Here are a few quick test-taking strategies for kids to keep in mind as they prepare for the spring’s high-stakes tests:
1) Don't waste time or space on a fancy introductory sentence if the answer space is just a few lines. Spend all your effort and time on the support or details that prove you know the answer. Cut to the chase--make your first sentence very clear and direct and to the point.
2) Write neatly enough that someone other than you can read the answer.
3) Even if you aren't sure of the correct answer, don't leave the answer space blank. In math, explain what you did to try to figure it out-- your explanation of what you did to figure out the answer is part of what you get credit for. In reading, try to figure out what the question asks and write something down, even if you aren’t sure if your answer is right. For either test, partial credit is better than no credit!
4) If you are going to have to answer questions about a passage that you will read, glance over the questions really briefly before you read the passage. Then highlight, take notes, or underline things in the passage that may help you answer the question.
5) The space you are given to answer the question is a dead giveaway of how important (how many points) the question is worth.
6) Use the space you are given. If there are 11 lines for a short essay answer, then if you only use 3 lines, you can pretty much bet you won't get much credit. If there are 11 lines, the scorers expect a response that has some support from the text.
7) Less is often more--instead of 7 examples that are just a list with little support, two or three examples that have explanations show more depth of understanding.
8) Before you turn in the test, reread your responses quickly. You'd be surprised at the little mistakes you might be able to catch.
9) In the reading test, always use information or details from the passage in your answer. That's why it's called a "reading" test.
10) When you are doing one of the two writing tests, always keep in mind what they are scoring you on---WRITING! Make sure you use transitions, that you use elaboration and support.
11) Avoid the 5-paragraph organizational plan. Think instead of 1) a good introduction that gets the reader's attention and lets him know the point of your essay, 2) some very specific, well-detailed/elaborated support, held together with logical transitions, and 3) an ending of some sort (it doesn't need to be a summary ending).
12) Organization and development are the most important criteria for a good essay response.
13) Read the question very carefully before you start to answer it. Highlight or underline the words in the question that tell you what you need to do.
14. You are allowed to highlight or mark up the test booklet, so jot down any notes, highlight important words, underline possible support as you read. Just remember though, that you are only scored on what you write in the answer booklet.
15. Get a good night’s sleep!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Tips for making small group collaboration work
So you’ve decided that you want to increase student engagement in class. Having students work in small groups is certainly a way to get students involved, but unless you build in some structure, the students can waste time or get off task quickly. Here are a few guidelines to follow when you plan cooperative learning activities in your class:
1) Give the groups very specific tasks to accomplish. Rather than say, “Discuss in your group,” provide more structured guidelines: “As a group come up with three alternatives . . . ” or “List four reasons why . . .” or “Figure out two different ways to solve . . . .” Make sure your directions are very clear and easy to follow.
2) Set very limited time frames for the activities. Giving a small group five minutes to solve a problem will leave little room for socializing. Consider less time—you can always stretch it if the groups are still working. If you need your groups to work for an extended period of time, perhaps break the time up into smaller portions with “deadlines” for each smaller time segment.
Often when there are discipline problems related to small group work, the culprit is one of the above issues—or both.
3) Keep the groups small if you can. In a group of six or seven, it’s easy for a student to hide in the crowd. There is no crowd in a group of three. If you have to have larger groups, then consider assigning (or having the group assign) different roles or tasks to each group member.
4) If you haven’t used small group activities before, model explicitly what you expect to happen. Even be as specific as to how the group will share with each other, what each member’s expectations will be, how the individual members should record their work, how the group’s consensus will be shared out with the class, etc. If you find that some groups get off task, look at what happened to cause that and stop and model to the class what behavior you expect. Modeling is a positive approach to trouble-shooting problems.
5) Don’t have students remain in the same groups for extended periods of time. Mix it up regularly so groups don’t develop “bad habits.”
6) Small group work can be as simple as “turn and talk to your neighbor.” Just remember to be very specific with the task and limit the time.
1) Give the groups very specific tasks to accomplish. Rather than say, “Discuss in your group,” provide more structured guidelines: “As a group come up with three alternatives . . . ” or “List four reasons why . . .” or “Figure out two different ways to solve . . . .” Make sure your directions are very clear and easy to follow.
2) Set very limited time frames for the activities. Giving a small group five minutes to solve a problem will leave little room for socializing. Consider less time—you can always stretch it if the groups are still working. If you need your groups to work for an extended period of time, perhaps break the time up into smaller portions with “deadlines” for each smaller time segment.
Often when there are discipline problems related to small group work, the culprit is one of the above issues—or both.
3) Keep the groups small if you can. In a group of six or seven, it’s easy for a student to hide in the crowd. There is no crowd in a group of three. If you have to have larger groups, then consider assigning (or having the group assign) different roles or tasks to each group member.
4) If you haven’t used small group activities before, model explicitly what you expect to happen. Even be as specific as to how the group will share with each other, what each member’s expectations will be, how the individual members should record their work, how the group’s consensus will be shared out with the class, etc. If you find that some groups get off task, look at what happened to cause that and stop and model to the class what behavior you expect. Modeling is a positive approach to trouble-shooting problems.
