Infographics-The New Anchor Chart

    What if you never had to draw another anchor chart? What if you had your students create their own anchor chart to assess understanding of a particular concept? 

    These are just a couple of questions that have one simple answer—INFOGRAPHICS

    Infographics are “graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.” (Turner and Hicks, 2017)

    Take a look at the infographic I created to strengthen my argument for the impact and need of early childhood literacy. 


    Pretty cool, huh? Although elementary teachers are very familiar with creating anchor charts, infographics are a newer way for students to discuss ideas and information. Having students to create infographics allows teachers to assess what students may already know about a topic and helps students sharpen their persuasion and research skills. 
    
    Using infographics in the classroom also helps those students that may have a difficult time with digesting large amounts of information. By creating infographics, students are able to get the bare facts of he information and see it in a visually new and different way.

    When having students create infographics, use the CRAP method to help guide your students’ thinking. CRAP stands for “contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.” (Turner and Hicks, 2017) These standards look at the procedural knowledge used to strengthen the infographic’s argument. When determining a student’s understanding of the procedural knowledge, a teacher looks at the visual and aesthetic elements of the piece. “Is it visually understood? Do the images used help or hurt the author’s argument? How is the information visually categorized? What information seems most important based on placement or text size?” These are all questions a teacher could use to guide crafting and instruction of procedural knowledge. 

    The other type of knowledge when assessing an infographic is declarative knowledge. Does the student know the "what" of their argument? It's really great to see a student that knows how to create images and media on a computer visually, but do they have the substance that the infographic needs? When teaching students to research information, we must explain credible and non-credible resources. Many times, students will pop the search terms into Google without thinking about what information might show up. According to a study done for Edutopia by Julie Coiro, the seventh graders that participated were more concerned about a source's relevance than credibility. The students also neglected to look at source features such as, the author, venue, or publication type to determine the source's credibility. (Coiro, 2017) When teaching students to critically evaluate sources there are 4 areas of criteria: relevance, accuracy, bias/perspective, and reliability. (Coiro, 2017) These 4 areas are crucial when it comes to evaluating sources to strengthen an infographic's argument.

Finally, teachers must keep in mind and relay to students that creating infographics is a learning process. As authors, we can always find different ways to strengthen our arguments!


Resources

Coiro, J. (2017, August 29). Teaching adolescents how to evaluate the quality of online information. Edutopia. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/evaluating-quality-of-online-info-julie-coiro 

Turner, K. H., & Hicks, T. (2017). The Nature of Argument in a Digital World. In Argument in the real world: Teaching adolescents to read and write digital texts. essay, Heinemann.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 11, 2022 at 11:07 AM

    Jennifer - Excellent job! This post paired so well with what I was thinking regarding your first post, and how teachers teach research skills to younger students. So often, as a high school teacher, I jump straight to the writing piece and forget the value of anchor charts and the building blocks before students begin writing. After reading your post, I wonder if having high school students create their own infographics as a precursor to research writing could be a helpful practice. A good infographic, after all, shows a student's ability to "deconstruct and craft arguments of substance" (Turner and Hicks, 2017). After reading your post, I was inspired to look more into anchor charts and how they could possibly assist me in the secondary ELA classroom. I stumbled upon Christine Simmet's (2016) dissertation "How Anchor Charts Can Engage Students in Interactive Read Alouds", which made me think about ways I can integrate both anchor charts and infographics in the literature portion of my course.

    References
    Simmet, C. (2016). "How anchor charts can engage students in interactive read-alouds." School of Education Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations. 4257.
    https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/hse_all/4257

    Turner, K. H., & Hicks, T. (2017). Argument in the real world: Teaching adolescents to read and write digital texts. Heinemann.

    ReplyDelete

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