what you need is a good strategy: how to put …literacy.coe.uga.edu/pdtr/springsummit/wed stephanie...

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What You Need is a Good Strategy: How to Put Strategy Instruction to Work in Your Classroom

ELL and EL/Civics Spring SummitMay 2018

Stephanie Sommers● Instructor & Writing Curriculum Team

Lead, Minneapolis Adult Education● ACES Coordinator through ATLAS

Welcome!Today’s facilitators are...

Heather Turngren● Minneapolis Adult Education● Regional Transitions Coordinator -

Minneapolis

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Today’s Objectives

Ø Understand what is meant by “strategy instruction” and how it relates to adult learning

Ø Reflect on ways to develop the related skills of self-regulation and metacognition

Ø Explore activities that bring strategy instruction into your classroom

Ø Develop a plan for using at least one strategy with your learners

If this man’s business fails, is it because he doesn’t have the skills needed to run a business, or could there be other factors?

Why is it important to make this distinction?

That’s your big marketing plan?

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What reasons do your students give for their success or failure?

using strategies?low ability?

sheer luck?

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Research tells us that perceptions of self-efficacy are critical to learner motivation and persistence

Learners’ perceptions of self-efficacy influence the goals they set, their commitment to those goals, and the learning strategies employed

Self-efficacy influences learners’ willingness to invest effort in tasks

~Taken from a video produced by the Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy (TEAL) project titled “Helping Adults Become Self-Regulated”

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Definition 1Strategy Instruction

Strategy instruction supplies students with the same tools and techniques that efficient learners use to understand and learn new material or skills. The underlying premise behind early research in this area was, “if we discovered what good learners do, we could teach poor or struggling learners to do these things and thereby improve their performance.”

~Taken from The Power of Strategy Instruction by Stephen D. Luke, Ed.D., 2006

Definition 2Self-Regulated Learning

Self-regulated learning is characterized by three central features:

Ø awareness of thinking

Ø use of strategies

Ø situated motivation

If developed among students, the focus of instruction is shifted to fostering strategic and motivated students rather than delivering curricula or managing classroom behavior.

~Taken from The Role of Self-Regulated Learning in Contextual Teaching: Principles and Practices for Teacher Preparation by Paris & Winograd

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Definition 3Metacognition

One’s ability to use prior knowledge to plan a strategy for approaching a learning task, take necessary steps to problem solve, reflect on and evaluate results, and modify one’s approach as needed. It helps learners choose the right cognitive tool for the task and plays a critical role in successful learning.

~Taken from TEAL Center Fact Sheet No. 4: Metacognitive Processes, 2010

An Important Distinction

There is a difference between “having a strategy” and “being strategic.”

It is not enough for our learners to know what a strategy is.

They need to understand:

Ø when and why to use a particular strategy (self-regulation)

Ø which strategies work best for them (metacognition)

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A Recursive Process for Self-Regulation

Task Analysis

Strategy Use

Self-Monitoring

Students need to understand what skills are needed to complete a particular task, choose appropriate strategies, and evaluate the effectiveness of those strategies.

Then they make adjustments and adaptations based on what they learned by going through the process and engaging in active reflection.

Strategy # 1Asking Questions

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The Question Formulation Technique (QFT)

Developed by The Right Question Institutehttp://rightquestion.orghttp://rightquestion.org/educators/resources/

This picture is an example of a Question Focus

Step 1: With a partner or small group, write down as many

questions as you can about the picture in the time allowed (3

min). Follow the 4 rules for producing your own questions.

Photo from the New York Times, The Learning NetworkWhat’s Going On in this Picture?, May 7, 2018

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Step 2: Improve your questions

Step 3: Prioritize your questions

A Question Focus can be a statement, a visual or aural aid in any medium related to the content. However, a Question Focus cannotbe a question.

These are some other examples of visuals that my colleagues and I have used for a Question Focus.

Think of a Question Focus that might help your students prepare or think about a topic that will be addressed in your curriculum in the next 2-4 weeks.

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Think PairShareHow can you make this work in your classroom?

Strategy # 2Graphic Organizers

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Vocabulary Notes Graphic Organizer

Helps with academic vocabulary instruction

Summary in My Hand

Summarizing a Passage

A summary is a brief statement or account of the main points of something. In this case, the

“something” is a reading passage. A summary may be oral (spoken) or written. When you are able to

summarize the passage, it will help with reading comprehension by focusing on the main points.

After you read a passage, ask the following questions to help you summarize

● Who - Does this passage discuss a person or group of people?

● What - Does the passage give information?

● When - Does the information contain a reference to time or date?

● Where - Does the text name a place or location?

