Week 3 - Advanced Organizers

This week we took a look at advanced organizers.  We read an article about the benefits of using advanced organizers when teaching a new topic and then we took a look at three different advanced organizers.  I use advanced organizers quite frequently in my classes when introducing new topics.  The main ones I have used are KWL Charts, character webs, Kidspiration and Inspiration.  The new ones I explored were MindMeister, ExploraTree, and Education Oasis.

The first one I looked at was MindMeister.  Some of the things I looked was that you could drag and drop images from your computer or the web into your map, you can add notes, links, and tabs to your map.  The history view can be saved in order to show it as a presentation.  You can use MindMeister to invite others to collaborate with you on your map which would be great if you were using it in a classroom with groups of students.  Finally, a feature I liked was that it can be used on both I-phones and Android phones.  MindMeister does require a monthly fee and you can choose your level of accessibility you want to pay for.

The second one was ExploraTree.  ExploraTree is a free advanced organizer program with numerous options.  You can add and change text, shapes, and images.  It can be presented as a presentation and sent to groups to collaborate.  There are numerous maps already ready for your use including maps used to solve problems and apply thinking skills.  It didn't seem as user friendly, but is a good option if you don't want to pay a fee.

Finally, I took a look at Education Oasis.  This website didn't seem to have the capabilities to customize your organizers, but provided you with 58 graphic organizers that are PDFs.  you can download them and print them for your class.  Some of them can be written on before they are printed.

The reading we had last week on Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers; Non linguistic Representation; Summarizing and Notetaking were really important in teaching.  Cues, Questions, and Advanced Organizers are important to promote critical thinking and help students retain what they learned.  I use KWL charts frequently to find out what kids have know and what they want to know in order to gear my lessons towards their interests.  I also use Character webs to help students remember characters in books and help them to analyze each character in the story. 

Non linguistic Representation is something I use frequently for our vocabulary words.  I try to link pictures to the words so the students can better remember them.  We also draw pictures of what we have read that day in order for them to visualize what they have read.  I use Kidspiration and Inspiration to create picture maps of stories.  We also use the Internet to find pictures that represent what we are reading.

Finally, Summarizing and Notetaking we use daily.  It is important for students to summarize what they have learned each day.  We summarize what we have read or what we have learned.  It is important for students to pick out the key facts that we have learned throughout the lesson and be able to summarize what we have done.  Some programs we use for notetaking and summarizing would be power point, smart notebook, and Kidspiration/Inspiration.