Transcript

The KWL Chart is a favorite for my class. This graphic organizer can be used in many, many different ways. We actually used it for a social studies lesson that we were going through, which is the state of Mississippi which is where we actually live. And I wanted it to be something that they can constantly refer to. I was pretty surprised that living in the state of Mississippi how much my students did not actually know. So the KWL chart, we started off with what you know about Mississippi and they knew some things, but there were a lot of things that they did not know about the state that the majority of them were born and raised in, so that gave me the idea to make it big. 

Usually I'll use a little chart, sometimes they'll do their own individual ones, but I wanted this to be class size because it was something that related to all of us. After they finished talking about what they know we posted it up here under the K for knowledge. Then we went to what you want to know, now they had a lot of questions about what they wanted to know about the state of Mississippi. And we talked about what were the different regions, they wanted to know that. Who was the first mayor? That was something that I found very interesting. They actually asked, was Mississippi ever a territory, because that was something that we had studied in the unit before. So, they brought in the background knowledge so I was pretty impressed with that. 

Once we read the chapter, we did a little research, some on their own, some were bringing in different things that they had Googled, that they looked up in the library. So, I found out that they really were enjoying the massive way that we were using the chart. So, after they did research we read about it, and we actually watched a couple of films about it, we talked about what we had learned, and that took us to the L. They learned that Bennie Thompson was the congressman here. To me I was like "you just learned that", and they were "ya, that's new for us". So, we put that up there. 

They learned that there were eight regions of Mississippi, and Alabama was Mississippi's territory, so there were a lot of things that through research, through readings that they actually did on their own, independently, we were actually able to post a lot under learning. After we had gone through what we know, what we wanted to know, and what we learned, I actually had them go back and draw the state of Mississippi. And as you can see here, not only did they draw the state of Mississippi, but they listed a lot of the cities that are actually in our state, which I thought was a really, really great idea. 

So this wall sized KWL chart is something that we decided would be something that we could leave up the whole year long, because it was a big unit and we live here, so it was really, really relevant, so it was not something that could be changed. But it was a very interactive way to bring in their knowledge of the state that they're living in.