Graphic Organizers Chapter 6

1. "Graphic organizers can be used throughout the curriculum to help students understand the relationships between ideas. Because they are tools for categorizing and storing information, visual displays can be useful in helping students understand complex information."

I selected this quote because I think it really summaries the importance of allowing students to use graphic organizers. It is very important to get students to visually represent what they know for the teacher so that the teacher will know what needs to be reinforced or retaught.

2. Is using a graphic organizer as a way of assessment really effective? I believe that students will just memorize information to fill in a graphic organizer instead of trying to study and retain the information.

3. I use graphic organizer to study for all my exams. I think they help me to gain a better understanding of the content that I need to learn. Writing an outlines allows me to put words from books or power points into my own words and I get to think about the information before I write it down.
For example, while studying for my math exam for Dr. Larman, I used two different types of graphic organizers which allowed me to write down my notes in two different ways thus, helping me to retain the information.

Chapter 4 and Text Talk

The article as well as the book both were effective in describing how beneficial it can be to use read alouds and shared reading activities in a classroom. Although these are activities that are thought to be mainly used in the elementary setting, I agree with the reading that it is very important to use these in secondary educational setting also. These two techiniques can be a great assest to students who donot retain information well when they read to themselves. In my experence with reading even at a college level, I gain a better understanding and can retain information better when it is read to me. I think a teacher should not only require students to practice reading through read alouds but also require students to have a discussion about what has been read to further deepen a students understand of the reading.
The article also pointed out how effective text talk can be to a students understanding of a reading. I found the table on page 14 that points out all the components of a text talk to be very interesting and I believe this to be something that I will try to implement into my class. The two things that I found to be most important from this table were the need to establish background knowledge and using follow up questions.

Why is round robin frowned upon?
Why aren't teachers required to engage their students in shared reading and discussions ?

Writing To Learn

After reading both the article and Chapter 8 I found that they both stressed the importance of educators requiring  or including writing in all subject areas. Writing is a great way for students to process what they have learned through reading and lectures. Students can use their writing as a review or to help them process the new information they have just taken in. Incorporating writing into all subject also allows teachers to determine what  students know and understand and what students may not have full knowledge of. What really stuck out to me about the chapter and the article is the different techniques and tools that could be used to incorporate writing into different subjects. I believe that it is the teachers responsibility to teach students how to use several of these techniques. I also believe that down the line the teacher should allow students to select which technique works best for them and allow students to display their knowledge in that form.

When is it appropriate to let students select their writing technique of choice and when should the teacher make the decision?
When requiring students to include writing in other subject areas such as math and science should you grade them on grammar and punctuation or allow them to write freely?