Melissa Kim Mosher's Summer Lab School Blog
Judy, good insight about computer liberating visual documenters. Notice more ability to speak and describe when looking at visual depiction or explanation. Smart Board was great to quickly describe the story the student had in her head. At first she was concerned about stick figures. Because the medium is crude - she quickly forgot being self-conscious about the stick figures and just focused on giving visual representation to her thoughts. Before drawing, I asked her to write the title, her school name, her name: to help her relax and be familiar with the tool. [More later - distributed cognition, light box]
Comments (1)
Melissa, I love that you are having the kids use the smartboards to "tell" about the stories in their heads. I've got to give you a book - Classroom Instruction that Works by Marzano et al - there is a great chapter on non-linguistic representation. I remember the author saying that when you ask kids to use imagery to express what they know -(drawings, graphs, mind maps, 3-dimensional models etc) they are better able to learn and retain information. The author went on to say that when we ask them to also verbalize (explain) what they have illustrated, the learner is further enhanced. I love the way you are using so many modalities in your teaching!
Posted by Judy | June 21, 2007 6:20 PM
Posted on June 21, 2007 18:20