5) Don’t have students remain in the same groups for extended periods of time. Mix it up regularly so groups don’t develop “bad habits.”
6) Small group work can be as simple as “turn and talk to your neighbor.” Just remember to be very specific with the task and limit the time.
Monday, February 16, 2009
The basic reading/thinking strategies
Wonder what you do as you read? What all good readers do. However, our struggling readers don’t always know what goes on in the minds of good readers; they need to be explicitly taught the strategies and guided to use them on their own. Daniels and Zemelman (Subjects Matter, 2004) list the following good reader strategies:
1) Visualize (to make mental pictures or sensory images from ideas, situations, details in the text)
2) Connect (to make connections between what they read and their lives, other texts or media, and the world)
3) Question (to ask questions of the text, of the author, of themselves as they read; to actively wonder)
4) Infer (to predict, hypothesize, interpret, draw conclusions)
5) Evaluate (to determine what’s important, to make judgments)
6) Analyze (to notice text structures, the author’s craft, vocabulary, purpose, theme, etc)
7) Recall (to retell, summarize, remember information)
8) Self-monitor (to realize when they are confused or uncertain or have lost attention)
It’s not enough, however, to just talk about the strategies and model them for the students. These strategies need to be embodied in very specific, concrete tools that we provide for our students as they read. That means that the graphic organizers we use to guide students’ reading must ask students to try out these strategies; the guiding questions we ask must lead students to use these strategies; the collaborative activities we plan must engage students in these strategies; and the language of our classrooms must reflect these strategies.
1) Visualize (to make mental pictures or sensory images from ideas, situations, details in the text)
2) Connect (to make connections between what they read and their lives, other texts or media, and the world)
3) Question (to ask questions of the text, of the author, of themselves as they read; to actively wonder)
4) Infer (to predict, hypothesize, interpret, draw conclusions)
5) Evaluate (to determine what’s important, to make judgments)
6) Analyze (to notice text structures, the author’s craft, vocabulary, purpose, theme, etc)
7) Recall (to retell, summarize, remember information)
8) Self-monitor (to realize when they are confused or uncertain or have lost attention)
It’s not enough, however, to just talk about the strategies and model them for the students. These strategies need to be embodied in very specific, concrete tools that we provide for our students as they read. That means that the graphic organizers we use to guide students’ reading must ask students to try out these strategies; the guiding questions we ask must lead students to use these strategies; the collaborative activities we plan must engage students in these strategies; and the language of our classrooms must reflect these strategies.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Best Practice Teaching Strategies
At a NSDC workshop I recently attended, the presenter shared with us the list of teaching strategies that her former Gwinnett County, Georgia, school district adopted. They are the following:
• Frequently access learning
• Use nonverbal representations
• Model strategies and skills and practice
• Teach essential vocabulary
• Teach summarizing strategies
• Provide collaboration experiences
• Teach and require goal setting
• Use inquiry-based problem solving
• Use and teach questioning and cuing
• Assess and/or build background knowledge
• Teach comparison-contrast/similarities-differences
• Use technology effectively
These are considerations we should keep in mind as we plan our lessons and reflect on our practice.
• Frequently access learning
• Use nonverbal representations
• Model strategies and skills and practice
• Teach essential vocabulary
• Teach summarizing strategies
• Provide collaboration experiences
• Teach and require goal setting
• Use inquiry-based problem solving
• Use and teach questioning and cuing
• Assess and/or build background knowledge
• Teach comparison-contrast/similarities-differences
• Use technology effectively
These are considerations we should keep in mind as we plan our lessons and reflect on our practice.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Before-During-After
Effective teachers don’t just assign reading and expect students to “get it.” They craft the preparation for the reading, help students organize their thinking as they read, and plan meaningful work after the reading to guide students to reflect on, integrate, and share the ideas they culled from the assignment.
While the questions at the end of the passage might seem like the way to go, those questions can be tedious to students and result in cursory responses. As you plan for activities to help students construct meaning, think about the purposes of before, during, and after work. Harvey Daniels and Steve Zemelman, in Subjects Matter (2004) describe in detail what teachers need to do BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER reading to help students improve their comprehension:
BEFORE Reading activities are ones that
As you plan for readings for you students to complete, always consider: What am I doing to help them make meaning BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER they read?
While the questions at the end of the passage might seem like the way to go, those questions can be tedious to students and result in cursory responses. As you plan for activities to help students construct meaning, think about the purposes of before, during, and after work. Harvey Daniels and Steve Zemelman, in Subjects Matter (2004) describe in detail what teachers need to do BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER reading to help students improve their comprehension:
BEFORE Reading activities are ones that
- get students focused on and excited about the reading
- develop purposes for reading
- activate students’ questions, beliefs, and predictions about the reading
- help students make connections between their prior knowledge and the new material, which will help them make sense of the reading
- visual what is happening in the reading, whether it is a story or a science experiment
- make connections between the reading and their lives and the world around them
- question the author or the text
- make inference (going beyond the information given to other implications)
- distinguish between main ideas and minor ideas as they read
- monitor their understanding and comprehension as they read, noticing when they lose track of the meaning
- synthesize ideas, connecting what they’ve learned to information they already know
- make inferences and connections
- look back at questions they initially had and decide if they have had those questions either answered or changed
As you plan for readings for you students to complete, always consider: What am I doing to help them make meaning BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER they read?
