The difference between novices and experts is their use of strategies, said Larry Lewin and Betty Jean Shoemaker of Eugene School District 4J in Oregon. But some students don't learn strategies intuitively, so teachers need to teach them explicitly.
Lewin and Shoemaker shared a four-step template that can help teachers identify areas where students might need to be taught strategies. The template is designed to cut across disciplines, they noted. The steps are
- Prepare
- First Dare
- Repair
- Share
"Prepare" strategies help students think and plan before beginning to study new material. Examples include
- Surveying (e.g., scanning the text)
- Retrieving, or tapping prior knowledge (e.g., using K-W-L)
- Planning (e.g., making work plans)
- Forecasting (e.g., writing down predictions)
"First Dare" strategies help students during their first attempt to process the new information. Examples include
- Focusing, or paying attention to what's important (e.g., analyzing text structure)
- Information gathering (e.g., using an index)
- Self-regulating, or monitoring one's own thinking (e.g., taking notes)
- Generating, or producing new information (e.g., brainstorming)
- Organizing (e.g., knowing how to make an outline)
"Repair" strategies help students evaluate their work for possible improvement. Examples include
- Fixing up (e.g., identifying "clicks and clunks")
- Evaluating (e.g., using Plus-Minus-Interesting)
- Analyzing (e.g., doing concept mapping)
"Share" strategies help students present, use, and share the results of their work. Examples include
- Integrating (e.g., summarizing)
- Organizing (e.g., using a filing system)
- Presenting (e.g., creating an electronic slide show)
- Self-regulating (e.g., using a checklist)
Lewin and Shoemaker went on to describe specific "teaching devices" that match particular strategies. One example was the User-Friendly Text Checklist, which can be used by individual teachers or by textbook-adoption committees. The checklist helps educators analyze how well a particular text will meet the needs of diverse learners. "Some texts are more considerate to low performers," they noted. For help with evaluating texts, they also recommended the books Questioning the Author, edited by Isabel Beck, and Textbooks and the Students Who Can't Read Them by Jean Ciborowski.