Strategy Archives

Strategy of the Month

April

Visualizing & Inferring

Strategies That Enhance Understanding

Visualizing and inferring don't occur in isolation. Strategies interweave. Inferring occurs at the intersection of questioning, connecting, and print. Visualizing strengthens our inferential thinking. When we visualize, we are in fact inferring, but with mental images rather than words and thoughts. Visualizing and inferrig are first cousins, the offspring of connecting and questioning. Hand in hand, they enhance understanding.

When we visualize we create movies in our mind. Visualizing personalizes reading, keeps us engaged, and often prevents us from abandoning a book prematurely. When we introduce visualizing, we are likely to facilitate a conversation about books and movie adaptations in an attempt to make the strategy concrete.

Strategy Lessons

Visualizing with Wordless Picture Books

visualizing to fill in missing information

Visualizing from a Vivid Piece of Text

merging prior experience and the text to create visual images

Visualizing in Nonfiction Text: Making Comaprisons

visualizing to better understand the dimesions of size, space, and time

Visualizing in Reading, Showing Not Telling in Writing

creating images with compelling nonfiction

Creating Mental Images That Go Beyond Visualizing

using all the senses to comprehend text

Inferential Thinking: Reading Between the Lines

Inferring is the bedrock of comprehension, not only in reading. We in infer in many realms. Inferring is about reading faces, reading body language, reading expressions, and reading tone as well as reading text.

Strategy Lessons

Inferring Feelings With Kindergartners

Helping kids to better understand their own and others' feelings; introducing inferential thinking

Inferring from the Cover and Illustrations as Well as the Text

using all aspects of a book to infer meaning

Recognizing Plot and Inferring Themes

differentiating between plot and theme, and inferring the big ideas or themes

Visualizing and Inferring to Understand Textbooks

using reading comprehension strategies to better understand content area textbooks

Inferring and Questioning to Understand Historical Concepts

inferring and questioning go hand in hand to buid understanding

Harvey, Stephanie. Strategies that Work. 1st. Canada: Stenhouse, 2000.

Click below to go to the link

Strategy of the Month

This strategy can be used in the areas of Language Arts and Math.

Identifying similarities and differences can play in many ways in the classroom. Students can be engaged in tasks that involve comparisons, classifications, metaphors, and analogies. In addition, these tasks can be either more teacher directed or student directed.

We can draw at least four salient generalizations from the research and theory in this area:

Presenting students with explicit guidance in identifying similarities and differences enhances students' understanding of and ability to use knowledge.

Asking students to independently identify similarities and differences enhances students' understanding of and ability to use knowledge.

Representing similarities and differences in graphic or symbolic form enhances students' understanding of and ability to use knowledge.

Identification of similarities and differences can be accomplished in a variety of ways. The identification of similarities and differences is a highly robust activity.

Research indicates that four different "forms" of this activity are highly effective; comparing, classifying, creating metaphors, and creating analogies.

Marzano, Robert & Pickering & Pollock, (2001). Classroom Instruction that Works. Alexandria, VA: McREL.

Computation Strategy

For some students and their parents practicing math fact flashcards is quite a daunting task. They don't know where to begin or how to manage the task. This is an easy way to help students and parents as well as a way to manage this task within the classroom or with a paraprofessional working with students. This works with addition, subtraction, multiplication or division.

Step 1: Start with all the 0s, 1s, and 2s. Use only these cards to practice with until you know two-thirds of them.

Step 2: As the student goes through only these facts put the flashcards they know in one pile and the ones they don't know in another pile.

Step 3: The next night go through only the pile they don't know. Sort them again by the ones they know and don't know.

Step 4: The next night go through only the pile they don't know and sort them.

Step 5: Review the pile of flashcards they know. Sort them.

Step 6: When they know at least two-thirds of the flashcards add the next set: all the 3s. Go through the process again.

Step 7: Continue in this manner adding the 4s, 5s, 6s, etc. until the student knows all the facts.

Important notes:

*Students must do these facts every night including Saturday and Sunday to be effective.

*This process should never last longer than 15 minutes.

Measurement Activities

For measurement activities to do in your classroom be sure to contact Dottie or Sue. They both have ideas and materials for classroom activities from short and simple to more complex. They would love to help you out!

Graphic Organizers for Comparing

CLICK ON THE UNDERLINED ITEMS TO PRINT THE GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

Graphic Organizers for Classifying

The key to constructing metaphors is to realize that the two items in the metaphor are connected by an abstract or nonliteral relationship.

Literal: Rose: The blossom is sweet to smell and pleasant to touch, but if you touch the thorns, they can stick you.

Abstract: Something is wonderful and you want to go near it, but if you get too close, you might get hurt.

Literal: Love: Makes you feel happy, but the person you love can end up hurting you.

Graphic Organizers for Analogies

Relationship: measures incremental changes in something

Relationship: adding three

Strategy of the Month

When we begin strategy instruction with children, stories close to their own lives and experiences are helpful for introducing new ways of thinking about reading. Readers naturally make connections between books and their own lives. Once they have heard a wealth of stories and narratives, they begin to connect themes, characters, and issues from one book to another. When children understand how to connect the texts they read to their lives, they begin to make connections between what they read and the larger world. This nudges them into thinking about bigger, more expansive issues beyond their universe of home, school, and neighborhood.

Harvey, Stephanie & Goudvis, (2000). Strategies That Work.

Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.