Week Three: Build Schemas November 2, 2023

 Week Three: Build Schemas

November 2, 2023

In Chapter Three of Rigor by Design, Not Chance, Karin Hess focuses on the importance of building schemas and how important it is to create a game plan for students to interact with. Schemas develop a structure for students to interpret different information and organize their thoughts through different processes. “Schemas shape our thoughts about what we are learning” (Hess, 2023). Schemas can aid in learning new information and connecting existing knowledge, as well as working with memory storage. The other main component of schemas is the building blocks for metacognition, that holds awareness of one’s thought processes. 

In my last post, I described the process of the Actionable Assessment Cycle and how it can be used. Now I am going to connect the cycle with building schemas and how practicing these strategies will support language learning and executive functioning. 

  1. Clarify learning targets: Using these targets to develop essential questions for students to interact with and uncover deeper-level thinking. Chart 3.4 in the book shows a good demonstration of different questions used in different content areas. 

  2. Embed short-cycle formative tasks into instruction: There are different strategies to implement that work in almost every lesson. Sketchnotes and mind Maps are used for organizing student's thoughts. Paint the parts used for color-coding notes so students to recognize each category easily. Lastly, Anchor Charts give students visual aids to break down text structures so students can recognize different areas. 

  3. Uncover thinking and document evidence of learning: Using related visual representations for students to receive the main idea. Picture Sorts & Finding Outlier pictures for students to pick out and decipher what is essential to the text, and what is not. This also includes graphic organizers, which are very useful for any age grade. 

      4&5.  Interpret evidence and frame feedback and determine the following steps to advance learning: Breakup of students to learn different perspectives in the Jigsaw experiment. “The Jigsaw activity encourages discussion and deeper thinking” (Hess, 2023). Students then collaborate with each other and assess their results. 

      6. Use performance tasks to assess transfer and deepen learning: I can only assume this last step is for students to transfer what they learned and create a product for future lessons. 

To learn more about the Anchor Chart strategy, I look at Kimberly Fontanez’s article titled “Examining the Impact of Art-Based Anchor Charts on Academic Achievement in Language Arts,” intrigued by the idea of using visuals more, which can be a little tricky for my area of teaching, but not impossible. We have to look at why she wanted to do a study in which Fontanez states “The purpose of this project study was to examine the teachers’ experiences of artbased anchor charts on increasing comprehension on informational text” (Fontanez 2017). Using this type of strategy, to see how students responded to anchor charts and how effective they were. The chart below shows some of the findings of this recent study. 

This allows us to see how many students were tested and how many struggled to use informational texts. From such a small section between students in a select area, imagine a bigger pool of students or other areas. Both sources had some excellent ideas and reasons why anchor charts could be very effective. The overall goal was to provide visual resources for students to reference and see new information being taught. 


References 

Fontanez, K. (n.d.). Search.proquest.com. Examining the Impact of Art-Based Anchor Charts on Academic Achievement in Language Arts. https://search.proquest.com/openview/f7c24a9fb8544f49200f78e6942a541e/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y 

Hess, Karin. (2023).  Rigor by Design, Not Chance: Deeper Thinking Through Actionable Instruction and Assessment. ASCD ASSN SUPERV CURR DEV, 2023.

Comments

  1. Dr. Beth Walsh-MoormanNovember 6, 2023 at 3:02 PM

    Can you interpret the chart for us, and help us to see the connections you are drawing between this and Hess? I really like the conclusions you draw from the study, but how do they relate to Hess' ideas of schema?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lucy PattisonNovember 8, 2023 at 9:56 AM

    I am also interested in the effects of visual activities that can help students build schemas. I wonder how effective choice boards that included different activities would be regarding students' motivation. I'm also curious how anchor charts can be used in a math lesson. I would be interested to see if anchor charts help build a structural or procedural schema. Overall, I am eager to learn more about schemas.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Megan SchanzNovember 9, 2023 at 6:18 PM

    I like how you are able to build and connect to your previous posts. I think that proves your knowledge of the Actionable Assessment Cycle. I agree that anchor charts would be beneficial for students in understanding informational texts. Having a visual would help those learners who need to see the information in different ways. I wonder how much higher the understanding of informational texts those students in the figure would have if they had been exposed to anchor charts.

    ReplyDelete

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