Simple Strategies to Help Students “Get it”

 

Dr. Betty Garner recently came to my school district to work with elementary teachers, who have asked (via online surveys) for help as they facilitate small group instruction during math and readers’ workshop.  Dr. Garner spoke about some simple strategies that may help students who seem to be unwilling or unable to make academic progress.  These are my notes from her workshop:

 

Many students are not able to make connections that would seem to be obvious.  They need to be taught how to collect and be aware of sensory data.  How might you teach this? 

•  Show an image and ask two questions:  1) What do you see? 2) What do you notice? (involves interpretation).  Discuss.


• Ask open-ended questions.


• Do not answer your own questions.


• Ask “What part do you know for sure?”


• Start a lesson with something hands-on.  Ask what the students notice. Do not tell them what to notice.  Make them do the work.


• Ask students to draw what comes to mind when they hear a word.  This is powerful.


• Provide an open-ended structure to a writing assignment.  Four paragraphs:  1) Summarize what you learned about _____.  2) What sense do you make of it?  3) How will you use it?  4) What questions come to mind?


• Ask “Which words do you wish you knew better?”

 There is such pressure to raise test scores and cover material as quickly as possible.  However, it works much better to invest teaching energy to help students learn how to learn.   These strategies will work for all grade levels and content areas.