SPED 604: Theoretical and Empirical Bases of Education for Learners with Mild/Moderate Disabilities
Lecture #8/Assignment #8
Learning Strategies
Disorders in Psychological Processing Psychological processes are:
- underlying abilities in such areas as perception, motor, linguistic, and memory functions.
- intrinsic.
Teaching Based on Psychological Processing Concepts Training-the-Deficit Process:
- The purpose is to help the student build and develop those processing functions that are weak through practice and training.
- The teaching plan is to strengthen the deficit to ameliorate the disability.
Teaching Through the Preferred Process:
- This approach uses the student's strength as the basis of learning.
- Circumvent the student's processing weaknesses.
The Combined Approach:
- Instruction is delivered using a method that capitalizes on the processing strengths, while concurrently using methods to strengthen the weakness.
The Information-Processing Model of Learning Input/output:
- Analogous to a computer
Significance for Teaching:
- A copy of an experience is stored very briefly in the sensory register.
- The information is immediately lost from the sensory register unless an effort is made to pay attention to it.
- The student must be attending.
- The lesson must be planned to initially spark the attention of the student.
Cognitive Learning Theories Instruction must be:
- constructive.
- link new information to prior knowledge.
- be given in a guiding social environment.
- teach strategies.
- develop automaticity.
- involve motivated students.
Learning Strategies Instruction Metacognition
Metacognition is:
- the awareness of one's systematic thinking about learning.
- the ability to facilitate learning by taking control and directing of one's own thinking processes.
If metacognition is used:
- it indicates an awareness of one's own limitations.
- it indicates that the student has the ability to plan for his or her own learning and problem solving.
Examples:
- Making a shopping list.
- Verbally rehearsing your new phone number.
Efficient learners:
- develop and use learning strategies.
Students with Mild/Moderate Disabilities:
- lack the skills to direct their own learning.
- can learn metacognitive strategies.
Activity #1
Read the following passage. As you read it, try to observe what you do by asking yourself these questions:
1. Do I look back at the words I have just read?
2. Do I look at each word?
3. Do I think of other things when I read?
4. Do I read and think about the meaning of every word, or do I put words together into groups?
5. Do I really know what I am reading?
Beneath their feet the diesel engine thudded slowly, sending a thrust of power trembling through the deck. Across Tauranga Harbor, against the wharf at Mount Maunganui, a Japanese timber ship lifted her long black hull fretfully on the tide, dragging at the hawser with a dark, clumsy impatience. Farrer looked away, out to the harbor mouth, mentally checking off Matakana Island, impatient to be past it, as though the approaching bird sanctuary barred their passage to the open sea and the thing he knew awaited him there. The sun, still rising, spread hot, multi-fingered hands across the water.
Metacognitive strategies needed for school learning:
1) Classification - Used to determine type, status, or mode a learning activity.
What am I doing here? Is this activity important to me?
2) Checking - Involves taking steps during the process of problem-solving to determine progress, success, and results.
I remember most of the lesson. There's something I do not understand here.
3) Evaluation - Provides information about quality (goes beyond checking).
My plan is not good enough to rule out any risks.
4) Prediction - Provides information about the possible alternative options for problem solving and possible outcomes.
If I decide to work on this problem, the technical details will be hard to accomplish. I will have to get someone to help me out with them.
Learning Strategies "Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime".
The learning strategies approach to instruction:
- focuses on how students learn rather than what they learn.
When teachers help students acquire learning strategies:
- students learn how to learn.
Strategies Intervention Model (SIM):
- is a widely used model of strategy instruction.
- was developed over many years at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.
- see handout
Activity #2
* Use the describe stage of acquisition to write out to directions to teach someone to parallel park a car. When you are finished, read them to a partner for feedback.
* Remember to include the rationale and benefits of the strategy and to carefully describe the steps.
Activity #3
Use the stages of acquisition and generalization to teach a partner to add three one-digit numbers.
(e.g., 5 + 2 + 3 = ____)
Now switch roles and have your partner use the acquisition and generalization stages to teach you the steps in long division.
(e.g., 46 / 8 = ____)
Skills for School Success (Archer & Gleason, 1989) - A four-level, teacher-directed program
Components:
1) School behaviors and organization strategies
HOW your paper should look:
Heading
Organized
Written neatly
2) Learning strategies
RCRC strategy
Read
Cover
Recite
Check
3) Test-taking strategies
4) Textbook reference strategies
Textbook chapter reading:
* Read the title and introduction * Read headings and subheadings * Read the summary * Read the questions at the end of the chapter * Tell yourself what the chapter will be about
5) Strategies for interpreting graphics
6) Strategies for using reference materials
Activity #4
* Look back at the description of the RCRC strategy for memorizing and studying.
* Now turn to any section of your textbook.
* Use the RCRC strategy to study what is on that page.
* Did it help?
* In what situations would you use it with elementary or middle school students?