Lesson 1: Skills and Best Practices
Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers have become very useful instructional tools. Most classrooms display graphics used for a variety of purposes. A graphic organizer can be used to help students:
- recall prior knowledge
- brainstorm information on a given topic
- organize information
- display information in an visual format
Access a variety of graphic organizers from this website:
www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr1grorg.htm
New graphic organizers are constantly being developed. Teachers should make it a practice to check the various websites to see what is available for their use. For example, the site listed above includes some new graphic organizers including:
- a spider map
- a continuum scale
- a compare and contrast matrix
- a problem/solution outline
- a human interaction outline
- a cycle
Cubing
Cubing is a method for viewing a topic from six different perspectives.
- Describing: Physically describe your topic. What does it look like? What color, shape, texture, size is it? Identify its parts.
- Comparing: How is your topic similar to other topics/things? How is it different?
- Associating: What other topic/thing does your topic make you think of? Can you compare it to anything else in your experience? Don't be afraid to be creative here: include everything that comes to mind.
- Analyzing: Look at your topic's components. How are these parts related? How is it put together? Where did it come from? Where is it going?
- Applying: What can you do with your topic? What uses does it have?
- Arguing: What arguments can you make for or against your topic?
Cubing is an excellent tool for rapidly exploring a topic. It reveals quickly what you know and what you don't know, and it may alert you to decide to narrow or expand your topic.
www.humboldt.edu/~tdd2/Cubing.htm
Reciprocal Teaching
Palincsar (1986) describes the concept of reciprocal teaching as an instructional activity that takes place in the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text. The dialogue is structured by the use of four strategies:
- summarizing
- question generating
- clarifying
- predicting
Research Base: For the past five years, Palincsar and Brown (1985) have conducted a series of studies to determine the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching. The effectiveness was evaluated by having the students read passages about 450 to 500 words in length and answer 10 comprehension questions from recall. The students completed five of these passages before reciprocal teaching instruction began and one during each day of instruction. Performance on these assessment passages indicated that all but one of the experimental students achieved criterion performance, which we identified as 70 percent accuracy for four out of five consecutive days. These results were in contrast to the group of control students, none of whom achieved criterion performance. Furthermore, teachers observed fewer behavior problems in their reciprocal teaching groups than in their control groups." (pp. 19-20)
www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/atrisk/at6lk38.htm
Think-Pair-Square
Think-Pair-Square is similar to Think-Pair-Share. Students first discuss problem-solving strategies in pairs and then in groups of fours. Since problem solving strategies can be complicated, this structure may be more appropriate with experienced collaborative groups.The instructor poses a problem. Problems that have a "right" answer work more effectively in this structure though open-ended problems also work. Students are given time to think about the question and then form groups of four. Two pairs of two students gather, each pair working to solve the problem. They then re-assemble as four and compare answers and methodologies.
The think-pair-square structure gives students the opportunity to discuss their ideas and provides a means for them to see other problem solving methodologies. If one student pair is unable to solve the problem, the other student pair can often explain their answer and methodology. Finally, if the problem posed does not have a "right" answer, the two student pairs can combine their results and generate a more comprehensive answer.