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SKU: 258
Categories: Catching Kids Up Collection
Notebook: $25.00
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The Learning-Focused Connections Newsletter is a weekly link to exemplary practice and ideas that will help you as an educator to increase achievement in your classroom and school. Some weeks there will be a mix of articles in the mailer; other weeks we will follow a theme. We are all working with the same goal in mind, continuous improvement in student achievement.
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National LEARNING-FOCUSED Conference
February 2-4, 2009
Cobb Galleria Center
Atlanta, GA
Registration Fee: $125.00 per person/day
Includes all conference materials (notebooks, flipcharts, handouts)
Registrations after November 1, 2008: $150.00 per person/day
Sessions and registration available August 1, 2008 at www.LearningFocused.com.
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We Want You to Make "Connections"!
Subscribers feel free to share the information, tips and strategies that you receive in Learning-Focused Connections with your colleagues. Administrators and coaches pass them on to the teachers in your school; teachers share them with your teammates and leadership team. The newsletter can be the basis for discussion in team meetings or provide ideas for further staff development. If individuals in your school/district do not receive Learning-Focused Connections encourage them to visit our website, www.LearningFocused.com, and subscribe through the link on our homepage.
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Can You Teach Memory?
by Carolyn Boyles
'Memory' is a label for a diverse set of cognitive capacities by which humans, and perhaps, other animals retain information and reconstruct past experiences, usually for present purposes. You can learn strategies that improve your ability to remember information if you intentionally use those strategies. What you can do as a teacher, and should do, is to teach students some of these memory strategies. Why not? You use them.
One of the differences between a person with a good memory and a person who is a "fast forgetter" is the use of some type of strategy to hold onto information long enough to move it from working memory to long term memory. As adults, we do quick associations or repeat things in our heads until they stick. We can write them down or use other strategies we have practiced that help us retain information that is a part of our semantic memory.
There are several reasons why some students have more difficulty than others with memory and need scaffolding strategies. When students are passive learners, they are at greater risk for not remembering the information being presented. Wandering attention will also interfere with the associations and connections needed for memory. The fast pace of the curriculum can also interfere with memory when practice and review are not built into instruction. Our brain needs to hear or experience information enough to establish a pattern or connection with prior knowledge. While there are other cognitive influences on memory, this article will focus on the memory strategies that are practical for use with academic information.
Students can benefit from memory strategies and, in fact, can remember complex information if it is connected to something memorable or familiar. There are numerous strategies; however, your students do not need to know how to use them all. It would be beneficial if they had a few tools to select from as they move through the varied and vast information they are expected to know and remember.
Most of the memory strategies described here do not contribute to deep understanding but do aid students in remembering facts, lists, steps in processes and information that can be called on as understanding is developed by other methods and experiences
The keyword method of memory is a popular strategy, because students can use pictures or images of familiar items or ideas and connect them mentally to information to be remembered. Students in one class of at-risk learners were able to retain the Bill of Rights - the first 10 amendments - by creating pictures that connected the number of the amendment with some information about the amendment in order to remember both. Example: One student drew this poster for the 8th amendment. It shows the number 8 being burned at the stake and declaring that it is "cruel and unusual." 
Another example was from two students who created a picture of the word that helped them remember the meaning of the word. Their example was a word picture of the word mosaic. Using different colors of post-it notes, a "mosaic" was created for the word "mosaic".
The Pegword method of memory uses a rhyme associated with numbers for remembering lists of information in a certain order. To remember the original 13 colonies and the order that they became states, Pennsylvania is associated with the number 2, and it rhymes with shoe. Remember the loafers that you could put a coin in and that it was usually a penny. Penny and shoe (2) are linked. Also, if you put 6 sticks of gum in your mouth at the same time, that would be a "mass of chewing" (Massachusetts). Pennsylvania was the 2nd colony to become a state, and Massachusetts was the 6th.
Acronyms and Acrostics are examples of mnemonic memory devices which use the first letter of the names of the items to be remembered to make words or sentences. This is a popular way to help anyone remember things. Most of us learned the 5 great lakes using the HOMES acronym - H - Huron, O - Ontario, M - Michigan, E - Erie, and S - Superior.
Or consider this spelling mnemonic:
A lettER is written on stationERy;
The jAR placed on a shelf remains stationARy.
Source: Unknown
Taking a memory walk is an old strategy that may be used to improve recall of a list of terms or steps. It is sometimes called the "Method of Loci" and was used by ancient storytellers to remember long tales. The things to be remembered are mentally placed along a path to an actual familiar place or a fantasy setting. Students in one classroom were observed using the route from their classroom to the school's cafeteria to remember four kinds of fossils by putting them at the door to the classroom, by the window to the media center, down the steps from the building, etc. The number of places you choose will be based on the number of things you are attempting to remember.
