• Teaching with Technology
  Clearly, the recent technological advancements in our society have tremendous potential benefits in the classroom. However, training for both student and teacher is essential for telecommunications to be more than simply replacing written text on paper with written text on a computer screen…
  
  

• Brain Based Teaching & Learning
  This was a presentation of a class project for a grad course in Brain Based Teaching & Learning. Find techniques that were implemented and the results.
  
  

• Cooperative Learning
  An overview of cooperative learning and some resources for finding online cooperative learning activities and lesson plans to try in your classroom.
  

• The Best Ways to Teach Students with Disabilities is the Best Way to Teach All Students
  While reading about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) I was startled to discover the extraordinary number of children relying on drug therapy to control their behavior. Even more disturbing is the drastic increase of drug reliance during the last ten years (Woolfolk, 1998)…
  
  

• Using “Think-Time” and “Wait-Time” Skillfully in the Classroom
  This digest discusses the effects of allowing time for student responses.
  

2nd article

Reciprocal teaching is best represented as a dialogue between teachers and students in which participants take turns assuming the role of teacher. ~ Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar

Reading is perhaps one of the most important tools to gain knowledge. Forget school going students, sometimes many of the adults also fail to grasp sufficient information from the text that they read. Reading with understanding is a habit that needs to be imbibed in students at a young age. Young school going students need to be a taught the importance of concentrated and constructive reading, and hence teachers often make use of several reading techniques and teaching methods that aid the students. One such technique is the reciprocal teaching technique, which is a remedial technique, aimed at developing and enhancing reading comprehension.

What exactly is the Reciprocal Teaching Technique?

According to Palincsar, who introduced this technique, the formal definition of reciprocal teaching is as follows: Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity that takes place in the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text which is structured by the use of four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. According to Palinscar, during reciprocal teaching, the teacher and students take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading this dialogue, which leads to an interesting group learning experience.

The Basic Strategies of Reciprocal Teaching

There are four basic strategies in reciprocal teaching, which, if applied while reading, can enhance the understanding and enable maximum grasping of information by the student from the given text. These strategies are as follows:

Predicting:

This is the stage where the students are encouraged by the teachers to predict or hypothesize about what the students think the author will discuss in the text. While predicting, students often have to draw upon the background knowledge pertaining to the subject in concern, which eventually enriches the learning experience by linking the new knowledge that they will come across in the text with the already possessed knowledge. Also, this helps enhance the students’ understanding of text structure as they learn the purpose of headings, subheadings, and questions that are embedded in the text and thus are useful means of anticipating further information.
Encourage the students to think on the following lines:

• I am looking at the title and other visual clues that are appearing along with the body text on the page. What do I think we will be reading about?
• Thinking about what I have read and discussed so far, what do I think might happen next?

Summarizing:

Summarizing the important information as you simultaneously process the text helps students to identify and integrate the most important information in the text. The length of the text after which summarization can differ from person to person. Text can be summarized after a few sentences, paragraphs, or across the passage as a whole. Usually while making use of the reciprocal teaching techniques, the students should be advised to begin summarizing at sentence and paragraph levels. As they master the technique, they can become proficient enough to integrate at the paragraph and passage levels.
Encourage the Students to think on the following lines:

• What does the author want me to remember or learn from this passage?
• What is the most important information in this passage?
• What are the valid and logical questions that can be phrased about the text?

Question generating

As students we are always taught to question everything since asking questions leads you to more and more information. The questioning technique reinforces the summarizing strategy by taking the reader’s understanding to the next level of reading comprehension. Questioning requires the students to process and identify the information that is present to them and further analyze its significance to generate a valid question, which they can answer themselves. This strategy has a major advantage of flexibility since students can be taught to generate questions at many levels.
Encourage the Students to think on the following lines:

• What question do I have about the text that I read?
• What are the concepts in the passage that I did not fully comprehend or am unsure about ?
• I’m curious about ‘so-and-so’ things mentioned in the text

