At the beginning of the year, Mr. Doniphan taught his eighth graders a strategy for comprehending their history lessons when they read the chapters in their text. He has found over his three years of teaching that many of the students get bogged down in the details and fail to understand how one event relates to another. The class is working on chapter four and Mr. Doniphan is leading discussion

Question

about the assigned reading. He finds that most of the students are unable to participate. They are getting bogged down again and are not applying the strategy they learned earlier.

What does Mr. Doniphan need to do when he teaches the learning strategy in order for students to continue using it all year?

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Suggested Response: Mr. Doniphan seems to have made the mistake of failing to provide sufficient practice and feedback after introducing the learning strategy.
• When he or any other teacher introduces a learning strategy, the teacher needs to model the strategy and make sure students understand when and how to use it. Then the teacher needs to provide appropriate tasks in which students use the strategy. In Mr. Doniphan's case, he needs to make sure the discussion questions require students to have used the strategy and gained understanding of the relationship of events to one another rather than asking questions that require recall of details.
• After introducing the strategy, Mr. Doniphan must provide plenty of opportunities for students to practice the strategy. He might provide feedback that helps students use the strategy more effectively.
• He should encourage students to monitor their use of the strategy by determining how well they are able to answer the comprehension questions. The self-monitoring might involve asking one or two simple questions to check understanding.
• He should help students value the use of the strategy by comparing how much better they do when they use the strategy to how much difficulty they have when they do not use the strategy.
• He might also encourage students to be reflective about checking their understanding and avoid distractions such as multitasking and losing focus.
Text Reference: Learning Strategies