As a teacher, I found myself going old-school, writing on a white board and I heard myself saying things like, “This is important.” I believe that I was responding to the high school student that lived inside of me, the one who was concerned about what would appear on the test in a few weeks. My complaint even in university was that if I only knew what the teacher wanted, I would give it to him or her. As an adult and as a librarian AND as a teacher, I feel that these concerns had more to do with marks anxiety than about learning and retaining.
Tell me that kids don’t have marks-anxiety today and I will ask you what planet you live on! Yet, as an educator, I am more concerned that learning be more than regurgitation and I’m far from being alone in this. It is very rewarding to see the projects, essays, and use of technology make this happen. One way that we can prepare students for the next step in their academic careers is to provide them with note-taking tools such as graphic organizers. Pick the right one for the right project and you’re giving a student a leg up when it comes to organizing and remembering facts.
You can find a list of various graphic organizers that are free to download at this website: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/02/list-of-free-graphic-organizers-for.html
