Tag: Rigor

 

• Vocabulary is tied to intelligence, one’s ability to learn new information and one’s level of income

1. Students need multiple exposures of words in context in order to learn them
   • Need to see word in context at least 6 times prior to remembering and understanding it
   • High density texts are less effective than low density texts at teaching students new vocabulary
   • Wide reading is insufficient to teach students a lot of new vocabulary – not enough reputations of new words to give students the exposure they need to learn words in context
2. Instruction in new words enhances ability to learn them in context
   • priming students prior to reading with vocabulary instructions makes them more likely to understand those words in context in the reading
   • priming requires minimal effort – just providing a definition sheet with examples
3. One of the best ways to learn new words is to associate images with them
   • imagery techniques are much more effective than simply studying definitions of words
4. Direct vocabulary instructions works.
5. Direction instructions on words critical to learning new content products best effects on learning.
   • focus instructions on vocabulary words that are critical to learning new content

• Identify key phrases and terms needed to understanding new material and focus vocabulary instruction on these
• Multi-step process for teaching vocabulary:
  1. Present brief explanation of new term or phrase
  2. Present nonlinguistic representation of new term or phrase
  3. Ask students to generate their own explanations of new term or phrase
  4. Ask students to create their own nonlinguistic representation of word or phrase
  5. Periodically ask students to review their accuracy of their explanations of new terms / phrases

• Details include specific types of knowledge such as facts, time sequences, cause / effect sequences

1. Students should have systematic exposure of details
   • Need frequent exposure to details to learn them – at least 3 or 4 times before applying them in meaningful contexts
   • Timing between exposure to details should not exceed 2 days
   • Information needs to be revisited multiple times in order for it to stick
2. Dramatic instruction works with details.
   • Visual instruction works better than pure verbal instruction
   • Dramatic instructions works better – students watch dramatization or are involved in dramatization of events

• Multiple exposures:
  • Include opportunities for at least 3 exposures spaced no longer than 2 days apart between exposures
• Dramatic representation of key details:
  • Students act out key features of systems or events

1. Students often have misconceptions about organizing ideas
   • Hard to undo misconceptions about organization ideas
   • Most effective strategy – have students provide a sound argument for their position relative to organizing an idea
2. Students should be provided with opportunities to organize ideas
   • Students need to apply generalizations and principles to understand them – not sufficient to just be exposed to generalizations

• Make sure students can explain generalizations and provide numerous related examples of them
• Exposure to novel situations can help students test and clear up misconceptions

• tactics – general rules describing how to execute processes
• algorithms – sequential steps that describe processes

1. Discovery approach doesn’t work well with skills
   • the more variation there is in the steps to execute a skill – the more amenable it is to discovery learning
   • simple straightforward skills don’t work well with discovery learning
2. When using discovery learning, organize examples into categories that represent different approaches to the skill
   • Organize examples by the type of problem solving skills needed to solve them
   • Have students test out strategies on one type of problem at a time.
3. Skills are most useful when learned to the point of automaticity
   • Skills that are learned to point of automaticity require little conscious thought
   • Practice starts out en masse (high density) and then becomes lower density (distributed)

• Use organization to facilitate discovery approach to skills
  • organize problems into related categories
  • have students discover approaches to problems one category at a time
  • have students compare approaches to different types of problems
• Plan for distributed practice of skills
  • teach students how distributed practice can lead to automaticity in skills
  • provide distributed practice opportunities

• Processes have a higher tolerance for variation in steps than skills

1. Students should practice parts of process in the context of overall process
   • Focused practice of parts of a process within context of that process is more effective than providing overview description of parts of process
2. Teacher should emphasize metacognitive control of processes
   • Metacognitive control of processes is being able to use and control parts of processes to complete tasks
   • Developing metacognitive control tips:
     • plenty of guided practice opportunities with descriptive feedback
     • encourage students to monitor their progress while using strategies
     • generalize use of strategies by having students use them in new contexts

• Provide overall model for key components of processes
  • Example – Reading Process:
    • Experience
    • Select text
    • Identify purpose and what’s known
    • Construct meaning
    • Use / reflect
• Focus on specific subcomponents of process in the overall context of the process
  • Do not teach components of process in isolation
  • Help students articulate strategy they are using
  • Have students develop criteria for evaluating success of strategy
  • Distribute practice of new strategy over several assignments over time
  • Have students provide feedback and self reflection on use of strategy

 

• For an upcoming project, list learning targets and classify them by type: details, vocabulary, processes, skills
• Design scaffolding that incorporates strategies that go with each knowledge type.  See above.
• Design project calendar that includes distributed practice opportunities and exposure opportunities for types of knowledge that required distributed exposure (skills, detailed knowledge, processes)

• Implement scaffolding & project calendar developed above
• Use formative assessments to check if students are getting enough learning opportunities to develop knowledge and skills

• Incorporate opportunities to enhance learning by activating prior knowledge
• Incorporate nonlinguistic representations of knowledge

• Scaffolding articles
• Understanding articles
• Lesson plan for cognitive engagement
• Activating prior knowledge
• Nonlinguistic representations

Research on using Cues/Questions to Activate Prior Knowledge:

1. Cues / questions should focus on what’s important, not what’s interesting.
   • Building bridges between key information and prior knowledge will increase engagement
2. Higher level questions products deeper learning than lower level questions.
   • Analysis questions are more impactful than recall questions.
   • Higher order questions ask students to restructure or apply new information.
3. Wait time increases depth of student responses.
   • Giving students time prior to answering questions to process their responses before sharing them.
4. Questions are effective to use BEFORE learning experience.
   • Asking questions before learning experience can help students approach a learning experience with a helpful mind set.

• Use explicit cues
  • Have students recall related experiences from prior knowledge and connect them to upcoming learning.
• Use questions that elicit inferences
  • Ask questions that ask students to predict functions, sensations, and related information associated with objects of study
• Use analytic questions – types of questions include questions that ask for:
  • Analysis of errors and misconceptions
  • Limitations of argument
  • Evidence that supports argument
  • Alternative perspectives and related reasoning
  • Value judgements and related reasoning

1. Advance organizers should focus on what’s important, not what’s unusual.
2. Higher level organizers lead to deeper learning than lower level organizers
3. Advance organizers are most helpful with handling info that is typically unorganized
   • better for preparing students for projects than for reading textbooks that are already organizer
4. Different types of organizers lead to different results
   • expository type had greatest positive effect – see below

• Expository Advance Organizers
  • provide brief organized overview of topics about to be discussed
• Narrative Advance Organizers
  • present upcoming information in the format of a story
• Skimming as a form of advance organizer
  • skimming key subtitles and figures prior to reading can help students process info
• Graphic Advanced Organizers
  • nonlinguistic organizers can be used to organizer prior knowledge and link it to upcoming info

 

• Research and brainstorm related knowledge & skills that students may have that relates to upcoming materials.
• Design prompts and advance organizers for eliciting students’ prior knowledge.

• Use knows and need-to-knows chart throughout the project as a means to elicit prior knowledge and link it to new material.
• Use other tools (cues, questions and advance organizers) to help students connect prior knowledge to new content.
• Have students reflect on the connections between new material and old knowledge.

• Use advance organizers that highlight most powerful connections between old and new knowledge – start to complete these prior to scaffolding lessons and refer to them during scaffolding lessons.
• Teach students about how prior knowledge shapes the learning of new knowledge and have them deliberately use that knowledge to invent strategies that can hep them connect old and new knowledge.

• Rigor articles
• Understanding articles
• Scaffolding articles
• Nonlinguistic representations