Tamara Griffith
Reference Materials
The overarching goal of the standards to graduate students who are college and career ready necessitates that all of my students are working towards a common goal; however, my students have varied experiences and abilities, resulting in a great need for differentiation and scaffolding in order to be inclusive of all the diversity present in my classroom. My classes, especially my regular language arts classes, are comprised of students who are significantly below grade level and of linguistically diverse students. As a result, many of my students struggle with recalling key content knowledge or activating prior knowledge. Thus, to effectively support students in their learning, I provide them with reference materials, such as a word wall, anchor charts, exemplars, sentence frames, and student friendly rubrics, as an instructional strategy to help bolster students' academic performance and facilitate application and transfer of key content knowledge and skills. These tangible items support my struggling learners' presentation of their content knowledge and skills, thus allowing them to efficiently and effectively demonstrate whether or not they have mastered a concept or a skill.
"A thousand teachers, a thousand methods."
~Chinese Proverb
Word Wall
One type of reference material I use as an instructional strategy in my classroom is a word wall. In the front of my room, words that will feature prominently in our reading and/or writing tasks are displayed prominently with their definitions and, sometimes, with a picture. As our reading and/or writing tasks change, so, too, do the words featured on the word wall. While students complete their work, they get up and review the words displayed on the word wall if needed. While I teach and/or review a key concept, I gesture or point to the word on the word wall. As a result, this instructional strategy is interactive and visually reinforces key conceptual knowledge.
Vocabulary development is crucial to improving students' literacy skills. Often, students lack the expansive vocabularies required to perform many higher-order critical thinking tasks with ease. Providing students with a word wall supports students in this critical thinking process because it reinforces the vocabulary they need in order to effectively demonstrate mastery of their content knowledge and skills. As students begin to more readily recognize and process the vocabulary terms displayed on the word wall, their comprehension of texts will improve, thereby improving their ability to interact with texts more deeply and analytically.
Explore the slideshow below to better discern how this instructional strategy is put to use within my classroom.
Often, I include pictures of the words in addition to the words' definition to facilitate students' understanding of key vocabulary skills. This is particularly beneficial for my ELL populations since it establishes a visual connection between the word an its definition, thereby promoting key literacy skills and English proficiency.
I teach students how to interact with the word wall to review and reinforce key vocabulary with our reading and writing tasks. Here, a student copies down the definition of a new word in his interactive journal so that he can refer back to it later.
As we interact with longer and more complex texts, more words get added to our word wall. Here, I added synonyms, or words with similar meanings, that students may be more familiar with to help them build the associations necessary to build their vocabularies and facilitate learning.
Often, I include pictures of the words in addition to the words' definition to facilitate students' understanding of key vocabulary skills. This is particularly beneficial for my ELL populations since it establishes a visual connection between the word an its definition, thereby promoting key literacy skills and English proficiency.
Anchor Charts
Another instructional strategy that I employ to assist students in referencing content knowledge is the use of anchor charts. Anchor charts are visual supports hung up or displayed around the classroom that serve a variety of purposes: they reinforce expectations, make thinking visible for students, and support instruction. Students are able to reference these anchor charts while they engage in both collaborative and independent work, thus reinforcing and supporting their understanding of key concepts and skills. Moreover, anchor charts ensure that previously taught content knowledge and skills remain relevant and accessible to students throughout the school year. In addition, students provide input as to what content should be displayed on the anchor chart and/or create their own anchor charts to be displayed, which fosters increased student engagement and investment and thus supporting academic achievement. In addition, I frequently refer to the anchor charts displayed in my classroom while students are learning or reviewing a concept or skill.
Navigate the slideshow below to explore samples of anchor charts utilized in my classroom and students' reflections regarding how this instructional strategy is beneficial to their learning.
Due to the lack of wall space in my classroom, some of the most used anchor charts of past skills are hung on the windows so that students can still refer to them as these skills are spiraled in subsequent lessons.
Some of my students' weakest skills center around writing. As a result, anchor charts that address some of the sub-skills of writing, such as this one on sentence structure, are displayed all year for students to consistently refer back to.
Having my students periodically reflect on the instructional practices I employ allow me to account for student input. If my students are not finding a particular strategy or anchor chart to be beneficial, I will rotate the anchor charts or ask for their input to design anchor charts that are more useful and tailored to their needs. This allows me to establish a classroom that is responsive to my students.
Due to the lack of wall space in my classroom, some of the most used anchor charts of past skills are hung on the windows so that students can still refer to them as these skills are spiraled in subsequent lessons.
The skills that we are currently learning are displayed most prominently on the cabinets around my classroom to ensure that the anchor charts are easily visible for students while they complete their work. As we learn new skills, the anchor charts displayed here are rotated out to help anchor students' learning around these new concepts and skills.