Chapter 4 - Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers

Chapter 4 is all about helping the students to keep their thoughts organized.

I like these software applications. Most of my students are lacking in organizational skills. I don't think they realize how much easier school and learning would be for them if they just organized themselves a little better.

A spread sheet would really help my literature student. He will be taking the AP test at the end of the year. His reading list comes from the College Board. And the list is long! He will need to be familiar with the authors and their works. I am thinking that he could make a spreadsheet with the titles, authors, genre, themes, and styles. He could manipulate it anyway he wanted to - for example group by theme and notice the authors that are grouped together. This way it will be easier for him to compare and contrast the writers and their works.

Another way I can imagine my students using a spreadsheet would be for some pre-writing brainstorming. Often my students are so much in a rush to get a writing assignment finished that they don't use much of their vocabulary. To correct this problem they could use a spreadsheet to organize the vocabulary they do know and then write their essay with those words. The spreadsheet could be set up for them to list words for different categories. For example before writing about a basketball game, they could make a list of the people involved - players, coach, officials, fans, and cheerleaders. Then they could make a list of the verbs associated with this sport - pass, dribble, score, foul, throw, and catch. Then they could make a list of other nouns of this sport - ball, court, score, scoreboard, basket, net, and buzzer. Another list could be expressions used at a game - Defense!, Way to go!, or Take the shot! After they've finished brainstorming as much vocabulary as they can think of, they'll use one word from one list to combine with a word from another list to make a complete sentence. After doing this a couple of times the students might begin to think writing is easy.

I think my beginning students can use the organizing software to help them make study guides for themselves. They could pick a theme and use Inspiration RapidFire tool to write all of the words they can think of to go with it. For example, the center circle could be "house" and then the other circles could be furniture, names of rooms, or verbs like to cook and to clean that are associated with a house. Another way of using this software would be to give them the new vocabulary for the chapter and they would have to find the connect or connects the words had to each other. They could also use the organizer to help them memorize verb conjugations and which verbs are irregular or have spelling changes.