Hi! My name is Kay and I am currently teaching Kindergarten and Transitional Kindergarten in south Los Angeles. I blog at Sommer Pride and am excited to be a part of this collaborative blog!
Would you like to ... have your students learn and understand content easier? ...reduce the semantic information processing demands on students? ... have your students become more strategic learners?
You can do it all by using graphic organizers!
Powerful processes occcur when using graphic organizers. Students will engage in information processing and higher order thinking skills.
Before students put information into graphic organizers, they need to recognize important information, make decisions about what is essential, consolidate information, and identify main ideas and supporting details.
Once the information is on the organizer, students are able to use the information to draw conclusions, make inferences, debate, and extend the understanding of important concepts.
Here are some of the different types of graphic organizers that we have created during the year.
Brainstorming about musical instruments
Categorizing types of transportation
Describing what we see in our neighborhood
Analogies - animals and babies
Story map - fiction
Main idea and supporting detail - realistic fiction
Parts of the whole - numbers
Parts of the whole - snowman
Keep in mind that the goal is to enable students to construct the graphic organizers by themselves, which includes the actual graphic as well as the content inside the graphic.
The possibilities are endless! So use graphic organizers in your classroom and increase student success!
I'm a big fan of graphic organizers. Check out my latest blog post on student digital portfolios using google drive and Thinking Maps! You can follow me on Twitter unde lackeymartha to checkout my blog!
ReplyDeleteJust checked out your blog. Love that you are combining technology and Thinking Maps! Thanks for stopping by!
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