Reflecting on What I Know~ Chapter 10

How do you know that students understand a concept?

There are several ways that you can assess if your students understand the concepts that you are teaching.  You can use teaching and learning activities.  You can test them.  You can also use thinking sheets and graphic organizers to assess their knowledge and skill level.  The cutting edge way to assess your students is to use graphic organizers and other digital tools.  Graphic organizers provede your students with tools that allow them to visually see and display the relationship among and between various elements.  These come in many forms like concept maps, advance organizers, and mental models.  Allowing students to use these tools gives the teacher a window into what the student truly understands.  It also is a window for the students themselves to see what they understand because it is graphically put together by them.  It encourages them to do more research and find answers for themselves in order to complete the graphic to show their peers and teachers.

How can you depict student misconceptions of key information?

Through the use of graphic organizers teachers can easily monitor if the students have misconceptions of key information.  The teacher must plan out the objective of the lesson.  Including ways for the student to show that they truly understand the problem being given to them.  Picking the right organizer is crucial.  Many organizers allow the student to write short entries straight into the organizer.  Some allow graphics, audio/video, text, links, brainstorming ideas with peers, outlines, etc.  Properly using these tools to complete the teachers objective allows the teacher to depict if the students fully understand. 

How can students capture and transfer brainstorming ideas into written thoughts?

I recently used the OWL system for distant learners, which is a program that allows you to give your written paper to another students at ECU online.  They are able to read your document and brainstorm ideas with you.  They can easily type in notes or thoughts about what you have written right onto your paper.  It is then simply returned to you and you can make the changes that you need.  I think that this is similar to how students can transfer brainstorming ideas into written thoughts.  Many graphic organizers allow you to do the same thing.  It allows the recorder to type in any idea and then create a link and new icon for the next idea by pressing Enter.  This captures students thoughts and ideas as they are expressed and encourages students to add their ideas to those of others.  After everyone has given their ideas, the writer can modify and rearrange their thoughts with the new information from their peers, (Morrison and Lowther, 260).