Another type of graphic representation that creates a strong association for concepts or words.
There are more memory strategies described in the Scaffolding Grade Level Learning presentation and book. Strategies can be selected based on the type of information that needs to be remembered, as well as the age and level of the students.
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Teaching Text Structures
by Denise Burson
During the past few years, teachers at all grade levels have become increasingly interested in developing student understanding of text structures in expository readings. Mounting pressures for improved student standardized test performance have resulted in increased attention to exposition. Because 70-80% of standardized reading test content is expository (Daniels, 2002), it is essential to provide students with the tools necessary to develop understanding of this type of text. Researchers have identified five basic organizational structures of expository text: sequence, description, cause and effect, problem and solution, and compare and contrast. The Learning-Focused Literacy Model can help you with the tools and strategies necessary to explicitly teach the following:
Sequence or time order uses time, numerical, or spatial order as the organizing structure. The author traces the sequence or the steps in the process.
Description or listing provides information, such as facts, characteristics, and attributes about a subject, event, person, or concepts. This organization is the most common pattern found in textbooks (Niles, 1965; Bartlett, 1978). Descriptive reports may be arranged according to categories of related attributes, moving from general categories of features to specific attributes.
Cause and Effect structure is used to show causal relationships between events. Cause and effect attempts to explain why something happens; how facts or events lead to other facts or events (effects). A single cause often has several effects. Also, a single event may have several causes.
Problem and Solution requires writers to state a problem and come up with a solution. Problem/solution structures are typically found in informational writing. However, realistic fiction often uses a problem/solution structure so that children can learn to identify the problem and present one or more solutions to that problem.
Comparison and Contrast points out the likenesses and/or differences between two or more subjects. This structure is used to explain how two or more objects, events, or positions in an argument are similar or different. Graphic organizers such as Venn diagrams, compare/contrast organizers, and data matrices can be used to compare features across different categories.
Visit, www.LearningFocused.com, to learn more about the Learning-Focused Literacy Model solutions.
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Transforming Learning In Your School
by Cindy Riedl
Is what you are doing today going to positively impact learning? If your answer is no or even maybe, are you willing to change your behaviors to impact student achievement?
Since education continues to be a 'chaotic' work environment, educators must slow down and align research-based interventions with instructional practices that accelerate achievement and abandon those practices that have minimal impact on student learning.
How do you get motivated to change what you are doing? It is not just about making AYP but determining and verifying the root causes of the problems that contribute to low achievement. The closer you can get to the 'root cause', the closer your school will be to solving the problems that cause the achievement gap.
Implementing a 'root cause' analysis is the first step in this process. The instructional team, which is made up of selected teachers representing each grade level or course, with specialists and the administrative leaders, brainstorm and create a list of all the reasons why their school is not reaching AYP. After categorizing this list, they must identify those things that they can influence and then prioritize this list. The collaborative effort allows everyone to participate in the establishment of clear goals using assessment data to determine their targets and then identify their intervention plan. This approach is process based rather than personality based, where individuals independently do their own thing. Getting everyone to use a common approach based on high quality implementation of research-based exemplary practices will lead to sustaining results. In the highest performing schools, teachers believe they are part of a team that will make an incredible difference in how their students learn and excel. The key to success is that everyone is focused on what is most critical. Teachers implement exemplary practices consistently and pervasively.
The Learning-Focused Catching Kids Up Model includes an Acceleration component. Acceleration for 'at risk' students is planned and implemented so that these students get the 'double dose' they need to be successful with grade level curriculum. Previewing vocabulary and advance organizers, as well as designing scaffolds for learning and building prior knowledge become a common practice of all teachers before for classroom instruction occurs.
Growth is monitored and success is celebrated. Celebration becomes a part of the culture. As a result, teachers come to believe in their capacity to teach and students come to believe in their capacity to learn and excel. Teachers and students are excited about coming to school to participate in a rich curriculum and succeed because instruction is engaging making students want to learn more.
Learning-Focused strategies and practices make the difference, causing a typical school to become an exceptional school by creating an instructional climate where balanced achievement thrives, and ALL students are provided the opportunity to excel.
Visit the Learning-Focused website and check out the Catching Kids Up Solutions.
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Past Connections Articles
Past Connections articles are available through the archive tool of this newsletter. Please click here to view the resources.
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