We're all familiar with the popular saying, "Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today; teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime." This adage certainly holds true for the ways we approach teaching and learning.
I have often made mention of how important it is to help students become "strategic" in their approach to learning, and how the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM) was one proven approach to helping students build essential skills and to learn complex subject matter. The SIM model was offered as a way for teachers to imbed effective strategies into classroom instruction. Strategic teaching? Strategies to enhance learning? Let's take a closer look at what we mean by "strategies" from a student's perspective and why they are so important.
Strategies Unfolded
Simply stated, learning strategies are methods that students use to learn. (Note: while the focus here is on students, it goes without saying that there is a set of complementary actions and behaviors that need to be initiated by teachers for these strategies to be most effective). These methods often vary in effectiveness from one student to another, and can be very helpful at certain times, while at other times prove to be annoying and in fact interfere with learning. Learning strategies can be useful when learning new skills as well as helpful when practicing these skills or applying them to new situations.
So What's the Big Deal About Strategies?
Imagine the following: After listening to in-class lectures, a student spends hours and hours combing through class notes and re-reading chapters in his text book in preparation for a test later in the week. He reads page after page, taking notes and trying to remember the important points. Answering the questions at the end of each chapter and reading over worksheets prepared by the teacher gives him a sense of confidence. A test is given and grade is, well, disappointing.
This scenario is all too familiar. It highlights what has been well-documented in the learning disabilities literature:
- Good effort is often not enough to promote efficient learning
- While explicit, well-focused teaching coupled with opportunities for practice and lots of feedback makes a huge difference, especially for students who struggle to learn, even this may not be enough
- Without a systematic and organized (systematic + organized = strategic) approach to learning, studying new materials is often just "spray and pray"...try hard, see what happens, and hope for the best.
To become active learners, three things need to happen:
- Students (as well as teachers and parents) need to recognize their unique strengths (often referred to as "learning styles" or "preferences") and challenges (i.e. disorders of attention) and be able to articulate and act upon them in mindful ways
- Students (in partnership with parents and teachers) need to set reasonable expectations for achievement that take into consideration such things as:
- Timelines for getting work done (this is especially critical if a student is far behind his classmates)
- How much 1:1 or small group time is available to provide targeted assistance, either during the school day or after school hours
- Distractions (i.e., attention difficulties, after-school activities) that might interfere with studying independently or keeping to a schedule of progress
- Students need to develop a repertoire of effective strategies that help to streamline the learning process and that effectively prepare them to demonstrate and remember what they have learned.
Thinking About Thinking
In a National Research Council report titled "How People Learn" a panel of researchers reflected on how memory, the structure of knowledge, learning environments and regulatory processes (the ways we think that govern how well we learn) enhance or discourage learning. Among the key findings was that:
A Closer Look at Strategies
I encourage you to seek out a wonderful book titled Academic Success Strategies for Adolescents with Learning Disabilities and ADHD written by Esther Minskoff and David Allsopp. In it they offer such useful tools as Active Teacher and Learner Questionnaires, as well as detailed descriptions of learning strategies such as mnemonics, visualization, verbalization, graphic organizers, structural steps, and multisensory learning. They also offer dozens of strategies to help with organization (managing time and materials), test taking, study skills, note taking, reading (vocabulary and comprehension), writing, math and advanced thinking.
An example from the study skills section of the book is the BREAK strategy (Break, Recite, Establish, Always, and Keywords). To help students remember information for tests it recommends that they:
- All students come to school with a certain level of information about the world and how it works. New information and skills are best learned if they somehow build on this prior knowledge (otherwise, they might learn the material for a test, but promptly forget it soon after).
- Students must not only have a firm foundation of factual knowledge, but must also have some way of organizing this knowledge in ways that help them retrieve and apply it to new situations.
- "Metacognitive" approaches to learning can help students take control of their own learning. (The word "metacognitive" can be described as "thinking about thinking" or being aware of the processes they use to manage successful learning.)
- Break up study time; try not to memorize too much information at one time; don't cram at the last minute
- Recite aloud what you are studying (some students enjoy pretending that they are both teacher and student, saying critical information aloud and testing themselves)
- Establish a helpful mnemonic; the example given has to do with remembering the names of the Great Lakes:
- Take the first letter of each of the Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario): S,M,H,E,O
- Move them around to create a simple word such as HOMES, which will serve as a quick and easy reminder during the test.
Additional Resources
Allsopp, D.H., Minskoff, E.H. and Bolt, L. (2005). Individualized Course-Specific Strategy Instruction for College Students with Learning Disabilities and ADHD: Lessons from a model demonstration project. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 20, 2,103-118. Blackwell Publishing. Boston, MA.
Boyle, J.R and Weishaar, M., (2001). The Effects of Strategic Notetaking on the Recall and Comprehension of Lecture Information for High School Students with Learning Disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 16, 3,133-141. Blackwell Publishing. Boston, MA.
Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L. and Cocking, R.R. (eds), (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning. Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education of the National Research Council, National Academy Press. Washington, DC.
Minskoff, E. and Allsopp, D. (2003). Academic Success Strategies for Adolescents with Learning Disabilities and ADHD. Paul H. Brookes Publishing. Baltimore, MD.
NICHCY News Digest 25 (1997). Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities.
Swanson, H.L. (1999). Intervention Research for Students with Learning Disabilities: A Meta-Analysis of Treatment Outcomes. This document was prepared for NCLD's Keys to Successful Learning Summit held in May 1999 in Washington, D.C.
The National Institute for Literacy has a Learning Disabilities and Literacy Special Collection online publication about learning strategies.
Sheldon H. Horowitz, Ed.D. is the Director of LD Resources & Essential Information at the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
