For one of the courses I am taking this term, I am collaborating with a partner who is a teacher in Portland. My job is to create materials (pre-test, 3 intervention lessons, and post-test) and then she implements them with a student she selected that struggles with content area comprehension. Although this may sound a bit dorky, I have thoroughly enjoyed preparing these lessons because I don't do all that much lesson planning for my current position due to the nature of my job.
The most recent intervention lesson I created was to help our student improve his skills in connecting to his background knowledge. He is learning about soil types and soil formation, so the goal was to see how he could make sense of this information given the schema he already has. It is hard for teachers to know enough about all of their students (especially when students are from different countries or unique cultural backgrounds) to help each and every student forge connections between each topic and their own personal lives.
In order to help our student think about what he already knows, I created this graphic organizer which I call the "Who I Am" sheet to help him create some visual images/words pertaining to what he already knows. I think it is an easy way for students to brainstorm and capture things, people, activities, places, hobbies, and interests that are important to them. Having a visual to look at when trying to make connections will hopefully help our student become more successful at seeing how his content topics relate to his life and experiences.
Here is the blank template.
My Life My Likes My Learning-Template
And of course I had to make an example based on my own life so he would understand what was being asked of him.
My Life, My Likes, My Learning
The student we are working with is in high school, but I could see this being adapted to much younger students so they could get ideas for writing. I would love to have had my first graders use a similar template (with bigger boxes) to create a brainstorming sheet for journal writing ideas.
I also think this would help me get to know my students better and learn interesting things about them and their families.
Information from the sheet could also be incorporated into math word problems because students definitely get more excited when their names and interests are mentioned in class!
Can you think of any other ways to use something like this?
2 comments:
I love this!! how expensive is this program? what is it called and what could i sell it to my school as? as in what type of tool? I see how I can use it but it is one of those things that I would like to generalize for my headmaster. let me know :)
I love stuff like this. Have you ever done the heart exercise from "Awakening the Heart" for poetry? Same idea except you put the stuff closest to your heart in the middle and then something like "ice cream" (for me anyway) would be on the outside etc...It's so fun to do with the kids I do it every year!
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