NOTE BELOW!!!
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
D to the blog. Thanks!
A. Self Assessment of Current Beliefs and Practices: This
component asks you to reflect on how and why you currently use the instructional
strategies of Nonlinguistic Representations 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.
• Nonlinguistic representations help us to recall and use
information every day. Think of a topic that you understand very well and notice
how many images related to this topic you can generate in your head. Now
identify a topic with which you are familiar but that you do not understand
well. Try to generate images and notice how difficult it is.
• What would be the purpose of representing knowledge in
different forms everyday in our classrooms across curriculum areas?
B. Read & Reflect “Research & Theory”: This
portion of the assignment asks you to read chapter 6 and reflect briefly on your
thinking after reading the “Research and Theory” section for both Nonlinguistic
Representations.
C. Practice: Choose one of the specific “classroom
practice” strategies or techniques shared in this chapter to teach to your
students (If you are not currently teaching, you may reflect on how you would
use this strategy in your classroom). You may want to consider the bullets
below.
• This chapter explains that nonlinguistic
representations are powerful ways to learn and recall information but that many
classrooms are very linguistically oriented. Think of classroom experiences that
are often effective but that are inherently linguistic (e.g., reading the
textbook, engaging in a discussion, listening to an explanation). Suggest
several specific ways that these linguistic experiences could be even more
effective by guiding students to generate and use nonlinguistic representations,
such as graphic organizers, multimedia, and role-plays.
• When do you ask students to represent knowledge using
forms other than words?
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.
How has the information you read in this
chapter on Nonlinguistic Representations 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:
• How might I change how use nonlinguistic
representation in my classroom?
• What is something you now understand better
about nonlinguistic representations?
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4 comments:
“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”
I am kinesthetic and visual when it comes to learning. I want to use both linguistic and nonlinguistic instruction this year in my classroom. I will be using visual math tools, pictures, graphs, projects and other ways to have kids involved in the practical use of math as well as modeling problems for students and explaining different strategies.
I have long been aware of my ability to learn best through involvement, hands on learning, although I am not the “driven by a motor” kind of learner often associated with kinesthetic learning. In my first years of teaching I was exposed to several days of SIOP emersion including lessons in Portuguese. I did not understand a word from linguistic presentation alone. However the same lesson was given with the use of nonlinguistic representation and I learned many things about the cashew tree and how cashews are farmed even though the lesson was delivered in Portuguese.
Since then I have tried to have more pictures in my teaching and many more examples from daily life. You would be surprised have the reaction you would get with a simple stick figure drawing when nothing else is present. I am a fair artist, but sometimes I simplify to get reactions and the kids love them. I would like to have more pictures in my lessons, but only have so much time in a day. I am adding a few more each year I teach. I once had a great math poster in my classroom called “When am I ever going to use this?” It listed so many careers and job paths along with the math strands associated with them. When I moved to a different school and left it behind and have regretted it ever since. I will be looking for math posters and projects this year. I am also thinking of using some Interact Math this year as I like their Social Studies units.
I do use movement in my math class. For example when students are working on integers they start on “0” and move forward for positive numbers and backwards for negative numbers. It is fun to look up and see kids walking with the look of deep concentration on their faces.
Assignment 6: Nonlinguistic Representations
I know that I am a very kinesthetic learner, but also realize I don’t do enough of that in my classroom. This year I did do some math “dances”, math rhythm moves and some math handshakes to help student remember the steps in multiplication and division. The kids loved it I saw some of them doing the motions during testing and review quizzes. We also do a lot of quick draws in all subject areas. I have found that taking a simple, empty comic strip outline and having my kids use it to summarize the main ideas of a story, or teach a lesson about being kind to others, has been a winner with my kids – they like making comic strips.
I hadn’t ever really thought of graphic organizers as “nonlinguistic” because so often they incorporate language/writing. I use graphic organizers mostly in reading and writing, but think I will try to do some in math this year too. I particularly liked the Process/Cause-Effect Pattern Organizer. It reminded me of the flowcharts I used to do in my computer programming classes in college. I have always loved using flowcharts to help me understand things and think that would be a very useful tool for my students. I think that same graphic organizer could be modified as a note-taking tool – a pictorial outline.
I have always known that making physical models of things help people understand things, but I would definitely point this out as an area of weakness for me, a strategy I rarely use! I think that I will work this year to find opportunities to have my students do more of this. It always seems to take so much time, time that they could be reading, or writing or some other kind of learning that would benefit them just as much. There is so much pressure to get through the curriculum it doesn’t seem to leave time for this – but I will look for some simplified ways to incorporate this strategy into my classroom. Let me know if you know of any resources I could use to look for these.
Week Six: Nonlinguistic Representations
This chapter totally confirmed my beliefs that not all students learn the same so you cannot teach only one way to get ALL students to fully understand a concept. You have to use so many different modalities to really get concepts to sink in for a whole classroom of learners. The concepts are differentiation to the fullest extent. This chapter was like a validation for all that we do in kindergarten because we are constantly using graphic organizers with minimal words, physical models, teaching kids to generate mental pictures, drawing a picture by just about everything from the daily schedule to things labeled around the room to pictures within a graphic organizer so pictures and pictographs are HUGE and kinesthetic activities are used on a daily basis multiple times in my kindergarten classroom.
In kindergarten we teach letters and letter sounds using zoophonics. When I first began teaching kindergarten, not only did I feel a little silly singing this song about Zoophonia and how she is going to teach kids how to read with 26 animals but making all the silly motions and stories for each letter and letter sound felt awkward to me. Five years in I can whole heartedly tell you what a difference it makes to children really LEARNING those sounds, some of them learn the sounds before they even learn the name of the letter - kinesthetic at its best! And believe me, I have become quite a ham as the more I over exaggerate and get into it, the more my students do too! Having that mental story and physical picture really helps to reinforce learning and all of it makes learning so much more FUN.
I really appreciated the many examples of graphic organizers presented in the chapter. There was a lot of great ideas to use for different ways to present information to students in the classroom. As I read through each section my mind was thinking about how I use that theory in my room to help my students learn.
Sam, what a great experience to have the lesson in another language and then again with the use of nonlinguistic representations. All teachers should have this training!!!
There has been quite of bit of research about movement and learning. I think without the data most of us can tell just from our experiences that it aids students' comprehension and retention.
Louise (and everyone) what about adding a simple reminder to your lesson plans to try to include movement, drawings, organizers, models. Or create a book mark that you laminate and keep in your plan book?
I think the key is, with all the demands currently being placed on teachers, to keep it simple - as you said. If you can get into the habit of looking for managable ways to incorporate some of these strategies then you'll be more likely to have success and not feel overwhelmed.
Does anyone else have some ideas or thoughts to share with Louise?
Margaret,
Isn't it great to feel validated for what we doing right in our class? :D
We're glad you found the readings useful!
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