Clarifying

Clarification of any doubts or questions regarding the text as and when you are reading it is very important for reading comprehension. It is particularly important while working with students who have a history of comprehension difficulty, since at times students may believe that the purpose of reading is saying the words correctly rather than understanding the underlying meaning of the written text. When you ask the students to clarify a particular concept in the text, their attention is brought to the fact the text is not being understood. The students will then think of the reasons why there is difficulty or failure in understanding. The reasons might include new vocabulary, unclear reference words, and even unfamiliar or rather difficult concepts. The clarifying technique makes the students aware of such impediments to comprehension and encourages them to take the necessary measures to restore meaning. For example rereading the text or looking up difficult words or asking for help tends to restore meaning of the previously un-understood text.
Encourage the Students to think on the following lines:

• One of the words from the text that I wasn’t familiar with was…
• What other words or additional concepts do I need for further clarification and better understanding?

How Students Benefit from Reciprocal Teaching

Students involved in the reciprocal teaching process tend to learn the art of checking their own understanding of the material, which they have encountered. They do this by generating questions, clarifying concepts and summarizing important information from the text. The ultimate purpose of reciprocal teaching is to help students actively bring meaning to the written word, with or without a teacher. The reciprocal teaching strategies not only assist reading comprehension but also provide opportunities for students to monitor their own learning and thinking processes. The structure of the dialogue and interactions of the group members in reciprocal teaching system requires all the students to participate and foster healthy relationships and hence helps create an ideal learning atmosphere. Not only does the reciprocal teaching system benefit the slow learners, but also normally achieving or above average students. This technique also facilitates peer-to-peer communication as students with more experience and confidence help other students in their group to decode and understand the text. Students who ask more questions stimulate deeper thinking and understanding in their peers as well.

How Reciprocal Teaching can Assist the Teachers?

Teachers who are planning to adopt the reciprocal teaching technique into their curriculum should make their preparations for the same well in advance. A digest complete with graphic organizers of the questioning, summarizing, clarifying and predicting strategies is highly recommended for the teachers to get used to the intricacies of reciprocal teaching. Once the teacher is well versed with these techniques, sufficient planning must be done about the text to be provided for instructive purposes during the nascent or learning phase since the ability levels of the students should be taken into account before choosing a challenging text.

Once the process of reciprocal teaching starts, a daily journal about students’ progress should be maintained to track the performance of students. The reciprocal teaching system not only facilitates the routine teaching procedures but also aids the teacher understand the grasping level, and overall comprehension abilities of every student. Listening to students during the dialogue is also a valuable means for teachers to determine whether the students are learning the strategies and benefiting from them. In addition to this, the teacher can check the students’ understanding by asking the students to answer questions and write the summaries of the text. Teachers should keep in mind that the early stages of reciprocal teaching require continuous monitoring and evaluation of performance to figure out the kind of support the children require. However the monitoring levels can be made less frequent as the students become more adept at monitoring their own performance and progress.

3rd

Teaching Strategies to Meet Multiple Needs

Learning Styles Can Become Learning Strategies

In the last 30 or 40 years, a number of educators have proposed that teaching would be more effective if faculty members took account of differences in students’ learning styles. A number of different conceptions of learning styles have been proposed, each with some plausibility. Probably the most widely accepted and best validated is Marton and S�lj�’s (1976a,b) “deep processors” vs. “surface processors” based upon the levels of processing theory developed by Craik and Lockhart (1972). Deep processors think about the author’s purpose and relate a reading assignment to prior knowledge; surface processors read with little thought. Another well validated style is “field dependent” vs. “field independent” (Witkin and Goodenough, 1981). In addition to these, there are also ten or twelve less well validated attempts to describe differing styles of learning. Probably the most over-generalized and misused has been “right-brain dominant” vs. “left-brain dominant.”

Regardless of their validity, any of these methods may have heuristic value for faculty development by drawing attention to the fact that learners differ and that we need to take account of these differences in teaching. Too many teachers think of students as a featureless mass; too many rarely vary their teaching methods, thinking that the method by which they were taught is best for everyone.

