Saturday, August 18, 2012

Metacognition FOCUS LESSONS


Focus Lessons:  Practicing Understanding

Laura Benson, 2005
 

A few ways to help students understand…

& Teach students what YOU DO as a thinker, learner, reader, writer, mathematician, historian, artist, scientist…

o   Model, name, explain - Create a “show and tell for thinking” with your students.

o   Draw from your literacy wells to develop your think alouds and reveal what you do in your head to create and maintain understanding (wells = the texts on your nightstand table, desk, computer)



! Teach students “Universal Habits of Understanding.”

o   Stop Signing/Stop to Self-Talk

o   Warming Up (surveying text rituals)

o   Pardon me?/Push your rewind button (rereading)

o   Summing Up

o   Scrabble Scholar (problem solving new words/word work skills)



& Teach Students how to interact with texts

o   Stick It!/Sticky notes and flags

o   Taking Note/Key Word Notes/Cornell Notes

o   Brain Stains/Prioritized Highlighting

o   Thinking Ink/Leaving Tracks of Thinking On The Text

o   Short Hand/Coding the Text

o   H.O.M. [Holding Onto Meaning]Advanced Organizers

o   Thinking Maps (Hyerle; Curtis)

o   One-Sentence Summaries/One Word Summaries

o   Double-Entry Journaling

o   Cumulative Writing



! Teach students why and how to talk to themselves as they read/write/learn/listen/do to deepen their understanding and caring.

o   Self-Talk                                                        

o   Student as Teacher

o   Book Clubs and Literature Circle Discussions   

o   Talking Circles


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