Whenever possible I try to include an opinion chart in my Animated Step-by-Steps® allowing everyone to state their prediction or democratically
decide on a shared direction. Teachers love opinion charts as they provide a functional reason for using math skills
and they provide a mini lesson in the
democratic process, e.g., ‘According to our chart … 6 friends want to make
blue play doh, two friends want to make red and 1 friend, Trevor, voted for his
favorite color, green...Which color got the most votes? That's right Jeremy, looks like we are going
to make blue play doh." Charts work especially well when using an interactive
whiteboard as the pen tools can be
used to mark up the large chart.
The opinion chart may take the form of deciding:
- what color play doh we will make;
- what fruit would you add to ice cream to achieve a particular color of ice cream;
- what three Fall colors does each student want for their turkey’s tail.
In Animated Step-by-Step experiments, a page previous to the table chart is designed to elicit open-ended suggestions. These
open-ended suggestions are then followed by a chart that has predetermined
options … but also includes an ‘other’
column for any creative idea(s) that may have been missed from the previous
discussion. Here are two examples derived from the Egg-Cola Experiment and
the Fire
Experiment.
So if you are creating your own educational materials,
consider adding charts whenever possible. It’s always helpful to ‘sneak in’ a
little math!
…’til the
next post … (new posts every Monday)
Follow me on
twitter www.twitter.com/@AnimStepbySteps
Email
me canadiangoosse@gmail.com
©2017 Carol
Goossens’, Ph.D.
Augmentative
Communication Consultant
Speech-Language
Pathologist
Special
Educator
