Zack Frame - Post #3 - Nonlinguistic Representations and Advance Organizers

Another strategy that I would like to use (and have used) and my level II clinical, is the use of the strategy of non linguistic representations. When I began teaching my first unit to the theatre I class—I used non linguistic representation in order to help students organize ideas of what they were planning to do with their character mask. For this unit, we were going to take the characters from a play the school is doing, then make and design a plaster mask that reflects the character’s personality, physical traits, and anything else that could be demonstrated through the making of a plaster mask.

The point of this activity is to help students learn the importance of script analysis and character analysis. By asking students the types of questions on their handout (or non linguistic representation), students are able to see the importance of script and character analysis through the making of their plaster masks. This strategy is especially important when we are giving students a baseline from which to work for the rest of the unit. Students can jot down their initial ideas and refer to them as they move along in the unit—all the while changing things up… getting rid of bad ideas coming up with a new and better ideas.

Here’s where the idea of advance organizers also plays a role! By giving the students this handout prior to teaching the unit, I’m giving students an advance opportunity before the lecture to give them an idea of what we will be covering in this unit. Much like essential questions, it allows them to begin with the goal in mind, allows them to pre-organize their thoughts, and as mentioned previously, gives them a baseline of where the unit is going to go from there.

My experience with this unit was pretty positive; I believe the strategies that are used in the classroom for this unit worked well with the students and the students reacted well to the strategies. I felt like the students were actually getting an idea of what character analysis is—which was the point of the entire unit. The only thing that I would have done differently, is I would have created a rubric to offer more structure to the assignment. My assessment of their character mask was not very good because of a lack of structure. If or when I teach this lesson again, I will be sure to have created the rubric to give students a goal to work for when developing their character masks. Go graphic organizers!