Graphic Organizers in the Classroom

This chapter talks about the importance of graphic organizers in the classroom. I completely agree with this chapter because I personally feel that I learn better by visually seeing how one topic relates to another, especially if the lesson is a lesson that can be drawn out into weeks. This helps students to keep track of what they are learning, reminds them of what they've just learned, and gives them an idea of what's to come next.

Growing up as in English Language Learner, I felt that it was important for the book to mention that they allow for complex ideas. It's easier for an ELL student to make connections to the lesson of they're able to dig into their schema of their own language and culture to better understand the lesson. This helps ELL students fill in gaps that language barriers may create in a classroom.

I think it's awesome that graphic organizers can be found and utilized in all different kinds of subjects. The better part is that graphic organizers are easy to make so if it's hard to find a graphic organizer that has all of the components you want it to, it's just as easy to utilize programs like Inspiration, or simply create one on your computer. Drawing and creating one by hand can also be done if one's short for time.

My favorite quote from this chapter is "Graphic organizers are one way for teachers to ensure that students can show their abilities." This quote speaks out to me because often times, students are not able to show their full potential in class because the class may only be lecture-type classes. Its hard for some students to learn just through lecture so a map usually brings the lesson to life for them because they're able to utilize their eyes, and not just their ears.

As I'm reading through this chapter, I noticed that graphic organizers are only students who can see. My question is, is there a way to create a graphic organizer through braille? In my clinical class, I have a student who is visually impaired. She can not see at all and I've been working with this student and found that it is very hard to describe certain things. Is there a way to create a graphic organizer that can help my student also?

Writing to Learn

While reading through this article and chapter eight, I realized that there was a lot that could be done to help students to learn by writing. Before reading the material, I did not know that incorporating writing into all subjects would be easier than it seemed from the get go. I liked how the book was able to break down how to introduce writing to learn in each of the subjects such as math, science, social studies, etc. Having the book give ways to incorporate writing to learn made it easier for me to see how to incorporate it in to different subjects rather than just telling me it was possible to do so without examples.

I also found that it was very important that the article discussed why teachers can incorporate writing to learn in their classrooms but choose not to do so. The reason would be that it is time consuming and reading a lot of writing everyday can boggle a days school time down. However, I liked that they gave suggestions such as using a rubric or a check list to lift some of the burden and making it easier on the teachers to be able to grade. This encourages me as a teacher to utilize writing to learn in my classrooms because I feel that it will not take too much class time out of the school day and it's not stressful if a checklist or rubric is utilized.

I especially love how writing to learn can help the students to utilized declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge rather than just one of the three. This is especially why I like the free write prompts. With the students being able to give their own opinions in their writing at times, this encourages students to think further about a particular subject rather than just knowing the facts. The examples of writing prompts is a fabulous way to have the students think while writing. I especially liked the "I am" poem because this has students thinking of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc.

As I've gained a better understanding of writing to learn, I am now encouraged to utilize it more in my own classrooms once I begin to teach. Writing to learn provides a win win situation for the students and the teachers and it should definitely gain more attention in the teaching world and in the classrooms.