A method appropriate for most students may be ineffective for other students who could learn more easily with a different approach. Methods of teaching (e.g., graphic or verbal), ways of representing information, personality characteristics of teachers � all affect learning and affect different learners differently. Thinking about learning styles can lead a teacher to think about different ways of teaching, and that is good. An effective teacher needs to vary techniques and to have an armamentarium of teaching methods and learning activities that can be drawn upon from moment to moment or from week to week to facilitate maximum learning for as many students as possible.

Nonetheless, as in most things, there are potential undesirable side effects from the use of learning style concepts. Probably the most serious is that styles are often taken to be fixed, inherited characteristics that limit students’ ability to learn in ways that do not fit their styles. Thus, some teachers draw the implication that they must match their teaching to the student’s particular style, and some students who have been labeled as having a particular style feel that they can only learn from a certain kind of teaching. Learning about learning styles may be helpful to teachers who have not previously thought seriously about differences among students. Where they go awry is when teachers become so committed to a particular set of learning style categories that they miss individual differences and changes over time.

Similarly, students who believe they have a particular style that cannot be changed are likely to give up when taught by a teacher whose method doesn’t match their style. Having classified the students into particular learning styles, a teacher often feels that the problem of learner differences has been solved. Some teachers become devotees of one or another learning style system. However, the “styles” or “types” identified by learning style inventories are not little boxes, neatly

As in most things, there are potential undesirable side effects from the use of learning style concepts.

separated from one another; rather, they represent dimensions along which learners may differ. Each individual is unique, falling at different points along the various continua that the learning style inventories purport to measure. Even when considered as dimensions rather than as categories, few measures of learning styles have been validated as being useful.Most of the attempts to match students with teachers have proved to have relatively little effect upon learning. It is plausible that, at least initially, trying to fit teaching to a student’s learning style may be helpful. But the important thing to remember is that what are called “learning styles” are preferences and habits of learning that have been learned, and that everyone is capable of going beyond the particular “style” preferred at the time. Regardless of their learning “styles,” students can learn strategies that enable them to be effective when taught by methods that are not compatible with their preferred “style.” To assume that one must teach to a particular learning style misses the fact that a given student may be best taught by one method early in learning and by another after the student has gained some competence. For example, anxious students need a good deal of structure when they first encounter a new instructor and new material. But if they are to overcome their anxiety, they later need challenges that they can successfully overcome.

None of the learning styles makes nearly as much difference as the student’s prior knowledge, intelligence, and motivation. All of these characteristics are learnable. My own research and teaching has focused upon teaching students skills and strategies so that they can learn more effectively regardless of differences in instruction. Our research group has developed the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich, et al., 1991), which assesses such things as the degree to which students try to relate ideas in a subject to what they already know, and the methods they use for organizing course materials. In my “Learning to Learn” course I also teach motivational strategies. When students learn to learn in more meaningful ways they are more likely to develop intrinsic motivation for learning rather than being solely focused on the tests and grades or credentials. Similarly, when students become interested in a topic they are likely to think more about it. Cognition and motivation are interdependent.

It is important for both teachers and students to realize that learners always encounter many situations that are not adapted to their own preferences. What we teachers need to do is to help students develop the skills and strategies needed for learning effectively from teachers who do not match the students’ preferred learning “style.” Methods of teaching learning strategies are described in Weinstein and Mayer (1986) and McKeachie, Pintrich and Lin (1985). Good teaching involves more than communicating the content of one’s discipline; a good teacher also needs both to motivate students to continue learning and to teach them the skills and strategies needed for continued learning.

5th

Teaching strategies associated with conceptual change learning in Science

The use of teaching strategies associated with a conceptual change model of science teaching was examined in a study of thirteen 7th-grade life science teachers. Teachers taught units on photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and matter cycling in ecosystems in their regular classes under conditions varying as to whether or not conceptual change-oriented instructional materials and training sessions were provided. Greater use of conceptual change teaching strategies was associated with use of the special instructional materials, but not with the training. Students in classes where teachers were provided with the materials tended to perform better on post tests than those where such materials were not provided. The use of the conceptual change strategies by teachers was also associated with higher student performance on tests designed to assess conceptual change learning. The results support claims for the usefulness of conceptual change teaching strategies, but few of the teachers in this study could successfully implement these strategies without the support of appropriately designed curriculum materials.