Another type of nonlinguistic representation that is often overlooked is having students engage in a kinesthetic activity.

These are classroom activities that involve physical movement. Unfortunately, since these activities involve students moving about the room, teachers are often afraid to try them out. However, if a teacher has strong classroom management skills, kinesthetic activities can be a very effective way to improve comprehension.

The idea here is that physical movement associated with specific knowledge generates a mental image (nonlinguistic image) in the mind of the learner.

Here is an example from one of my social studies classes…

Every year when studying American colonial life I have my students take a “walking tour of the colonies”. I set up eight stations around the room. Each station has a picture of one aspect of colonial life (i.e. marriage, life on the frontier, life on a small farm, conflict with Native Americans etc.) with written information on the back. Students start at one station and examine the picture/information for roughly 5 minutes and then “walk” to the next station as if they are walking through the colonies back in the early 1700s. We continue this process until the students have “visited” all the stations.

This kinesthetic activity really helps the students create mental images and allows students to build upon their knowledge of life in colonial America.

Plus, it’s a lot of fun! The students love these types of activities.

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Looking for some more fun activities to do with your students?

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When talking about “nonlinguistic representations” the first thing most teachers think about is graphic organizers. We all use them and they work great! However, there are other types of nonlinguistic representations (as mentioned last week). One of the simplest is “generating mental pictures/images”.

As a social studies teacher this is one I use all them time. Instead of reading a passage to my students and having them just “listen” to me read, I have my students imagine I am reading about them.

For example, I may simply tell my students to close their eyes, put their head down on their desk and imagine they are living in an African tribe in 1820 when they are suddenly kidnapped and forced on board a slave ship. I tell them that while I read the following excerpts from a first-hand account of life on board a slave ship I want them to imagine that I am reading about them…imagine the smells, the taste, the sounds, and the sights….imagine what it “feels” like to be on board a slave ship during the Middle Passage.

This is an extremely effective strategy that really helps students create mental images and therefore add to their knowledge base.

The best part about this is it’s so easy to do…no preparation or copies needed

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A powerful aspect of learning that is often overlooked, or at least seems to fad out of practice as students enter higher grade levels, is nonlinguistic representations.

The fact is the more students use nonlinguistic representations to add to the more common linguistic representations, the better they will be able to recall information.

There are a variety of activities teachers can do to produce these nonlinguistic representations.

Here are a handful to get you started:
1. Creating graphic organizers
2. Making physical models
3. Generating mental pictures
4. Drawing pictures and graphs
5. Engaging in kinesthetic activities (activities that involve physical movement)

Incorporating nonlinguistic representations into your lessons can range from a quick activity to spark interest at the beginning of a lesson…to an entire lesson that involves various types of nonlinguistic activities…to week long projects…to simple homework assignments.

What’s great is that students enjoy this type of learning as well. Maybe because they don’t get exposed to it as much or maybe because it truly helps them understand the material better.

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Here’s something many teachers overlook that may actually improve the quality and quantity of homework your students produce…

Tell your students the purpose of the homework assignment.

That’s right…let your students know why you are giving a particular homework assignment. For example, “Tonight for homework I want you to write a 1 page journal entry as if you were an immigrant during the early 1900s. Make sure to include the name of the country you are coming from, the date, and several ‘push-pull’ factors. Remember, identifying several push-pull factors was the objective of today’s lesson. By writing this journal entry you will be reinforcing those objectives and really gain a deeper understanding of the reasons why people left their home countries and decided to come to America.”

This simple homework strategy will greatly increase the number of students who actually do the homework AND it will also improve the quality of the homework.

Why?

Simple…many, if not most, students just don’t understand why they are assigned homework. Most think that all the teachers really care about is that they just complete the homework. That the purpose of homework is for the teachers to have another grade in their gradebook.

By letting the students know the true purpose of homework they will see the importance and relevance of the assignment and therefore put in more effort towards that assignment.

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Are you still having problems getting your students to complete homework?

For more homework strategies that you can start applying to your very next class make sure read eTeach: A Teacher Resource for Learning the Strategies of Master Teachers @ www.TeachingTeacher.com

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The connection between parent involvement and student achievement is obvious. The question is how do teachers go about increasing this parent involvement.

There many different ways teachers can do this…such as a classroom newsletter, website, blog etc.

If you can do this on a weekly basis you will see a great improvement in your students’ performance.

Personally, I think the best way to do this is through your own website and/or blog (granted, nearly all of my students have internet access).

Nevertheless, I think every teacher these days should have some type of website/blog. Here’s mine: www.MrWaxlersClass.com

Notice how simple it is…However, parents LOVE it!

Each week I make a simple post informing parents (and students) of what we are doing that week and what the homework is each day. I can also inform them of important upcoming events and due dates (such as the History Fair, fcat testing etc.). I even include helpful links to the school calendar, district website, homework philosophy, curriculum map etc.

What I did is really not that difficult. But you should know that my way does cost a little money (about $6.95) per month…though you can easily make that back if you just throw some adense ads on your site (again, really easy to do).

First, let me tell you about a couple of free ways. First of all, check with your school….you may have some type of web creating software and you could host your site though the school’s servers. However, the program at our school is so bad I don’t even bother…it’s really a joke. The other thing you can do is set up a blog with blogger.com or wordpress.com. Both of these are free, but you are limited in some ways…not sure if you can have people sign up for automatic email notifications, and you do not use your own domain name. If these things don’t bother you then maybe you should go that route.

Personally, I enjoy having my “own” web site where I have complete control AND my own domain name. To do this you must purchase a domain name and host your web site. Fortunately, if you do this right it does not cost much.

Simply sign up for a hosting account with a reputable host such as Bluehost.

If you sign up for a certain number of months you get to register your domain name for free.

Next, you simply log into your control panel and there is a link where you can automatically install the wordpress blog script…that is what I use. Again, this may have sounded complicated, but really it is not…it is quite easy and any good hosting company will have a great support staff.

Once you have your blog up and running you will want your parents (and students) to be able to sign up for automatic notifications. This way, every time you update the blog your students’ parents will automatically get sent an email with the blog post embedded in the email.

Think about this from a parents point of view…how great would it be to get an email each and every week letting you know what your child will be working on that week and what the homework is each day of the week.

To do this you can use a site such as www.feedburner.com. Simply follow the directions provided on that site that show you how to publicize your “feed”. You basically copy small amount of html code from their site and paste it into the sidebar of your own site (via your control panel). Again, this may sound complicated, but it is actually very easy…you could have the whole things set up in less than 20 minutes.

Just think how impressed your parents, students, and administration will be, but more importantly, think about how much it will help improve your students’ academic achievement.

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