One instructional strategy that enhances learning is cues, questions, and advance organizers. Cues can be used to direct students in the correct path. This is an imperative time to bring realia into the lesson to allow English language learners the opportunity to advance. Questioning throughout the lesson offers safety for students. Questioning also could spark student’s interest in wanting to research the content further. Advance organizers are used to organize the material into categories through technology or the old fashioned paper/pencil. Teachers have a plethora of online assistance in creating organizers appropriate for their students and subject area.
Another instructional strategy used is summarizing and note taking. Summarizing helps students to retell the information in their own words and focuses on the big picture. This can be done verbally or written. You will see summarizing is necessary in all grade levels. Students need to be taught how to filter out the unnecessary material to find the main idea. Note taking can be done in bullet form, outlines, sentences, or even pictures. Students need to learn a variety of ways to note taking to find what works best for these personal needs. By doing so, students will more likely gain long term memory with the information being taught.
Reference
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Denver, Co: Mid-Continental Research for Education and Learning.
Hi Lisa,
ReplyDeleteYour first sentence really caught my attention. I attended a meeting today and the focus was on how do we get students interested. It was amazing how the discussion never took the turn that we need to get the students interested in the content. They talked about how the teacher needed to show enthusiasm for the content, but never mentioned that maybe we aren't using all the tools that are available to us to make the content interesting. I teach in a school with an online self-paced curriculum, so students do not have the traditional classroom setting. Our curriculum currently is lacking in many areas. Most of the assignments are not relevant to their personal lives and do not have a lot of variation. I agree that if we incorporated advanced organizers then the students would be able to visualize the information and make connections, so it could be stored in their long term memory. I strongly believe that the students are simply not connecting with the material, so therefore are not processing it.
I agree that these strategies are very helpful for the students.
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteYour point about how questioning has the ability to spark students interest really got me thinking about how I use this same technique in my science classes. Science is all about questions and without people asking new, or different questions we would not be in the places we are today. I think questioning has a great use in cognitive learning, as questions require students to have some knowledge of the topic or related topics in order to form probing questions. Questioning also begins a thought process that lead to some interesting connections to students live and the material at hand.
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteNote taking is an important skill that does need to be taught. I recall many lessons on how to make outlines to help with note taking. I do not think that is taught enough anymore. Many students do not know how to take meaningful notes and would really benefit from note taking instructions. Realia is definitely a plus and is so helpful for English language learners. Realia is a cue in itself and helps spark thoughts and memory. Good post.
Kerri
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteThank you for making the connection for me between courses. The idea of realia, which we discussed in Diversity, is probably commonplace for you because of all your ESL students. But since my experience in that area is few and far between, I had forgotten its importance. Realia provides the extra connection for longer lasting memories that Dr. Wolfe talked about as well as the visual connection, dual coding hypothesis, Michael Orrey talked about. Realia is extremely beneficial for ESL students but this also illustrates the purpose for using it even when an ESL student is not present. Nice job!
I like your summary of the strategies discussed this week. I did not think of using cues and realia at the same time and I thought that was a very good idea. It is so important to make sure we address all of our learners in our classroom beyond learning styles and realia will definitely help out those ELLs. Also, you make a point to say that teachers have a variety of tools at our fingertips and it is so true. I think during these courses at Walden, I am finally able to see how I can use them more effectively as oppose to administration giving us tools without further professional development yet have high expectations that they will be used.
ReplyDelete