Monday, February 2, 2009
30-30-30 (Think-Aloud Scaffolding)
This activity from Jeff Zwiers' Building Reading Comprehension Habits in Grades 6-12 (2004) is called 30-30-30 because it divides a text into thirds, and the reading and thinking are scaffolded as you move through the text. In order to get through 100% of a text with enough time for you to model and for the students to both practice and do alone, make sure the passage isn’t too long. This 30-30-30 uses the “gradual release of responsibility” model first developed by Pearson and Gallagher (1983).
Elementary teachers have used “think-alouds” for decades in their reading instruction. The teacher and her students look at a picture in a children’s book, then the teacher says to herself (and to her students), “Hmmm, I wonder what this picture is about? What’s happening here?” She continues as she reads, asking herself questions—about the text, about her own thinking, about the author’s intent. The purpose is to model for the children the kinds of thinking that goes on in a good reader’s mind, to push the young readers to begin to be metacognitive.
Effective secondary teachers use think-alouds too, even if they don’t realize they do. This exercise helps students focus on the kinds of questions they should be asking themselves as they read aloud by making think-alouds the point of the lesson.
Here are the steps:
1. Make sure you have a list of reading strategies available to refer to as you model. If you have found that students are not using a specific strategy (like summarizing, questioning, using context clues, etc.) then use that strategy as you model your thinking aloud.
2. Start by modeling some prereading strategies by thinking aloud (predicting the author’s purpose, asking questions of the title, graphics, headings, etc.). Ask the students to also do some of this questioning. Besides modeling what good readers do, you are building background knowledge.
3. Now, for the first 30% of the passage, read and think aloud while your students listen and perhaps take notes. You might even mention the strategy you are using as you think aloud to yourself (and to the students).
4. For the second 30% of the passage, continue to read aloud, stopping occasionally at places where you want students to think or question. Ask students to work in pairs to actually think aloud. You might want students to share some of their think-alouds with other pairs or the class. This would also insure that they are actually using the specific strategy you have discussed. Continue with this teacher-directed reading aloud and stopping for the middle 30% of the text.
5. For the last 30% of the text, have the students read silently, taking individual notes on sticky notes and pasting the notes in the margins where they stopped to think silently about their reading. This would also make a great “share with your elbow partner” activity, so students could compare the spots where they stopped to think as well as the questions or ideas they thought about. If you think you need to give a little more structure to this independent work, you could put a minimum on the number of thinking stops the students would need to make.
6. Finally, as a postreading activity, do another think aloud where you model the process of putting it all together, either summarizing or determining the author’s purpose.
Elementary teachers have used “think-alouds” for decades in their reading instruction. The teacher and her students look at a picture in a children’s book, then the teacher says to herself (and to her students), “Hmmm, I wonder what this picture is about? What’s happening here?” She continues as she reads, asking herself questions—about the text, about her own thinking, about the author’s intent. The purpose is to model for the children the kinds of thinking that goes on in a good reader’s mind, to push the young readers to begin to be metacognitive.
Effective secondary teachers use think-alouds too, even if they don’t realize they do. This exercise helps students focus on the kinds of questions they should be asking themselves as they read aloud by making think-alouds the point of the lesson.
Here are the steps:
1. Make sure you have a list of reading strategies available to refer to as you model. If you have found that students are not using a specific strategy (like summarizing, questioning, using context clues, etc.) then use that strategy as you model your thinking aloud.
2. Start by modeling some prereading strategies by thinking aloud (predicting the author’s purpose, asking questions of the title, graphics, headings, etc.). Ask the students to also do some of this questioning. Besides modeling what good readers do, you are building background knowledge.
3. Now, for the first 30% of the passage, read and think aloud while your students listen and perhaps take notes. You might even mention the strategy you are using as you think aloud to yourself (and to the students).
4. For the second 30% of the passage, continue to read aloud, stopping occasionally at places where you want students to think or question. Ask students to work in pairs to actually think aloud. You might want students to share some of their think-alouds with other pairs or the class. This would also insure that they are actually using the specific strategy you have discussed. Continue with this teacher-directed reading aloud and stopping for the middle 30% of the text.
5. For the last 30% of the text, have the students read silently, taking individual notes on sticky notes and pasting the notes in the margins where they stopped to think silently about their reading. This would also make a great “share with your elbow partner” activity, so students could compare the spots where they stopped to think as well as the questions or ideas they thought about. If you think you need to give a little more structure to this independent work, you could put a minimum on the number of thinking stops the students would need to make.
6. Finally, as a postreading activity, do another think aloud where you model the process of putting it all together, either summarizing or determining the author’s purpose.
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