Once you have been teaching the same grade year after year, it typically gets a *little* easier because you have resources created, ideas, and experience with the majority of lessons and curriculum. On the contrary, as educators we know that depending on the group in front of you at this moment, you might need to completely reinvent a lesson to better suit the needs of this specific group.
This year I am quite often scaffolding more than I have in the past. One example is by creating templates/graphic organizers for my students that I print off and have them glue into the given subjects notebook. In past years, I would have students create the organizer themselves or copy it off the board, but this year (and last year to be honest) my students could not handle that. It was adding an extra layer of stress that was unnecessary for myself or my students. Was I assessing them on their ability to copy or to be able to fill out a tool to build their own thinking? Creating the organizer outline/template helped get students get started on what mattered most and those students who already struggle with following multi-step directions were able to get settled into the point of the lesson with much more success.
I often use PowerPoint to create my graphic organizers and I save them to go back to next year if needed. The graphic organizers are digital for me but still paper and pencil for my students. I keep contemplating about moving towards it being a more digital process for my students as well, but given that I teach 8/9 year old students who are still working on fine motor skills and letter formation, I am not sure how ready I am to lean even more into the digital realm. As I mentioned in a comment on a classmates blog post on this topic, maybe it is just "time to rip off the band-aid" and try it?
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I have also found that my students are in need of some extra scaffolding and providing them with graphic organizer templates is a great way to do that! Students are able to spend time focusing on generating and organizing their ideas instead of creating their own template. Hopefully, as they become more comfortable with using graphic organizers they will find things that they enjoy about the templates and ways they'd like to change it to make it their own. I teach first-grade and would not have my students independently create their own digital graphic organizers, however, I plan to try one out on our SmartBoard in a whole group setting. Maybe trying something small like that so you can still provide scaffolds and guide your students when necessary may start them off on the right foot!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of using PowerPoint to make graphic organizers! I have not thought about this before but I will be adding it into my classroom. It is great that they are saved forever so that they can be used every year! I also love the idea of having the students glue them in notebooks. This is great because the students can then refer back to the graphic organizer when needed!
ReplyDeleteThe digital realm can be tricky in education. My students are still learning how to write and construct sentences. I do not think they will be able to type their thoughts on a digital graphic organizer.