I was thinking today about the frenzy many teachers are in right now. Everyone's scrambling to 'catch up' because of snow days and illness; rescheduled meetings and test prep. I know that feeling of pushing plans forward day after day and thinking, "How am I supposed to follow the curriculum map (if I have one) with no time to teach the curriculum??!!"
Although we know it is a somewhat futile exercise, the impulse to make sure we 'cover' everything is strong. This makes strategic planning all the more critical. It forces us to look at not just 'what' we are teaching (or trying to 'cover'), but 'how'.
Making the most of the time we have by incorporating best practice is key. You cannot teach 'everything' to any student. You can teach some very important things to every student. One of the most important being the development of their own metacognitive skills.
Reading
You can teach, post, and remind all students of word attack and comprehension fix-up strategies. Good readers use a number of tools to make sense of what they read and students need to continually practice these while reading a range of texts, especially those of their choosing. There are a whole range of strategies and approaches. The key is that students are monitoring their own comprehension with you as a guide for what strategies they may need to engage more often.
Depending on your grade level or individual student needs, you may choose to emphasize different strategies with different students. For example, if you have a student who has good decoding skills, but whose miscues affect meaning, you could emphasize 'does this word make sense?' vs. 'sound it out'. She could set a goal of trying that strategy when she gets stuck to remind her that she should be reading for meaning.
If you teach in a content area, it is critical that you reinforce self-monitoring and comprehension strategies, as your students may struggle with reading the most when faced with a language foreign to them, e.g., Math, Science, Social Studies.
Whatever subject area you teach, you should find strategies here that will benefit your students:
Monitoring for Comprehension (Self-monitoring):
Students need to be aware of when their comprehension breaks down. Teachers need to explicitly teach students to be aware of their comprehension as they read. Once they realize they have lost meaning, they can then begin to apply the following strategies below:
Use picture and/or context clues
Ask questions
Go back & reread
Summarize & Retell
Make predictions
Graphic Organizers
http://teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/comprehension/flowchartofbehavior.pdf
Word Attack Strategies
Students who are learning to read need strategies besides decoding to help them read unknown words. Decoding is the most common strategy that students use but many words in the English language do not lend themselves to decoding. Therefore, children need other strategies for reading words.
Look at the pictures.
Try to sound out the word.
Look at the beginning letters.
Look at the ending letters.
Look for a smaller word inside the word.
Skip the word and read to the end of the sentence.
Try to guess! Does your word make sense? Does your guess look like the word?
Use the words around it.
Go back and re-read.
Put another word in it's place.
Look in the dictionary.
Ask a friend or an adult.
http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/literacy/fixup_strategies.html
SCUBA-D
S-Sound it out
C-Check the clues in the sentence
U-Use main idea
B-Break word into smaller parts
A-Ask for help
D-Dive into the dictionary
http://www.unl.edu/csi/Pdfs/scuba.pdf
Math Problem Solving
-While you do not have time for students to master every skill in the state standards, you can teach general problem solving strategies so they have tools to work through math problems.
Find a Pattern
Make a Table
Work Backwards
Guess and Check
Draw a Picture
Make a List
Write a Number Sentence
Use Logical Reasoning
http://www.mathstories.com/strategies.htm
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