As teachers, we often assume that doodling in class is “bad,” indicating that students aren’t listening to the material being taught. However, for visual learners, doodling can be that extra nudge that helps them in memorizing the material. Doodling as a memory strategy is not only effective, it helps some students focus, calm themselves, and turn verbal-linguistic information into non-linguistic information. In order to make that transfer from text to visual, students must understand the content. Given that one can’t doodle about what’s learned unless one understands it, doodling as a memory strategy can also be an effective formative assessment.

Even if they make up their answer on the spot, it STILL is effective in supporting recall of the information that was taught.

By taking what can be seen as a negative and turning it around into a positive, by encouraging doodling as a memory strategy, you gain the trust of your students, especially those that learn differently. By working with the student’s strengths, you enhance learning and memory on multiple levels. Create a win-win situation!

This video tutorial for Sketchnotes explains the concept well.

Related resources:

• What are Sketchnotes?
• What to Do to Help Students Improve Focus
• A Dozen Commonsense Strategies to Maintain Focus, Attention, And Enhance Learning in the Classroom!

The post Use Doodling as a Memory Strategy with Sketchnotes appeared first on Susan Fitzell.

Most students, parents, and teachers know a lot about managing their time to include homework, studying, and other activities, but many overlook the importance of also learning test-taking time management skills.

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Many students do not think much about how to budget their time on a test and just jump right in.  However, in order to do their best on tests, they must learn how to think about how much time they have and how to budget that time when testing.

Test taking time management strategies for student success:

1. Have them count the number of multiple choice questions and calculate how much time they have for each question.
2. When there are essay questions too, have students set aside time for the essay(s) and then calculate their time per question for the rest of the test.
3. On a multiple choice-type test, teach them to answer the easy questions (the ones they know) first.
4. Tell students to cross out obviously incorrect responses to minimize the distractions such responses offer.  This will save them even more time.
5. Then, after they’ve answered all they know, THEN, answer the difficult ones next (and skip the ones they don’t know at all).
6. After they’ve done their best on all the questions they think they could answer, then quickly guess the rest (as long as it won’t count against them). It’s best to pick one letter and guess with the same letter throughout the test. It statistically improves the chances of guessing more right. Remember, “When in doubt, pick C!” It doesn’t have to be C. It just has to be the same letter every time.
7. In general, students should answer multiple choice questions FIRST and then focus on essay questions LAST.  There are often clues to other questions in the multiple choice parts of a test.

How Often Do You Find Yourself Saying: “I Wish I Knew How To Ace A Multiple Choice Test”

Watch this video to reinforce these steps!

For more information about study strategies for your student, see Susan Fitzell’s book, Please Help Me With My Homework. Available in both print and electronic versions!

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That lesson holds true in every job I’ve ever held. A couple years ago, I was sitting next to a principal who had just received the edict from his superintendent that he had to let go of three teachers. He was upset with this news and struggling with decisions regarding his staff. He asked me if I had been in the classroom to observe a certain co-teaching pair. I had been in that class and validated that with him. He then asked if I saw the special education teacher sitting in the back of the room on the isle focusing on one or two students. He asked if I had seen a teacher do anything other than sitting there while the general education teacher delivered the lesson. I could not deny that I had observed exactly what he had described. He then asked me a question that, from my teacher viewpoint, I had never considered, “How can I justify keeping that teacher when I can replace her with a paraprofessional who could do the same job?” He explained that every single time he walked by that classroom, the special-education teacher was sitting in the same spot, working with those same few students. This teacher had resisted all coaching to change her practice and be more involved in using her professional skills to co-teach. If he had to choose which teachers to let go, why not choose that one?

Unfortunately, this reality exists in more than one district. I have heard this story repeated multiple times since the first occasion. In a time of budget crunches, school principals are asked to make difficult decisions regarding their staff. With this in mind, it becomes even more imperative that special education teachers in co-taught classrooms truly co-teach.

