How to break down a strategy...

Breaking Down a Strategy:

When breaking it down, consider if you are creating a process, scaffold or support:

• SCAFFOLD: an educator’s intentional act of building upon students’ already acquired skills and knowledge to teach new skills
• SUPPORT: use of instructional strategies or tools used to assist students in accessing content necessary for classroom understanding or communication and to help construct meaning from language

Strategies to break down:

Pre-, During-, and Post-Reading Strategies

Pre-Reading Strategies	During-Reading Strategies	Post-Reading Strategies
Previewing text Activating prior knowledge Making predictions	Selectively underlining/highlighting Recognizing word parts Paraphrasing Making margin notes Asking questions	Taking Cornell notes Organizing column notes Utilizing concept maps Using Venn diagrams Writing summary statements Creating graphic organizers

Strategic learning in students develops along three levels: 

• declarative knowledge (being able to describe a strategy), 
• procedural knowledge (being able to use a strategy on demand), and 
• conditional knowledge (being able to select and to apply a strategy as appropriate) (Garner, 1990). 

Comprehension strategy instruction should focus on providing teacher-directed strategies, like discussion Webs (Alvermann, 1991, adapted fromDuthie, 1986), as well as self-directed strategies such as questioning, to describe explicitly, to model, and to guide strategy use.

• Who:  (Good readers, writers, thinkers...students)
• When:  (Before, during or after reading, writing, class...)
• Why:  (Purpose...reasons that are motivational for teachers AND students)
• How:  (steps - goal to have them in some order from beginning to advanced)

Example:  Reflection

• Who:  Good teachers reflect about their teaching.
• When:  on an ongoing basis - while planning, during the lesson, after the lesson, and in more formalized ways and settings.
• Why:  Reflection causes us to grow and change as teachers.  Reflection allows us to use the PDSA cycle or enter into the cycle of inquiry with purpose and depth.
• When:  Reflection is necessary at all points of the cycle of inquiry (PDSA).  Reflection is study and adjusting.

How to plan a lesson on breaking down a strategy:

1. While planning, ask...
2. While doing, pay attention to...
3. While studying, ask...
4. Adjust when...

Read to Learn:

• Read for meaning - take notes, hold onto ideas, gather and sort ideas, 
• Compare and contrast reading with PK.  What is new and requires some thinking and processing (students often stick with that is the same!)
• Inductive learning
• Circles of knowledge
• Write to learn - provisional (notes), readable (seeking clarity and organization around NEW thinking/learning), polished (writing process)

Inferring:

How To Teach Students to Make Evidence-Based Inferences (From ASCD)

Though abstract and difficult to model, inference is an important skill to teach students -- it's the gateway to the kind of higher-order, critical thinking students need to succeed in school and work.

Students use different processes to draw conclusions via inference. How can teachers explicitly model these processes? In Inference: Teaching Students to Develop Hypotheses, Evaluate Evidence, and Draw Logical Conclusions, Harvey Silver, Thomas Dewing, and Matthew Perini examine four inference strategies:

• Inductive Learning, which helps students draw inferences by grouping data, labeling the data groups with descriptive titles, and using the groups to generate and test hypotheses.
• Mystery, which presents students with a puzzling question or situation and has students examine clues that help them explain the mystery.
• Main Idea, which teaches students how to use inferential thinking to construct main ideas that are not explicitly stated.
• Investigation, which challenges students to use various problem-solving approaches that require inference.

Inference lessons using any of these approaches -- Inductive Learning, Mystery, Main Idea, or Investigation -- have five principles and corresponding phases of implementation:

1. Principle: What's missing is what's important. Phase: Identify what you need to figure out.
2. Principle: Understanding is a drive. Phase: Note information sources and look for patterns.
3. Principle: Inference is a process. Phase: Formulate and refine hypotheses.
4. Principle: You've got some explaining to do. Phase: Explain your thinking.
5. Principle: Look back to move forward. Phase: Reflect on the process.

The first letter of the first word of each instructional phase of an inference lesson spells out the acronym INFER (Identify, Note, Formulate, Explain, Reflect). These phases and guidance for classroom implementation of the instructional phases are spelled out in more detail, in the free sample chapter of this new ASCD book.

Also -- you can see a sample lesson using these strategies in action. Walk through each step of teacher Jason Mantzoukas' 9th grade U.S. history inductive learning lesson on what life was like in Colonial New England. Each phase is described, and accompanying word lists, text passages, and graphic organizers are provided.