1. Fostering Strategies for Student
Independence
Chapter 16
Romie Garcia
Michelle Murray
Elizabeth Pratt
2. What’s this chapter about?
• Emphasizes importance of using effective
strategy instruction in the classroom.
• Shows how to facilitate the teaching-learning
connection.
• Explains why students have difficulty developing
independence.
• Demonstrates how to teach students to develop
independence inside and outside of the
classroom.
3. Effective Strategy Instruction: The
Teaching-Learning Connection
• What’s a strategy?
▫ Step-by-step cognitive processes and plans for
reading, studying, and problem solving.
• Okay, what does the mean in the classroom?
▫ Strategies are deliberately controlled processes,
they are goal-oriented. They go hand-in-hand with
skills.
4. The Goals of Strategy Instruction
• To support students as they develop
independence in completing learning tasks and
eventually become skilled.
• Such independent learners are known as
executive learners.
5. What makes an executive learner?
• Are knowledgeable about personal learning
strengths and challenges.
• Have a clear understanding about tasks to be
accomplished.
• Have a repertoire of learning strategies that can
be applied in independent learning situations.
• Have developed a set of help-seeking behaviors.
6. How do my students become executive
learners?
Guidelines Tips for Teachers
• Choose Strategies Carefully
• Present Content and Strategies
Concurrently
• Teach Strategies in Stages
▫ Awareness
▫ Knowledge
▫ Simulation
▫ Practice
▫ Skill
• Make Strategy Discussion a
Regular part of Class Routines
• Different strategies are
designed for different
purposes.
• Not all strategies work for all
students
• For strategies to be useful they
must be presented in a
memorable form.
7. Guidelines for Strategy Instruction
• Choose Strategies Carefully
▫ There are many sources available
that provide a variety of different
strategies. You just have to go out
and look for them!
• Present Content and Strategies
Concurrently.
▫ You can increase the odds of your
students using the strategies when
you teach them concurrently.
• Make Strategies a regular part of the
day
▫ Brief class discussions about
specific learning tasks and how
best to accomplish them can be
helpful.
• Teach in Stages
▫ Awareness: Becoming introduced
to the strategy and its rational
Why use it?
▫ Knowledge: Finding out when and
how to use the strategy as well as
the procedures to use it.
▫ Simulation: Trying it out!
▫ Practice: Trying it out in actual
reading and studying
▫ Skill: Making it a part of your
regular routine.
8. Difficulties In Developing Independent
Learners
Difficulty
Cognitive Cultural
Communicative
Educational
Motivational
Organizational
Family
Jobs
Extracurricular
9. Difficulties In Developing Independent
Learners
Things
you can
control
Your Advocacy
for school wide
strategy
learning
programs
Focus on
teaching
students how
to learn in your
own classroom.
10. Developing Independence: Personal
Responsibility
• Many students have a tough time self-
monitoring, while others struggle with self-
determination.
• Teaching students how to assume personal
responsibility can help them move beyond
passivity and learned helplessness.
11. Remembering Information (page 457-
459)
Provide
time for
practice
Provide
time to
review
How to
Enhance
student
Memory
Teach
how to
apply
Use
Visual
Aids
Limit
Amount
of Info
showed
Activate
prior
knowledge
Control
rate
Cue
StudentsPage 548
12. Remembering Information
• Distributed Practice:
▫ Breaking up the material to be learned into
manageable chucks and then holding several short
study sessions.
• Overlearning: Learning to mastery
• Direct teaching of memory strategies can
enhance student performance.
13. Lets Remember…
• One kind of memory-triggering technique is
known as mnemonic devices.
▫ There are two types:
Letter Strategy
Key word
14. Mnemonic Devices
• Letter Strategy
▫ There are two types:
Acronyms: words created by joining the first letters
of a series of words.
Acrostics: sentences created by words that begin
with the first letters of a series of words.
▫ FIRST-letter mnemonic strategy
Includes an overall strategy (LISTS) and a
substrategy for making a mnemonic device (FIRST).
15. Letter Strategy Mnemonic Devices
Acronyms Acrostics
• Radar: radio detecting and
ranging
• Scuba: self-contained
underwater breathing
apparatus
• Laser: Light amplification by
stimulated emission of
radiation.
• Every Good Boy Does Fine:
Notes on the lines of the treble
clef staff: EGGBDF
• King Henry Died Monday
Drinking Chocolate Milk:
The Metric system: Kilo,
Hecto,Deca,Meter, Deci, Centi,
Milli
• My Very Eager Mother Just
Served Us Nine Pizzas:
The Planets in our Solar
System
16. LIST Strategy
• Look for clues
▫ In class notes and books look for lists of
information that are important to learn.
• Investigate the items
▫ Decide what should be included in the list.
• Select a mnemonic device, using FIRST
• Transfer the information to a card
• Self-Test
17. FIRST-Letter Strategy
• Form a word
▫ Using uppercase letters, write the first letter of each
word in a list.
• Insert a letter(s)
▫ Insert letters to see if a word can be made
• Rearrange the letters
▫ Rearrange the letters to see what word can be made.
• Shape a sentence
▫ Try to construct a sentence
• Try combination
▫ Try combinations to see what works best
18. Key Word Strategy
• Involves three steps
▫ 1. Identify a target word of concept to be learned.
▫ 2. Identify a concrete, easily imagined “key word”
that is either phonetically or semantically related
to the target word.
▫ 3. Identify a visual image that links the key word
to the meaning of the target word.
