Ever used chalk to talk? Yeah, me either: Chalk Talk strategy

Today everyone was introduced to a new form of activity that helps break down and further analyze text. This is not the traditional forms of learning that we are all use to. It strays away from the whole idea of learning text traditionally. What I mean by that is instead of reading assigned chapters then the next day coming to class discussing what the reading was about, there was more of an emphasis placed on our knowledge and understanding. When the Professor first introduced "chalk talk" to the class I immediately thought of actual messy screeching chalk on a black board. Many emotions were flushing my body, the cringing of my ears when the chalk would hit the black board and like come on is utilizing chalk in a classroom still a thing? Well, maybe it is still useful to elementary, middle, and high school teachers.

Through the use of the circles and lines connecting to the key ideas or concepts reminded me of how I typically would learn a story or chapter throughout my academic career. It was called "brainstorming web" which is what I seen throughout this activity. This strategy was used to help focus in on the main concepts of what the story, chapter, article etc. is trying to convey to its audience. Then from the key points a circle was drawn around them and was elaborated on to further develope the readers knowledge.



This was my first time ever hearing of something like this, so this process was way different from the learning that I am use to. I found that this way of analyzing and learning helps me better understand what I read previously. Being active with the text and actually doing things hands on allowed me to be better engaged in this courses content. Now if I was limited to just reading and filling in a reciprocal chart I would be super uninterested. Through learning directly makes things to boring to me and hinders my ability to learn or retain the knowledge.

The challenges for this activity is the whole organization aspect, many groups had a page full of words that were all over the place. There was no order to follow students just begun to write until the professor told us to stop. This can be a hard way of learning what the story was about because everything is, so unfocused. However, through being unorganized these student groups were assigned a facilitator that stood back and guided our ideas to connect, making things flow rather smoothly. With being the facilitator it gave me a chance to see
where the two writers started their ideas and what stemmed from those key ideas. With the use of the writers knowledge I got a better understanding for what the chapter was about. Through them it shedder light on ideas or concepts that were unclear for me.

Once students were done jotting down their ideas the professor told us to switch posters in order to see the other groups perspective. What I really liked about the switching was we got to see the similarities as well as the differences. The other groups poster contained the same key concepts (some a little different). Although we notice the similarities with the concepts there were differences in how each student interpreted that concept. Therefore, our ability to recognize what is important is the same, but the way we choose to understand it and deliver it to others is completely different.
https://vimeo.com/101254151