Reflecting on Cues, Questions, Advanced Organizers, Nonlinguistic Representations, Summarizing, and Note-Taking

Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers

            Setting the stage for learning is vital to help students getting the most out of each and every class.  By using cues, questions, and advance organizers, teachers can help students activate prior knowledge, organize their learning, and review/study information. 

            One strategy I think could be pretty powerful is the use of multimedia narrative and expository advance organizers.  Not only can pictures, videos, and internet simulations set the stage for student learning, these nonlinguistic representations can give something visual to which students can connect their learning.  These visuals could also trigger great classroom discussions and perhaps help students develop questions that could trigger self-directed learning.  I also am really excited about using tools like Today's Meet, WallWisher, and Linoit as bellringer activities or as question activities throughout a lesson.

 Nonlinguistic Representation

            Nonlinguistic representations force students to think about their learning in a different way.  Too often classrooms are focused on just linguistic representations of knowledge, and this hinders student achievement and cannot meet the needs of all learners.  A combination of both linguistic and nonlinguistic representations in the classroom will increase student learning and student achievement and engage all learners more deeply.

            During my last semester as a traditional classroom teacher, a student teacher and I experimented with using digital cameras to help students learn vocabulary.  It was definitely a successful activity; the students had fun, exercised their critical and creative thinking skills, and learned their vocabulary in a unique, active way.  This nonlinguistic representation of their vocabulary was useful as both a learning tool and a review tool.  One drawback was the amount of time it took. 

Summarizing and Notetaking

            I witness the problems students have with summarizing and note-taking frequently in my role as a teacher librarian.  The difficulty students have with these skills manifests itself in copying and pasting, plagiarism, and blank stares at information on the computer screen and in books. 

            I think all teachers need to overtly teach the processes of summarizing and note-taking.  I also firmly believe that teachers should teach a variety of note-taking methods, with the ultimate goal of students begin able to choose the best method for them and for the activity.  Discussing the students’ choices with them would be a powerful metacognitive activity for the students.

            Technology can definitely help with the teaching of summarizing and note-taking strategies.  Similar to the Microsoft Word tools discussed in the book, Google Docs could be used to document the steps in a summarizing process through tracking revision history.  I also like to teach students how to use PowerPoint, rather than notecards in the research process.  They work just as well as the notecards we all used during our intense research papers, with the added benefits of not being as easy to lose or misplace!  This, however, does not teach students how to pull out important information from their reading during the research process, so it is important to remember to teach and have students repeatedly practice that skill.