Chapter 7 Strategies (Strategies for Analysis and Strategies for Knowledge Utilization)
Well, this will be the last post for this book study. I really hope that you have found this resource useful! I know that I have been enjoying it and our conversations around the topics. It has been wonderful having so many people joining in the discussions 🙂 I decided to do the last 2 sets of strategies together as there are only a couple of strategies in each one.
Strategies for Analysis:
31 Web It- Everyone knows how useful a web can be. It is useful for accessing prior knowledge, knoweldge learned, and setting up for a presentation, an essay or other written activity. Another great thing about a web is that the topic is variable and the amount of information that goes onto the web is personal.
32 Collect It- What a great strategy for having a student represent different topics! Being able to show the different concrete items related to a topic would be very meaningful. Having a sentence or two of information added to the display would make it even more interesting.
35 Compare It and Contrast It- Venn diagrams can be tricky for students, but with a little support and lots of practice, they can be excellent ways to show similarities and differences about a couple of topics. The information that goes into the Venn diagram can be level appropriate, even if the topics are the same for all students. Venn diagrams are definitely an easy way to adapt an assignment!
37 Edit It- This strategy would be useful for all students! Varying the level of difficulty could be as simple as some kids simply circling the errors while others have to write the correction above and others still have to re-write the text with the corrections made. This could be done to support peer editing, editing personal work or even just sample editing practice to support the learning of spelling, punctuation usage, etc. Super simple!
Strategies for Knowledge Utilization
38 Judge It for Yourself- The Judge It for Yourself graphic could be used in numerous different situations. STEM Project reflections, Social siuation problem solving, lit circles problem analysis and I am sure many more! You could easily change the “What did you do?” to include the name of a character in a story, keep “Then what happened” and change the “Would you do it again?” to something like “What could they have done differently?” or “What would you do in their situation?” etc. This could also be done using pictures rather than written statements. So many different uses!
39 Investigate It- The Investigate It strategy is great for students learning to research and write reports. It lays out the information nicely, allowing students to find the necessary information by answering some simple questions. It would be easy enough to make the questions more specific or vague, depending on the level of the student.
40 Predict It-This strategy is intended to have students make connections between what they already know and what they have learned. They can then use this information to predict what might happen in the future. This could be useful in science when doing similar experiments, in language arts, when exploring similar texts, even in artwhen exploring mixing of colours or examining different art techniques. It encourages students to use their critical thinking skills and dive deeper into the topics as they are making these predictions.
The strategies that Nicole Eredics has laid out for us in this book have been wonderful! I have enjoyed learning about/revisiting them over the course of this book study! I am going to have many different strategies to support my colleagues with and use in my own groups! I really hope that you, too, have enjoyed this book and the strategies within it. Feel free to add any of the ways you have used the strategies over the course of trying them out. We would love to hear about it! If you have found one or two of them to be praticularly useful and have a good story to go along with it, consider entering a short blurb into our publication to share with our members!
Thank you all again for your participation! I have once again enjoyed the book and the wonderful conversations evoked by it! I look forward to the next one! If you have any book suggestions, please do not hesitate to let me know! I am always looking for ideas 🙂 Remember to also join us at the book study luncheon at Crosscurrents!
Sarah