Classroom Tip: Concept Cards

For the modeling workshop this past weekend, the participants were asked to prepare 1-3 questions on 3"x5" index cards about topics or issues that may have come up in our modeling classrooms.  We then had a Q&A session with the workshop leaders where they addressed the questions and shared their experiences and possible solutions.  Let me tell you, I went well beyond my 1-3 cards requested.  I gave them a stack!

One of my (many) questions was about keeping students' notes more structured and organized:  as I had mentioned in previous posts, I really feel my standard students need more structure to be able to make the best use of their interactive lab notebooks.  Also, my honors kids have been craving more organization-- they are the rare types that actually would like to be able to refer back to a textbook or a body of work.  Only being able to refer back to a hodgepodge of handouts and notes scattered in their notebook has been throwing some of them off their game.

An experienced modeling teacher had what seems to be a great solution for this:  concept cards.  For each unit, she has her students prepare index cards for each of the major concepts.  They have the concept on one side, and the important information about the concept on the other.  This may be related vocabulary, a summary of the idea, diagrams, etc.  Anything to better help the students quickly review to main points of the concept.  This way they can flip through the cards in their downtime and refresh on the most important points and concepts from the unit.

While this isn't a new invention, I LOVED this idea and hadn't even considered it on my own.  I think it may be the solution I so desperately wanted.  Plus, with having a state end of course exam, I feel like these have potential to be a fabulous study tool later down the road.  So today as a review activity, I'm had my students create concept cards for Unit 3.

And to really incorporate the modeling instruction, I divide the topics up among the lab groups and had them whiteboard their ideas of what they think should go on the cards for each concept:

A whiteboard from my standard bio class

The whiteboarding was really dual purpose-- this allowed them to take some ownership in the concepts, but also made sure everyone recorded all of the important and correct information.  We had a board meeting where we came to a consensus on the most thorough and useful summaries.

I hope to keep up with this idea, and I hope it works.  I also thought it was an effective review activity.  I'm always trying to come up with better ways to review for tests.  Games are fun, but they can be time-consuming to create and the brightest students often dominate the competition.  Just completing a study guide can be dull and ineffective.  This seemed to be a nice middle ground.