CEDO 525 - Enhanced Learning - Responses to Chapters 4-6

     Chapter 4 covered Cues, Questions, and Advanced Organizers.  I think being good at providing cues and probing questions is the foundation that all good teachers have.  It is central to any good teacher's repertoire and is underrated in most circles.  Any random individual could probably present the material to students at most levels but the cues and questioning that a teacher employs distinguishes them from a good teacher and a mediocre teacher.  If a teacher can neutrally facilitate a discussion in such a way that students come to their own conclusions and form their own base knowledge then the teacher is truly performing their role masterfully.  I thought the book brought up a very effective strategy when it mentioned simply waiting briefly before accepting an answer.  This can cause students to internalize their answer and allow other students to analyze it as well.  I'd like to add that I've had success when not indicating whether I agree or disagree with answers and avoiding giving students indicators as to whether I think an answer is right or wrong.  By collecting answers and then posing questions about those answers back to the class I have found that the students really become involved in higher level reasoning while achieving answers by self-discovery more often than not.
     The Chapter 5 topic is Non-linguistic Representation.  Using Kinesthetic activities or physical models are extremely effective from my experiences.  I think we don't see as much of these types of lessons as we should.  They tend to take a a higher level of organization and planning than your conventional "read from the book or follow along" lessons.  Lessons using kinesthetic activities or physical models also tend to take longer.  I think sometimes that teachers are under a time crunch and elect to go the "quick" route to fit all of the content in and sometimes I feel that teachers choose the "easy" route because they are plain lazy.  Regardless, it is a shame that we don't see more lessons that make use of non-linguistic representation because it has been proven that it reinforces conventional methods and it is able to reach those students who are visual or hands-on learners.
     Chapter 6 dealt with Summarizing and Note-taking.  I think the generalization that the book made pretty much sums it up: "To effectively summarize, students must be able to delete information, substitute information, and keep information."  When that is taking place it means that the students are giving the content a deep analysis and that they have a firm grasp on the subject matter.  The book also mentions that verbatim note taking is the worst method.  That is something I intend to pass on to the staff at my school.  When I read about the Cornell note taking method a week or two ago I brought it to the attention of our resource teacher and also provided our middle school teachers with some samples and showed them how effective it could be. The Cornell method is in the process of being assimilated into the middle school classes and after teachers become more comfortable the idea is to introduce it at the 4th and 5th grade levels as well.  It'll be another tool to help students organize their learning and foster a higher level of comprehension.