ASSESSMENT PORTFOLIO

Tools and techniques used to assess English language learners to create an assessment portfolio

Tools and techniques used to assess English language learners to create an assessment portfolio

Graphic Organizers

Lerner (2000, p. 207) defines graphic organizers (GOs) as “visual representations of concepts, knowledge, or information that incorporate both text and pictures. They make it easier for a person to understand the information by allowing the mind 'to see' complex relationships.” GOs are advance organizers that used to support student learning in reading, mathematics, and in other academic areas from primary level classes to adult education programs. GOs widely used in general education classrooms and in many special education programs as well (Ascher, 2006).

Explanation

Several investigations have shown that the graphic organizers are one of the best methods to teach the skills of thinking. The techniques of graphic organizers include graphs to work with diverse ideas and present information, teach students to clarify their thinking, and to process, organize and prioritize additional information.

The diagrams visually reveal patterns, interrelationships and interdependence and stimulate creative thinking.

The various graphic organizers techniques help students to:

1) Clarify thinking

Students see how ideas connected and realize how they can organize or group information. With the help of graphic organization, the advanced concepts are deeper and more easily understood.

2) To strengthen understanding

Students play in their own words what they understand something. This helps them absorb and internalize extra information, giving them possession of their own ideas.

3) Integrating new knowledge

The diagrams updated throughout a lesson encourage students to build on their knowledge before and integrate new information. By reviewing diagrams created previously, students may appreciate how facts and ideas fit at the same time.

4) Identify misconceptions

While a concept map or other graphic organizer that shows what students know, misdirected links or connections wrong, expose what they have not understood yet.

Concept

The Learning Visual defined as a method of teaching / learning using a set of Graphics Organizers (visual methods for ordering information) in order to help students through work with ideas and concepts, to think and learn more effectively . In addition, these misconceptions can identify and visualize patterns and relationships in information, factors necessary for deep understanding and internalization of concepts.

Moreover, the development of visual diagrams help students to process, organize, prioritize, retain and recall new information, so that they can integrate significantly to their prior knowledge base.

 

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However, for the application in the classroom these Graphic Organizers can be truly effective, knowing the main features of each and the other, be clear about the objectives of learning that you want students achieve. For example, if you locate these within a period of time, the events surrounding the discovery of America, to see and understand the temporal relationship between them, the ideal graphic organizer method to use in this situation will be a Time line. On the contrary, if what desired is that students understand the relationship between the most important concepts related to the discovery of America , such as a new world, new shipping routes, conquest of other lands, economic ...