Guides to Facilitate Information Use
The Instructional Specialist needs a cache of resources that can scaffold student learning. These include guidelines for specific aspects of the information process, along with templates and prompts to facilitate production.
Process Guides
Bibliographic Citations Guidelines. As students select resources to be used in their project, it's important to properly cite each source. Students need to understand the importance of the copyright law and the implications of plagiarism.
- Teacher Tap: Citing Internet Resources
- Citation Wizard - web-based citation generator
Communication Guides. From written to oral communication, students may need to review techniques for expository, narrative, descriptive, persuasive, or other types of communications.
Concept Map Template. Tools such as Inspiration and Kidspiration provide great concept map templates. These can also be created by instructional specialists to get students started developing a concept map.
Evaluation Guide. Depending on the activity, you may wish to review evaluation tips, guides, and criteria.
- Evaluation Wizard - web-based evaluation generator
Glossary. A word list with definitions is useful for students who are likely to encounter new vocabulary in their exploration. It's also help for students to generate their own glossary or pictionary as part of the inquiry process.
Interviewing Guide. Directions are helpful for interviewing another person to gather information.
Notetaking Guide. Instructions for how to keep track of specific pieces of information is helpful for students. The instructional specialist may provide examples directly related to the student inquiry.
Observation Guide. Guidelines are helpful for conducting visual or auditory observations of objects and events. They might include guiding questions to help students organize their viewing, focus attention on specific features, look for detail they might otherwise miss, and apply vocabulary in recording the experience.
Time Management Guide. Some students have a difficult time regulating their time. You may wish to provide a set of guidelines or suggestions for efficient use of time.
Product Guides
Presentation Templates. Sometimes students need guidance in the organization of a presenation. Templates may provide directions in the speaker notes of PowerPoint for creating informational, instructional, or persuasive presentations. Although PowerPoint templates are most popular, templates can be made for creating Appleworks or other software. For example, an interactive debate template may provide screens for each element of the debate process.
Writing Prompts. Students may be provided with directions, ideas, or starters for writing reports, newsletters, simulated diaries, editorials, obituaries, poetry, or other writing types.
Structure Guides. Sometimes directions and examples are provided for the structure of a particular type of product such as a poem, skit, quilt, video, or play. This might include an outline for scriptwriting, storyboard for video or multimedia production, or diagram for a poem style or quilt pattern.
Nonlinguistic Representations
It's important to consider the wide range of learning styles and how different forms of communication can address different needs.
Read Nonlingistic Representation from NETC.