Strategies to engage the mind of the learner

 I just finished reading a book that I discovered on a shelf at school, Strategies to Engage the Mind of the Learner: Building Strategic Learners: Volume 2, second edition, by Rachel Billymeyer. The majority of the book is an overview of strategies. They are grouped into categories: opening strategies, vocabulary development, literacy strategies for narrative and informational texts, questioning strategies, graphic organizers, information building strategies, discussion strategies, grouping and energizing strategies, reflection strategies and closing strategies. While many of the strategies are oldies but goodies, like the KWL chart and semantic mapping, some were more novel to me.

One strategy I found interesting was Chat and Go Questions. Groups of four work together. They each draw a question and share an answer with their group. Group members can ask questions of the person sharing for more clarity or further details. The author includes a fabulous list of possible questions such as 

• What are the high points of interest within the selection for you?
• How were the characters depicted in the selection? What are your impressions about them?
• In what ways is this selection similar/different to what you usually read? (p. 133-5)

This list could be used for a variety of activities. The open ended nature of the questions leads to good conversation. Other strategies throughout the test also include great sentence starters as well.

What struck me as I read through the strategies was the way so many relied on skills of summarization and paraphrasing. Having worked on paraphrasing with my seventh graders this spring, I was reminded of how difficult this skill is. Students struggle with putting things in their own words. I have walked students through restating a claim, and I think they would benefit from a more structured approach. Jeff Anderson talked about teaching students to combine sentences, a critical skill when it comes to summarizing. We talk about rules of summarizing being:

• include only important information
• combine ideas
• add connective words for clarity and coherence, 
• use category terms instead of a list of words
• do not include your opinion, quotes, or what the author "should" have said. (p.113)

Practice with each step is important. When we combine them into one group to use, we often do not give students enough practice. 

One important thing that Billymeyer includes is a plan for teaching a strategy. She suggests introducing the strategy with the reason for using it. Then use a traditional Hunteresque approach, demonstrate the strategy, participate in a we do with the strategy then have students do independent practice with it. Of critical importance is the idea that students need multiple opportunities to practice the strategy in order to internalize it.