Observation Charts are a GLAD strategy that activates prior knowledge, orients students to a new unit, and promotes academic discussions in your classrooms, building success, for all. In this strategy, your students will be engaging in all four domains of language: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Students look at pictures from a unit of study and use sentence stems to capture their thinking on paper.
Here is a second-grade example of an Observation Chart for a unit studying plants.
The thing I love about Observation Charts (and most GLAD strategies) is that they are living documents. This means that you keep the charts up on your classroom walls during the entire unit of study and as students gain more knowledge, they're able to go back to these charts to add newly learned information or revise their thinking.
Materials Needed
Photos relating to your unit of study - a good rule of thumb is 4-5 pictures for each chart. You'll want to make enough charts for each pair or trio to have one chart (if you have 22 students, prep 11 charts).
12 x 18 Construction Paper - you'll want to pick one color for each unit of study. This serves two purposes: color coding for student learning and a neat way to keep your materials organized. Mat the photos relating to your unit of study on the construction paper. For repeated use year after year, I suggest laminating your charts.
11 x 17 White Paper - these will serve as the recording space for students, one per chart.
Colored Markers- Kids seem to love Mr. Sketch markers because they smell good. When each group uses a different color, this strategy can also double as a formative assessment of what kids already know and what you'll want to be sure to cover in your unit.
Sentence Frames - "I notice..." "I wonder..."
Implementation
Model expectations for students. I voice over my thoughts and actions while I'm demonstrating for students so that they have a clear understanding of the expectations.
Spread the charts out around your classroom. You can put them on any flat surface, just ensure that students will be able to write on the white paper successfully.
Students pair up*, choose one color marker to share between them, and begin walking the room and using the sentence frames: "I notice..." and "I wonder" to discuss what they see on each chart.
After a short verbal exchange, students take turns sketching or writing their observations, being sure to start each sentence with the aforementioned sentence frames.
Once all students in the group have recorded their observations and wonderings, they move on to another chart.
*If you have students with limited English proficiency (LEP), I recommend a triad of a native English speaker, a moderate to proficient English speaker with the same home language as your newcomer, and your newcomer. This is so that LEP has a language model as well as home language support.
Formative, Informal Assessment
While your students are engaging in this strategy, you'll want to wander the room and pay close attention to which students are drawing, adding labels, and writing short phrases or complete sentences. From there, you can plan the next steps for these students such as adding descriptive language, writing conventions, or elaboration.
Tips and Tricks for Quick Implementation
Gathering photos for this strategy can feel like a daunting task. Especially when you have to copy, paste, resize, format, and then print, cut out, mat on construction paper, and laminate. Many GLAD strategies require a lot of up-front prep but once they're prepped, you can use them over and over again.
Collecting photos for this strategy can be made simple with the following steps:
Collect photos in a PowerPoint rather than a Word Document. This will allow you to more easily manipulate photos.
Begin with blank slides
Resize your slides: Design > Slide Size > Custom Slide Size > select "letter paper" from the drop-down menu > for best results, select landscape orientation > OK
Insert photos directly from PowerPoint: Insert > Pictures > Stock Images (this will give you nice, high-quality photos that have Creative Commons permissions). Search for photos that relate to your unit of study then select four photos to insert into the slide, and press "Insert." Photos will populate the slide, likely on top of each other.
Organize your photos into four quadrants: Design > Design Ideas > Select a design that has the photos in each of the four corners
Repeat until you have enough photos to create at least one chart for each partnership or triad (if you have 22 students, prep 11 charts).
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