We do understand that there are times when a general education teacher is direct teaching. When one teacher is direct teaching, what can the other teacher do besides position control, redirect students, quietly answer questions or, at worst, hold up the wall?

In this data-driven age of education, a valuable co-teaching strategy is to collect data while the other teacher is direct teaching. Now, this is not only the role of the special education teacher. Data collection can and should be, accomplished by both teachers, depending on who is teaching at the time. A wonderful extension of this data collection experience is for the general education teacher to collect data, while the special education teacher is leading the class.

While one teacher is direct teaching, the other teacher can be in the background with a clipboard, a pen, and a chart that allows them to take note of student behavior. For example, the data collector might look at how students are responding to the lesson:

• Are they engaged or sleeping or off task? Looking out the window or texting?
• Which students have come to class prepared?
• Which students are struggling to take down notes and may need additional support after class?
• Are specific students attentive, asking questions, looking confused but not asking questions, or sleeping?

Note these things on the chart.

After the lesson, the data collector – who might be the general education or special education teacher – shares the results with their co-teacher. With this objective data (please be sure it’s objective. It’s not appropriate to write on the data collection form that your colleague is boring the students to death, so they are fast asleep), co-teachers have the information necessary to enhance their next lesson plan to address the issues that might come to light through data collection. This data may also be used in IEP meetings, a 504 meeting, an RTI planning meeting, or for any other purposes where student data may be advantageous.

Now, when an administrator, or a school board member, or a parent walks through the room and one teacher is teaching while the other is standing in the background with a clipboard and pen, both teachers have a solid response to the question, “What are you doing?” The responses very simple; “We are collecting data. In this classroom, we plan data-driven instruction.”

Explore even more tips, tools, and resources for collaboration at TheHowofCo-teaching.com!

Bring Susan to your campus!

Featured seminar – Co-teaching and Collaboration

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Tier One of RTI requires the use of best practice, research-based teaching methods. Research- based strategies, as discussed in Robert Marzano’s Dimensions of Learning, are implemented in the differentiated classroom to provide the best teaching practices for Tier One, thereby reducing the need for interventions.

Given my experience teaching at the high school level as both a special education teacher and a co-teacher who worked within the inclusion model, as well as my experience coaching in middle schools and high schools around the country, I have become convinced that every secondary classroom needs to begin at Tier One: differentiating instruction so that all students can learn.  When teachers differentiate instruction, 80-90% of students are successful in meeting achievement benchmarks. (Hanson 2009)

1. The verbal linguistic, auditory delivery of information where students are expected to passively sit in their seats and take in information while trying to copy notes at rapid speed does not work for all students.
2. The students it does not work for are the students who are not responding to education and are doing poorly in the classroom as well as on their state tests. While this method may work for some teachers and some students, it does not work for the majority of our struggling student population.
3. A consequence of the lack of differentiation at the secondary level is that students who move on to college, whether to engineering coursework or technical school, primarily learned only one mode of studying. When they become college students and are met with challenging coursework, they often lack the study skills to support them in the more rigorous academic environment. This is why we often find that our most successful high school students don’t meet expectations at the college level.

The reality is that until we differentiate instruction at the secondary level, a basic requirement of Tier One RTI, we are shortchanging all our students: English-language learners, students with special needs, trade bound students, or students heading off to college.

Excerpted from RTI Strategies for Secondary Teachers by Susan Gingras Fitzell.

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On Standardized Tests:

The easiest questions are at the beginning, the middle more difficult and the end, the most difficult. If a question at the end seems too easy, it’s probably the wrong answer.

On Essay Tests:

• Make notes on back of exam sheet, eg., ACRONYMS, Visual Cues, etc.
• Read directions carefully
• Underline key question words.
• Number all parts of the question.
• Jot notes along side each question as you read it for the first time.
• Pretend the reader is totally ignorant of the topic!

