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"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." -Jack London

We will be starting a unit on informational writing to wrap up the school year. I wanted to demonstrate a different way of finding a topic, a narrow topic. I find that young… Continue reading →

Five things I'm reading, enjoying, and thinking about this Friday.

On pages 62 – 63 of Day by Day, I talked about the role of Pilates and its connection to writing workshop in a detailed discussion called “Concrete Images for Support.”  Here I talked about one of many concrete tools, a ball, I used to help support my body as I did Pilates.  I want [...]

Graphic organizers are great tools for students to use in all subjects and for all grades.  Using pictures in Kid Pix or Kidspiration to writing out ideas, formulas, thoughts, data, or information from textbooks, there’s one ready made to fit the need.  I especially like to use the Graphic Organizers available through two of SSPP’s curriculum publishers, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Education Place (our Reading and Social Studies K-5 curriculum) and ScottForesman’s PearsonSuccessNet (our K-5 Science curriculum).  Step Up To Writing has some available on line, and teachers use hard copy printouts provided with the SUTW curriculum in the classroom.

The NY Times ran an article (01/21/2011)  commenting on a Science journal (01/20/2011) published study from Purdue University challenging the value of graphic organizers, specifically concept maps,

Educators rely heavily on learning activities that encourage elaborative studying, while activities that require students to practice retrieving and reconstructing knowledge are used less frequently.

The research concluded that, “Retrieval practice is an effective tool to promote conceptual learning about science.” It got some reaction, pro and con.  One notable reaction came from Howard Gardner, the father of multiple intelligences.

Educators who embrace seemingly more active approaches, like concept mapping are challenged to devise outcome measures that can demonstrate the superiority of such constructivist approaches.

So, we’ll see if those outcome measures will be developed, but, in the meantime, the graphic organizers do help break down the information to give students a fighting chance to learn the material and integrate it into their thinking and understanding of content. Perhaps the assessments can be better designed to determine if the students actually remember what is being taught.

Graphic from  Boise State.

0 Comments on Graphic Organizers as of 1/1/1900

I’m super fortunate to be working with a couple of third grade teachers (Hi Sandy & Dan!) who are interested in helping their writers to naturally develop more sophisticated writing processes. Their students are coming off of heavy illustration study in their previous writing experience (in grades k-2), so we are trying to find a [...]

Someone once told me that an experienced teacher asks, “How are the kids doing?” rather than asking “How am I doing?” I’ve found that to be more and more true of myself as each year passes. I’m not as worried about how I’m doing… I think I know what I’m doing. I’m [...]

This little guy was just downsized from the story I'm working on, so I guess its OK to show his sketchy development without getting in trouble.



He only made it this far ~ he never got to be a fully rendered bunny. {sniff}



He was supposed to look like he'd been "flung" and landed in the snow, so the challenge was to draw "flung but not hurt" poses.
















This is how he ended up on the last page. I can tell you that there are other flung animals as well, who used up other "flung" poses (I'm loving that word...flungflungflungflungflung).


Oh well. Maybe he can get flung in another story.