● Why - Do you find a reason or explanation for something that happened?

Graphic organizer that can be used with reading passages

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Read the passage on Harriet Tubman silently.

Then turn to a partner and give a Summary on a Hand.

Reading Passage Summary on a Hand

Think about the reading that you just completed.

What questions would your students need to ask themselves in order to successfully complete this reading and the questions?

Write your ideas down on your planning tool.

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A tool for thinking about what tools and strategies are needed to successfully complete a task

Self-Regulation


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Strategy # 3Mnemonic Devices

Using TIF-ing methods to support strategy instruction

Learning Task Formats: routine structures for activities and tasks that provide practice of lesson content

Routines: a sequence of actions regularly followed; a routine process

Norms: standards of acceptable behavior; expectationswithin a specified context

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Paragraph Correction Practicehttp://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/archives/edit.shtml

This paragraph correction practice is an example of a Learning Task Format.

Students get used to looking for 10 errors in the paragraph. The types of errors that the students look for stay the same, but the content changes with each lesson.

Can you find the 10 mistakes?

Let’s look at the answers

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Using mnemonic devices helps students to remember the strategy~Taken from the LD@School websitehttps://www.ldatschool.ca/the-cops-editing-strategy/

CUPS COPS and STOPS

COPS STOPS

Content Sentence Structure

Organization Tenses

Punctuation Organization

Spelling Punctuation

Spelling

FANBOYS is another mnemonic device for coordinating conjunctions

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ROYGBIVis a mnemonic device for the color spectrum of a rainbow

Think PairShare

How can you make this work in your classroom?Do you know any other helpful mnemonics?

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Strategy # 4Using Context Clues

The students learn this vocabulary in order to better understand the listening activity.

The instructions tell them to use context clues to guess the meaning.

How do you help your learners understand how to use context clues?

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A strategy for understanding unknown words from context: Substitution

~ Taken from the Cuesta College Websitehttps://www.cuesta.edu/student/resources/ssc/study_guides/vocabulary/811_vocab_clues.html

Here the students use the word substitution strategy to try to understand the meaning of the missing words (the target vocab).

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Strategy # 5Learning Journals

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Types of Learning Journals that Help Students Think

� 1. Question Journal: This type of journal is focused on inquiry–the asking and refinement of questions. They can be answered or merely ‘wondered about.’ The big idea here is students asking and improving their own questions. The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) Strategy could be useful here.

� 2. Metacogntive Journal: A journal focused on thinking about thinking. In a Metacognitive Journal, students are writing about their thinking–their tendencies, changes in their thinking over time, cognitive blind spots, etc.

� 3. Change Journal: All learning should result in personal and social change. Similar to the ‘change in thinking’ topic in the Metacognitive Journal listened above, a ‘Change Journal’ frames the writing for learning in terms of, well, change.

� How has their knowledge changed after a lesson or project–how it is now more complete or useful, for example. Change in their own behavior as the result of their learning is another possible approach. That is, how is or should their own inclinations or skills or general potential different post-discussion/lesson/project/unit. Writers can also reflect on how other knowledge (about other topics, for example) as changed after encountering new data or ‘finishing’ a learning experience of some kind.

Types of Learning Journals that Help Students Think

� 4. Connecting Journal: A learning journal that frames writing through the connections between things. For example, in science this could be writing about how new knowledge about the scientific process connects to old perceptions. Or, less abstractly, learners could simply write about how the scientific process connects to data, business, technology, or science itself at large.

� A Connecting Journal, more than anything else, requires writers to make, focus on, or otherwise frame their thinking through connections. In this way, it pairs well with a ‘Sketch Note’ Journal, which would allow students to make those connections through prose as well as drawings or concept maps.

� 5. Transfer Journal: A journal that focuses on learners transferring their learning–to new and unfamiliar circumstances in the strictest sense. If a student learns about migration in social studies, a Transfer Journal would allow them to consider how that knowledge might be used, or how it might transfer to current events, for example.

� It could also focus on transfer from within the classroom to outside the classroom, making explicit the learner’s application of academic and content knowledge in their own lives.

~Journal Ideas taken from the TeachThought website:https://www.teachthought.com/literacy/20-types-of-learning-journals-that-help-students-think/

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One Minute ReflectionCan be used an exit ticket to see what strategies students are incorporating for their learning.


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One Change

After participating in today’s session, what is one change that you would like to make regarding your classroom practices or procedures? What affect do you think this will have on your learners?

QUESTIONS?COMMENTS?Thank you for your wonderful participation today!

[email protected]@mpls.k12.mn.us

2018 ELL AND EL/CIVICS SPRING SUMMIT

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