Academic Strategies to Enhance Learning

1. Academic Strategies to Enhance Learning Michelle Fattig, Ed.S. Doctoral Candidate NorthCentral University

2. Accommodating All Students: 'Classic' Ideas That Teachers Can Use to Diversify Classroom Instruction • “Teachers are required to accommodate a wide range of student abilities in their classrooms. The following are some 'classic' ideas that teachers found help them to meet the unique learning needs of particular students within a busy general-education classroom.” • Retrieved January 5, 2007 from: http://www.interventioncentral.org/htmdocs/interventions/genAcademic/classic.php

3. To communicate clearly with students: • Post a daily classroom schedule. Preview the schedule with students and highlight academic and behavioral expectations for each activity. Leave the schedule up through the entire day. • Speak in a clear voice that all students can hear easily ('strong teacher instructional signal'). Be sure that all students can see the board or projection screen without difficulty. • Make eye contact with the student before giving directions. Have the student repeat directions back to you before beginning assignment. • Use simple, clear language when communicating with the child. • Keep instructions brief. Break multi-step directions into smaller subsets-and have the student complete one subset before advancing to another. • Write assignments or complex directions on the board in addition to saying them. Retrieved January 5, 2007 from: http://www.interventioncentral.org/htmdocs/interventions/ genAcademic/classic.php

4. To ensure student understanding of newly introduced academic material: • Structure lessons so that they contain no more than one-quarter new material. (Students are most successful when they can 'anchor' new concepts to known information.) • Match student's level of instruction to ability level to guarantee him or her high rate of success (80% or greater). • Use a 'think-aloud' approach: Talk through the steps of a problem-solving strategy as you teach it so that students can understand and internalize those steps. Then have them use the same 'think-aloud' approach as they work through the strategy, so that you can observe them and offer feedback. • Give the student your master notes as a guide for improving or expanding his or her own notes. Or at the end of each class period, have the student compare his or her notes for thoroughness and accuracy against those of a classmate who takes thorough notes. Retrieved January 5, 2007 from: http://www.interventioncentral.org/htmdocs/interventions/ genAcademic/classic.php

5. To promote student motivationin group instruction: • Seat the student at the front of the room, so that you face him or her as you teach (the teaching 'action zone') • Use alerting cues to get the class's attention before giving a directive or assignment. • Integrate learning into game-like tasks that allow students to win praise, points, privileges, or rewards; promote friendly competition between student teams; or use puzzles, riddles, or other novel vehicles to kindle student interest. • Present instructional material in short sessions at a brisk pace. • Require that students engage in some type of active responding to teacher instruction (e.g., students respond to teacher question in unison; students write down their response and then the teacher calls randomly on one student to share his or her answer; students break into small groups and use cooperative-learning strategies to solve a problem). Retrieved January 5, 2007 from: http://www.interventioncentral.org/htmdocs/interventions/ genAcademic/classic.php

6. Summarization for Reading Comprehension • Ask students for the overall idea of the selected reading • Have the students help write a general statement about the story • Ask them to list the main ideas with two or three supporting ideas for each main idea • Give each part of the story a heading a record important details that the students help to identify • Identify what information is and is not important • Ask the students to describe the parts of the passage • Relate the important parts of the passage to the main topic and/or the title • Have students write a summary that includes each of the parts • Have students check the summary against what was read to see if anything important was left out • Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 67.

7. Who Should Learn Summarization • Summarization is likely to benefit students low in comprehension, because it helps children to see how all of the parts are connected and to approach reading in a more strategic way, prompting them in a step-by-step manner to look for important details and related parts of a story. • Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 68.

8. Summarization Strategy for Reading Comprehension • Guide students to underline or circle most important parts • Encourage the students to look back in the text and scan (but not re-read) • Encourage use of overall labels for information (e.g., ducks, geese, cows are barnyard animals) • Instruct students to write important ideas, order the ideas by importance, and ignore unimportant information • Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 68.

9. More guidelines for summarization • Use direct explanation • Teach why, when, and where to apply summarization • Model skills. Talk through examples and show how the skill is applied • Break down into simple steps • Summarize short paragraphs before proceeding to harder/longer • Phase out teacher directives as students demonstrate successful, self-directed implementation of the techniques • Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 68.

10. Understanding Text Good reading skills require understanding the meaning of what is written even if not explicitly stated. • Extended Questioning and Self Questioning help students to think more deeply about what the are reading and encourage the necessary connections between the known and what they are reading by producing elaborations on the to-be-learned facts and connections to what they already know. • Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 69.

11. Teaching Extended Questioning and Self-Questioning • Assign to groups • Have students read the text • Have students ask questions, such as: • Why are you studying in this passage • What are the main points? Underline • Can you think of some questions about the main idea you have underlined? • What do you already know about the topic? • What do you want to learn about the topic? • How does this relate to what you know? Tell students how to learn the answers by looking at the question and answers to see how each provides them with information. Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 68.

12. Teaching Extended Questioning and Self-Questioning cont. • Ask the class these questions as a group, list answers to the questions, and note elaborations. • An excellent resource can be found at www.mindtools.com/memory.html Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 69.

13. PLAN Look at the word. Find the chunk. Sound out the chunk. Sound out the beginning. Sound out the chunk. Sound out the ending. Say the word. Action “I see the word beginning.” “I see the chunk ginn.” “I say, ‘ginn.’” “I say, ‘be.’” “I say, ‘ginn.’” “I say, ‘ing.’” “I say, ‘beginning.’” Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 73. Chunking for reading decoding and spelling

14. Plans for Basic Math • Helps learners to remember by thinking, rather than rote memory • Doubles plus one rather than 7+8 • 2+2 is a car with four wheels • 3+3 is the legs of an ant • 4+4 is an octopus with four legs on each side • 5+5 is fingers on both hands Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 113.

15. Plans for Math • Cuisenaire Rods and Math • TouchMath • Part-Whole Strategy • Addition parts, Doubling, Doubles plus 1, Doubles plus 2, Reconstruction, etc. Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, pp. 115-119.

16. Chunking for Multiplication • Read the problem: 2x8= • Point to a number you know how to count by twos • Make the number of slash marks indicated by the other number • Count by twos as you touch each mark, “2, 4, 6, 8..” • Stop counting at the last mark “..10, 12, 14, 16” • The number you stopped on is the answer: “16” Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 123.

17. Math Word Problems • Read the problem slowly and carefully. • Cross out information that is not relevant. • Draw a diagram of the problem. • State the facts in your own words. • Estimate what the answer should be. • Calculate the answer and check against the estimate. • Check your work. • Remember you have to know basic facts to get the answer (or allow calculator use). • Be persistent. • Be sure you read the problem correctly. Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 127.

18. Arithmetic Word ProblemsTeach how to classify into four types: • Change: problems involving values that are changed as the result of some action by the student (e.g. Jack has two pencils, Mary gave him three more, how many does Jack have now?”). • Combine: requires a more general view of the mathematical situation by computing a total based on a new way of organizing the problem (e.g., Jack has two pencils and Mary has three. How many pencils to they have altogether?). The new concept of children as a group is required. • Compare: the quantity of the sets does not change, but the operations demand that a relative relationship be determined (e.g., How many more pencils does Mary have than Jack?). • Equalize: these problems require that the values be equalized. (Jack has two pencils and Mary has four. How many more pencils does Jack need to equal Mary?). Naglieri, J.A. & Pickering, E.B. (2003). Helping children learn: Intervention handouts for use in school and at home. Baltimore, MA: Brookes Publishing, p. 127.