By Licda Belinda Davis Maithand
This information is based on The Florida Department of Education, Bureau of Curriculum and Instruction.
Research based information shown two special cases for learning strategies:
1. The expertise reversal effect. Students who possess high levels of expertise in a subject do not benefit from the same strategies that work for average students. they require direct information to integrate for themselves with what they already know.
2. The powerful resistance to learning. It refers to students misconceptions in a subject area. Traditional strategies also fail to work, they require intense constructivism.
Motivational Strategies
Instructional materials must include features to maintain learner motivation. Features that maintain students motivation include:
* positive expectations
* feedback, and
* appearance.
The degree of challenge and relevancy of activities also influences positive expectations:
- challenge works-not too easy, not too hard.
-"Relevant" helps; "irrelevant" hurts
-personal connections improve learning
Students are motivated by informative feedback about correctness, incorrectness, and how to improve what they are learning.
Appearance refers to materials with features that look appealing.
Teaching a few "Big Ideas"
Instructional materials should thoroughly teach important ideas, concepts or themes. they provide:
- focus for students and
- completeness
Explicit Instruction
Instructional materials must contain clear statements of information and outcomes. It depends on:
- clarity of directions and explanations, and
- exclusion of ambiguity.
Guidance and Support
Instructional materials must include guidance and support to help students safely and successfully become more independent learners and thinkers.
Effectiveness of guidance and support depends on:
- level and
- adaptability.
An example of an organized routine would be to give the structure for a task followed by practice before moving on to production, and then to provide guided practice before independent practice.
Lectures help "advanced" students; "average" students need scaffolding. Research shows that students with less expertise require more structure, active learning , and guidance such as examples, hints, explanations, practice in working, and feedback on how they are doing.
Materials should accommodate differences in learning styles with a variety of activities and modalities.
In general the types of guidance and support that have been effective in supporting student learning include the following features:
* goals at the beginning of an assignment;
* organized activities and routines;
* explicit organizational schemes and explanations;
* examples of finished products, sample problems, and models.
Students Responses
Students learn more when they do the following kinds of activities:
- generate their own charts or worksheets for study;
- summarize and take notes;
- discuss controversial issues;
- participate in peer tutoring;
- generate their own questions about topics after receiving guidance;
- construct their own knowledge.
Targeted Instructional and Assessment Strategies
Instructional materials should include the instructional and assessment strategies known to be successful for teaching the learning outcomes targeted in the curriculum requirements. This depends upon
* alignment of strategies and
* completeness of strategies.
Is important to evaluate student progress as a result of learning activities. This serves a dual purpose: 1 to assess individual student's performance based on learning outcomes, and 2 to provide information about the kinds of revisions needed to improve instruction.