How to Handle Reading Passages on Tests:

• Find the main idea: Each passage has a main idea. Read for the main idea and skim the details.
• Read quickly, answer slowly: Most students do the opposite: read slowly and answer quickly. Read for the main idea and you’ll read quickly.
• Mark as you read: After reading each paragraph, make a brief note of two or three words in the margin. Indicate what went on in the paragraph. Circle important details.

How to Handle Math Questions on Tests:

• Look for shortcuts: For example, you know that an odd number multiplied by an odd number gives an odd number for an answer. If only one of the choices is an odd number, it has to be correct.
• Work in consistent units:
  • If one side of a rectangle is given in inches and another in feet, convert them both to feet or inches before you multiply or add.
  • Don’t do all the computations in your head.

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“THE BIG FOUR”

Jane E. Pollock’s “Improving Student Learning: One Teacher at a Time” builds off of the old saying, “When reading, think like a writer. And when writing, think like a reader.” by applying it to the Teacher/Student relationship.

Pollock offers a structure she calls “The Big Four” to build a learning program that is centered around student achievements.

1. Clearly articulated curriculum, benchmarks, and learning targets

2. Purposeful instructional planning and delivery

3. Purposeful and varied assessment, tied to learning targets

4. Record-keeping and reporting that allow for timely and meaningful feedback that is based on specific criteria

This user friendly book has lots to offer teachers working to differentiate curriculum based on research based best practice. I hope you enjoy the book and feel free to let me know what you think!

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After I’ve taught a concept and I’m ready to have students do small group or independent practice work on the concept, I ask them for a show of hands.

Ask: Show me with your fingers how well you understand the concept.

If  you would like me to go over the concept again, put a fist up. Or phrase it another way, “If you would like me to re-teach the concept and break it into chunks before you move on, put a fist up” or “If you  ‘don’t get it’, put a fist up.” Find a way to ask so that students don’t feel like they are admitting stupidity in front of the whole class.

If you get it, and you would benefit from more practice, put up three fingers. And lastly, if you are bored, you get it, and ready to move on, put up five fingers.

Once students put their fingers up, you have a way to group them. Put all the fists together and re-teach them the concept breaking it down into smaller chunks, using memory strategies, etc. Spend only a few minutes re-teaching and then have them work in pairs to practice what you just reviewed.

Check on the “three finger” group and make sure they are set. This will take a minute or two.

Then, present the ‘five finger” group with a challenge question, an investigation, advanced problems, etc. or work that challenges them and takes them to the next level. Spend about three to five minutes getting them going. Then go back to the “fist” group.

We so often lament that we have to teach to the middle. This strategy allows us to quickly, efficiently and on the spot assess students and teach to their level, providing interventions where needed and advanced instruction where warranted.

Another option is to put one “fist” one “three fingers” and one “five fingers” together in a triad and have them teach each other. Now, as teachers, we can move around the room and assess how students are doing, providing support where needed.

This sure beats running around the room trying to support a wide range of students individually in the classroom. There’s never enough time to do that. We simply end up frazzled and feeling like we didn’t meet everyone’s needs.

I was in Bow, NH yesterday presenting a session on differentiated instruction and shared this strategy with the group. One of the teachers in the group, Patti Lally, a teacher at Bow Elementary School, left me a variation of this activity in my “idea bag”. She credits the idea to her colleague, Karen Boyd. Here’s her variation:

When choices are necessary to answer a question, ask children to raise and show a colored card: A red card means,  “I don’t get it”, a blue card means, “I need some help” and a green card means, “I got it”. She asks the question then says, “Three, two one, show me!” The students raise the colored cards. She has a quick way to find out where kids are at with their understanding and a way to put them in flexible practice groups.  She suggests making the cards about the size of an index card in red, blue and green and laminating them. Then punch a whole in them and put them on a ring so that students have easy access to all three colored cards.

Organization tip: Put a sticky backed hook on the side of the desk and hang the cards there.

Have a wonderful day!

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