Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Graphic Organizers by Ratna Nur'aini


 

Teaching and learning writing using graphic organizers is the most effective way to students in thinking and exploring ideas through visual display. The graphic organizers help the students to do more concentrate and focus to improve the topic given to be paragraphs or essays. It makes them easier to organize their ideas within the process of their writing. It acts as a pattern to improve the performance of writing guidance so that teacher can easily control their students’ illustration in creating their essay based on their concept maps. In addition, I do agree that building writing papers using some kind of the types of graphic organizers through visual learning is a very good way of strategy to enhance the ability of writing.



 

I also think that graphic organizers help me to teach writing better. It is shown that teaching writing using graphic organizers is useful enough for me to help students to learn writing as a tool to illustrate their ideas. It is also to visualize and organize information to form a writing product. The graphic organizers learning are also having some benefit to my students about structure and increase their reading comprehension. They are also a costume to use graphic organizers to brainstorm in finding concepts or ideas and organize them to demonstrate to be a better performance. Finally, it gives an impact to the students to grow more confidence to demonstrate their writing papers.
 

Graphic organizers are helpful for the learners to learn the writing process. It can be seen teachers teaching about vocabulary in understanding the reading text or when the teachers introduce the new materials such as genre in a reading text.  For example when the students learn how to write a narrative text, teachers give some words like orientation, complication, resolution, re-orientation, moral value, tell a story, amuse , entertain, etc. Then teachers ask students to think and discuss the materials in a group to create a good short story based on the words given. Because of those words given as starting to compose the paragraph, the students feel that it makes them easy to start creating their work.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

CHOMP INTO A GOOD BOOK

         

When this topic came up on the blog, it struck my mind right on its peak. I used to use this method in reading comprehension. but not anymore. Frankly speaking, I can't remember the reason why I stopped using this method. Never mind, then, as I still remember the good times doing it.
         
Graphic organizers may look like simple fill-in-the-blank worksheets, but they are actually so much more. These pieces of paper full of circles, squares and connecting lines help improve students' comprehension and encourage them to think critically. Whether they are used to compare and contrast, analyze relationships, brainstorm, explore concepts or just take notes, graphic organizers help students see their reading and writing instruction in a new way.
         
As the technology always develops, we are dealing with students who are accustomed to visual material. Verbal or linguistic learners tend to perform well in a language arts classroom, but not all students are verbally or linguistically inclined. Graphic organizers help students with different learning styles, particularly logical and visual learners. While reading a story, students can use a graphic organizer to outline the sequence of the story, identify the main traits of a character or chart the conflicts that appear in the text. For example, a graphic organizer may have a box for a character's name in the middle and boxes around the page asking for examples of the character's feelings, thoughts, actions and physical characteristics. This helps students to see the text in a new way -- and through a medium that fits their style of learning.
         
Not only the students, teacher are also having benefit from this technique, as a graphic organizer is a visual display that demonstrates relationships between facts, concepts or ideas. A graphic organizer guides the learner’s thinking as they fill in and build upon a visual map or diagram. So, teachers can deliver the material in a lot more familiar way. To inspire more, here is an example taken online :  http://www.fcrr.org/curriculum/PDF/G4-5/45CPartOne.pdf





ENJOY