Cues,+Questions,+&+Advance+Organizers

**Cues and Questions**
==As a teacher, I use cues to access my students prior knowledge that will help them to better understand and relate to a topic taht we are studying. I use questioning to help my students gain a deeper understanding of what we are studying. Questions are also used to make sure that they are comprehending what they have read or to show me that they have comprehended what they read. I use cues a lot when I am introducing a topic for the first time or when I want to scaffold on what they already know about a given topic. We are currently studying nouns. I started with what is a noun, which they already knew. Then I moved on to common and proper nouns. I cued them with what is a noun and when they gave me a proper noun I continued on to what a proper noun is. I really would like to start using the KWL chart. The type of questions that I use are typically the lower level of who, what, where, when and why. I really need to start going into more depth with the more analytical questions and inferential questions. I would like my students to be able to go deeper into their thinking.==

== Advanced Organizers My school district has adopted the use of Thinking Maps. These maps follow along whith the 8 major thought processes that we use. They cover brainstorming, classifiying, comparing and contrasting, cause and effect, sequencing, describing, seeing analogies and part-whole relationships. These maps provide a visual representation of these thought processes. In these maps I sometimes fill in part of the information and then have them fill in the rest or sometimes I have them fill in the whole thing. The nice thing about these maps is that they can be used alone or together and they are useful in getting the students to write responses. Below are some examples of the Thinking Maps that we use.==



[|Golgster]
== I really liked this site. It was very easy to use. The way I set up my page was so that I could use it for multiple lessons. It is showing test to self as bigger than the other two text connections. This way the students can also see what else we will be learning about. I really think that my students would like to use this for projects or to demonstrate what they have learned on a given topic. They can also use the Thinking Maps software to include a thinking map that may go with the lesson. The only down fall is that in order to be able to use some of the other features, you have to purchase a more expensive package. The other issue that I need to investigate is whether or not this site can be accessed from school. If it can, I am envisioning my students using it for either a group project or a book report. ==