How to Help Students Develop Educational Strategies
Educational strategies are skills that help students achieve success. Ideally, instructors would teach reading and writing strategies according to a student’s learning style. Unfortunately, time constraints and limited resources make it difficult to tailor strategies to an individual student’s needs. However, there are educational strategies you can teach that will help improve performance among all of your students.
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Instructions
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Teach students to manage educational time with a schedule. Academic organizers do not always provide adequate space to write homework. So, use the academic organizer as a model to create a worksheet that allows students to plan a study schedule. Distribute the schedule worksheet, and help students plan for study.
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Help students read with a purpose. Explain the idea that some tasks require a passage to be read multiple times. Pick a passage from a textbook that includes headings and subheadings. Ask students to preview the section and predict the topic. Then have students read once for the main idea and a second time for the details.
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Develop a note-taking unit to help students. Note-taking is one of many educational strategies students use to organize and commit ideas to memory. Start with a mini-lesson about the different types of note-taking techniques. For example, write a list on the board that includes charting, mapping and sentence methods.
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Practice listening as a way to understand and communicate ideas. Begin with a read-a-loud activity. Instruct students to listen carefully and follow along, because at some point during the story, you will stop reading, and they will have to finish the sentence. Explain that if you spot a student who is not reading the sentence aloud, you will start all over.
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Get students hooked on outlines. An outline directs the process of writing and students should develop the habit of creating one before they write a paper. Model the steps of outline development with the help of an overhead projector.
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Spend time reviewing. Educational strategies used for review move ideas from short-term to long-term memory. Schedule a 5-minute period for students to review as part of “Bell work,” or the tasks scheduled for the beginning of the period.
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Teach students test-taking strategies. Under NCLB legislation, standardized tests are part of the educational process. Instructors should help students develop techniques to score well. For instance, help students by directing them to preview a sample question before reading the test passage.
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Tips & Warnings
Help students develop their knowledge of educational strategies, such as SQ3R, Cornell Notes and KWL methods, through practice.
Do not overemphasize educational strategies, especially in regards to assessments. Devoting too much time to strategies can lead to test anxiety or burnout.
Resources
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