Please select the appropriate category on the left of the screen to find out more about the high yield instructional strategies that support our school improvement initiatives! Also, please submit any additional strategies you have used successfully to Jonathan Tanner so we can share them with all the teachers.
Sum It Up
Teaching summarizing is no small undertaking. It's one of the hardest strategies for students to grasp, and one of the hardest strategies for you to teach. You have to repeatedly model it and give your students ample time and opportunities to practice it. But it is such a valuable strategy and competency. Can you imagine your students succeeding in school without being able to break down content into manageable small succinct pieces? We ask students to summarize all the time, but we're terrible about teaching them good ways to do this! Here are a few strategies that may help:
3-2-1 Strategy
The idea of this strategy is to give students a chance to summarize some key ideas, rethink them in order to focus on those that they are most intrigued by, and then pose a question that can reveal where their understanding is still uncertain.
Three-Minute Pause
If you don't want to have to keep re-teaching information, then you should give your students time to reflect on their learning. The Three-Minute Pause is a perfect bridge that allows students to consolidate and clarify their emerging understanding before you move on to teach more new concepts.
Download threeminute_pause.doc Download threeminute_pause.pdf
Four Box Semantics
The purpose of this strategy is to engage students in reinforcing their understanding of words or concepts through the use of a creative comparison. This strategy is great for vocabulary or new ideas you are trying to teach.
Word Jar
This strategy is great for having students' create their own memory clues about vocuabulary. The memory clue is a way for students to fully integrate the meaning of the key idea into their memories. By making a simple sketch that explains the key idea, students synthesize and interpret the new information, making it their own.
Four Corners
When you want students to retell a story that has a problem and solution the Four Corners strategy may be just what you're looking for. It is also great for when you want to improve students’ comprehension and it is also a powerful assessment technique.
Advanced Organizers
Benefits of Graphic Organizers
Focus attention on key elements
Help integrate prior knowledge with new knowledge
Enhance concept development
Enrich reading, writing, and thinking
Aid writing by supporting planning and revision
Promote focused discussion
Assist instructional planning
Serve as assessment and evaluation tool
Download the_power_of_graphic_organizers.doc
Frayer Model
The Frayer Model is a graphical organizer used for word analysis and vocabulary building. This four-square model prompts students to think about and describe the meaning of a word or concept by . . .
- Defining the term,
- Describing its essential characteristics,
- Providing examples of the idea, and
- Offering non-examples of the idea.
Why Use It?
This strategy stresses understanding words within the larger context of a reading selection by requiring students, first, to analyze the items (definition and characteristics) and, second, to synthesize/apply this information by thinking of examples and non-examples.
Download frayer_model_example_template.ppt
Double-Entry Diaries
Download doubleentry_diaries.doc
Double-Entry Diaries
are a version of two-column note-taking and are tailored for guiding students in monitoring their comprehension. The provided example asks students to consciously make connections to what they are reading by considering how what they know might relate to new information. In addition, students should verbalize how their personal connections contributed to a greater understanding of a passage. With practice, students can begin to use Double-Entry Diaries as an ongoing method of tracking their thinking.Concept Map Strategy
A concept map is a special form of a web diagram for exploring knowledge and gathering and sharing information. Concept mapping is the strategy employed to develop a concept map. A concept map consists of nodes or cells that contain a concept, item or question and links. The links are labeled and denote direction with an arrow symbol. The labeled links explain the relationship between the nodes. The arrow describes the direction of the relationship and reads like a sentence.
Select the link below to find out more:
DMS School Improvement Strategies
November 2008
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