Teaching by Fostering

Learning Strategies
•EDU 221
 Learning Strategies
• Change of Schedule (no quiz #3; final will
be over chapters 11-14-videotapes; Dec. 7 th
Classroom Management Strategies &
working with parents)
• HYLA #2 findings
• Chapter 11 Group Presentation
• Chapter 11 PP
For Tuesday: Read Chapter 12
 Learning Strategies
• Goal:
– Learning Strategies are designed to help
learners become cognitively active learners. 

• 3 Main Criteria
– involves intentional cognitive processing by
the learner
– occurs at the time of learning           
– intended to improve learning
 Passive to Active
• teach students how to learn not just what
to learn
• learning strategies help students:           
– recall specific facts           
– organize material into coherent
structure           
– integrate material with prior
knowledge                   

***All are traits of active learning.***

 Benefits
• Learning strategies help students become
skilled learners.
• Highly skilled students can look at new
material and perform the following
actions.
– Be able to select relevant material
– Know how to organize the material into a coherent
structure
– Integrate the new material with previous knowledge
Mnemonic Strategies
What Are Mnemonic Strategies?
• Techniques that help students remember
material through memorization
• Promote transfer 2 ways
• By memorizing the basic facts and then
using the information without much effort

• When a student has learned information a

mnemonic can help make the information
seem more meaningful.
 Willingham, D.
(2008).
What will Improve
a Students
Memory?
Letter Examples
– Acronym Example:
• ROY G BIV
– Colors of the rainbow
– Acrostic Example:
• My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles
– To remember the order of the planets in the solar system
 Why Mnemonics Work
• Dual Coding- strategies involve imagery as well
as verbal representation, meaning more ways to
find it in memory.
• Organization- provide organization into which
new information fits, tends to hold it together
rather then separate in memory
• Association- involves forming associations
between information which allows for better recall
of the information.
Structure Strategies
Goal: Prompt active learning by
encouraging learners to mentally
select relevant pieces of
information and relate them to
one another within a structure.
 “Dual-coding” Theory
-Paivio, 1991

• Stored in Memory in Two Forms:

– Linguistic: words or statements
– Non-linguistic: mental pictures of physical
sensations
• Most information is delivered linguistically
• Structure Strategies designed to help students
see relationships between information with the
help of visual representations
 Graphic Organizers
Help organize the information being presented by visually
representing meaningful relationships among concepts.

• Concept Maps: Depicts

information hierarchically

• Venn Diagrams: Allow

comparisons (similarities and
differences)
 Graphic Organizers cont.
• Fishbone diagrams: examine
cause and effect relationships

• Webs or Mind Maps: free

associations and links among
ideas
 More Graphic Organizers

• Life cycle diagrams: how a

series of events or stages are
related to one another in a
repeating process

• Chain of Events/Time Lines:

time-sequence patterns
Generative Strategies
 What are generative
strategies?
• Learning strategies that are used to
help integrate the information that was
presented to the learner.

• Promote Mathemagenic Activity

 Generative Strategies

• Note taking
• Summarizing
• Repeating information out loud
• Answering questions

All require students to integrate the given

information to information the previously
learned.
 Slotte and Lonka (1999)
• It is more beneficial to take summary
notes rather than verbatim notes.
– Summary notes require more in depth
thinking
• Organizing material
• Integrating material
– Verbatim notes do not require the student
to put information into their own words,
which leads to a lower grasp of concepts.
 Generative Strategies

• Note taking
• Summarizing
• Repeating information out loud
• Answering questions

All require students to integrate the given

information to information the previously
learned.
 Questioning Method
• Aimed at getting the student to create
questions relating to the information in order
to build onto their knowledge base.
• If a student is taught how to construct
questions about certain aspects of a topic they
are more likely to integrate previous
knowledge to the new information.
• Questioning can lead to deeper understanding
and lead to transfer of the information.