According to the post written by Fanguy on Piktochart’s blog, “Humans are visual creatures - half of our brain is dedicated to visual functions...What’s even more impressive is that as images are processed simultaneously, we process them 60,000 times faster than we process text” (Infographics as a visual learning tool section). Especially for my younger students, who often still struggle with reading, using visuals in my lessons is more important to have effective instruction in my classroom.
My favorite way to help students represent data in visual ways is through the use of data notebooks. This past school year, I went to a conference at Lake of the Ozarks and one of the sessions I attended was about using data notebooks with elementary students. I, along with another teacher that attended with me, are working on putting together data notebooks for our grade levels to use with our students. Especially since my grade level is moving to standards based grading next year, using these data notebooks with students will really help students visualize their learning progress. Students will start by taking a pretest for each standard (as we get to it in our pacing guide) and graphing their results. Then students will continue to chart/graph their score on each data point (assignment) that we do throughout the standard, and finally on a post-test. This will allow students to visually see how they are progressing through each standard in third grade.
In addition to these student data notebooks, my students also graph their DRA data and progress on AR reading goals. I feel like this is a great way for students to start understanding what all of their “grades” mean and to feel more connected to their learning.
