Top Ten Tool Kit- Strategies (4-5)

4. Drawing and Illustrating (Reading Comprehension) Drawing and illustrating techniques are the developments of sketches, diagrams, charts, etc., by students to help them understand something that may be hard to grasp by just reading or listening. According to Harvey Daniels, drawing a concept can help students retain or digest the information for a longer period of time than reading alone. Because of this, it is appropriate to allow the students to use this strategy at any time that a lesson may be taking place. How this strategy works is simple: during a difficult lesson, such as cell make-up, students can draw the different parts of the cells, while labeling them and writing the function of these parts in quick notes beside the pictures. Drawing the cell parts can help one understand what a text book can't explain in its wording. Whatever it takes for each student to learn, whether it's taking notes or drawing quick pictures, he or she should practice any strategy in order to strive and excel.

During a study of plants in a science lesson, I will give my students the opportunity to go outside to explore various plants/trees/flowers that may fall under various categories and families. To help my students distinguish the plants and remember what was seen, I will encourage them to draw and label pictures that will be helpful to them at a later time in their science journals. This way, the visual learners won't be dependent on looking up plants and their characteristics in a book. Instead, they can learn through a more successful strategy. After the drawings are complete, the students will be able to have personal notes and illustrations of their own, rather than what's written in words in a book.

5. Rubrics (Assessment) Overall, a rubric is an organized chart of information that guides a student that distinguishes between levels of performance or completion of an assignment. A rubric is helpful for a teacher in that it is used as a scoring guide to help develop a final grade. A rubric is a great resource to use when assigning a major project or paper to students. More importantly, the easy to follow guide, which may consist of boxes ranging in order from desired performance to a low/failing grade, is great to use because students have an idea of what needs to be accomplished in order to receive a final grade on a major assignment. Also, rubrics hold students accountable for their work- they can't say "they didn't know." Rubrics may come in many forms or designs. Between the traditional styles, which is simply a chart of boxes with descriptions/expectations in each or a list of requirements, to newer ideas, such as the "tic-tac-toe" method, teachers have a variety of rubrics to choose from to make it easier for students to understand and follow.

While teaching my students about the cell and parts of the cell, I will give my students a project that requires them to design a factory or store of their choice that contains rooms/machines/people, etc., which depict the functions that cell parts perform. This complex project would be greatly helpful when accompanied by a rubric for my students. The rubric would follow the traditional rubric style (organized boxes that range in score), that my students can hold on to for guidance to complete an ideal project. As mentioned before, it will contain a description in each box and numbers/letter grade beside each box so that each student knows what to include for a particular grade, as well as help me easily grade each assignment appropriately.