1 Part two of module four will address understanding the importance of study and inquiry skills as tools for learning. Understand the importance of study and inquiry skills as tools for learning. 2 STUDY SKILLS Using graphic organizers Taking notes Previewing Setting purpose for reading Summarizing Making connections INQUIRY SKILLS Questioning Planning Researching Creating Improving Presenting This module covers both study and inquiry skills. Study skills include effective study and learning skills that can be incorporated into the classroom instructional routines to help students learn effective studying skills to help them on tests. Some effective study skills that we will look at include using graphic organizers, taking notes, previewing, setting a purpose for reading, summarizing and making connections. Inquiry is a process. To inquire means to ask questions. The inquiry process begins with a question and needing to find the answer. The rest of the process includes planning, researching, creating, improving, and finally presenting to your audience the answer to your question. Let s start by looking at study skills. 3 Illustrate the relationship among concepts within a text. Use as a study aid. As we discussed in module two, graphic organizers illustrate the relationship among concepts within a text. Graphic organizers can then be used as a study aid. For instance, if an informational piece of text is organized using the cause and effect text structure, the student would write the cause and the multiple effects from the text and then use this graphic organizer to study for an upcoming test on the concept.
4 Note-Taking Area Short main ideas and key information from teacher s information and textbook reading. Cue Column Area Completed after the notes have been reviewed. Questions that the notes answer. Summaries Area Brief summary of the notes in student s own words. Sum up how all of the information on the notes page fits together. Taking notes is an effective study skill, but usually reserved for students in middle school and above. One note taking approach is the use of Cornell notes. In Cornell notes, the student s note page is divided like on your screen. Let s begin with the Note-Taking Area. In this area students would take the notes from the classroom work, or teacher s information. These notes should be short, and contain the main ideas and key information. The next section, the Cue Column, is completed after the notes have been completed. The student reviews the notes that were taken and then devises questions that the notes answer. This questions, or cues, are written in the Cue column. Finally, the summary at the bottom is a very brief summary of the notes in the student s own words. The summary should sum up how all of the information on the notes page fits together. 5 Previewing Looking through the text beforehand. Walking through the text to show text features, text structure or to pre-teach challenging vocabulary. Setting a Purpose Fiction Read the chapter to find out how the character feels about or read to the end of the second page to see when the setting changes. Previewing the text is looking through the text beforehand. Teachers can teach students how to preview text by walking them through the text they are going to be reading and showing them different text features, the text structure or to pre-teach challenging vocabulary. Teachers first set a purpose for their student s independent reading of a piece of text. This instructional strategy then becomes internalized in students so that they begin to set a purpose for their own reading of the text. For instance in fiction text, the teacher may ask the small group of students she is working with to Read the chapter to find out how the character feels about or read to the end of the second page to see when the setting changes. Let s take a look at an instructional strategy that incorporates both previewing and setting a purpose for reading an informational piece of text.
6 This activity is conducted using the National Geographic article Race to the South Pole 7 I ll model thinking aloud as I preview the text. You are going to be reading an informational article about two explorers who raced to the south pole in the early 1900s. 8 Who were the two men? How did they get ready? What dangers did they face on the ice? In informational text, there are headings and subheadings. One way that we can set a purpose for reading is to turn all of the subheadings into questions. Let me show you, for this first subheading, Two Men, One Goal I m going to turn it into the question, Who were the two men? I m going to write this question on a sticky note and place it in the article. Now I m going to do the same thing for the rest of my subheadings.
9 What happened to each man during the race? Who had to be recovered? For the entire article, I ll turn all of the subheadings into questions. Who were 10 the two men? How did they get ready? What dangers did they face on the ice? Roald Amundsen from Norway and Robert Scott from England wanted to be the first to reach the South Pole for their country. After I have turned all of my subheadings into questions, I m going to go back and read each section to find the answer to my question. I m going to transfer each of the sticky notes to my reading response journal and then record my answers to each question beside the question in the journal. 11 Write a brief statement that contains essential ideas of a longer passage or selection. Identify most important information from the text. Concisely synthesize this information into their own words. Summarizing is the ability to write a brief statement that contains the essential ideas of a longer passage or selection. In order to summarize students must be able to first identify the most important information in the text. For instance in fiction this would be the story elements, the main characters, setting, conflict, sequence of events that lead up to the solution to the conflict and the resolution. Once students can identify these elements, they then need to be able to concisely synthesize this information into their own words.
12 Linking knowledge from previous experiences with ideas in the text. Text-to-Self connection Text-to-Text connection Text-to-World connection Schema Theory The web Social studies science Textbooks Many places magazines Informational Text Pass a test Interested in topic Reasons to read it how to Find facts Honig, Diamond, Gutlohn, (2008) Making connections to text involves linking your knowledge from previous experiences with the ideas in the text. Research shows that what readers knew about the topic of the text before reading it had a huge impact on the messages they took away from reading. Different connections that readers can make to a piece of text include text-to-self connection which links ideas in the text to something from the reader s personal life, text-to-text connections links something in the text currently reading to ideas from information in another text, text-to-world connections links ideas in the text to something that is, or has, happened in the world. The role of the reader s world knowledge in comprehension can be demonstrated through Anderson and Pearson s schema theory of how knowledge is organized. Schema theory suggests that the mind stores information in a network of knowledge structures called schemas. As good readers see topics in a text, they access their schema for the topic. Each schema is connected to many related schemas, so once a schema is activated, the reader has access to a whole network of information to support understanding the text at hand. In turn, new information from the text gets liked into existing schemas, making the information easier to understand and recall. The schema web on your screen is one way to show a schema. 13 Place for students to explore their reactions and responses to literary and informational texts. Readers who use journals regularly are actively involved in the process of comprehending. Three different types of readers response journals: Double-entry journals Reading Journals Response Journals An effective way to incorporate many of the study skills we have just looked at is through the use of Reader s Response journals. Response journals are place that students can explore their reactions and responses to literary and informational texts. Readers who use journals regularly are involved actively in the process of comprehending as they record their feelings, thoughts and reactions to various types of literature. Pages 392-395 in your textbook explore three different types of reader s response journals.
14 Inquiry is a process. It begins by being hooked by a question and needing to find the answer. Teaching students this process helps them become active learners who have a means to learn whatever they need to know. PROPERTIES Allow user to leave interaction: Show Next Button: Completion Button Label: After viewing all the steps Show upon completion Next Start with the first event on the timeline, questioning and then continue along the timeline. Inquiry begins by asking a question. The situation may be a class assignment such as the one in the example used throughout this inquiry presentation. The situation might be a school assignment, or a science project. The basic questions are the same: 5 W's and H Who is involved? My science class What is my goal? To help an endangered species Where is the situation? In science class, in the school, and in my community When is the situation? Over the next three weeks Why am I doing this? It's an assignment How should I do it? We could maybe have a fund-raiser Once you have analyzed the situation, brainstorm ideas, like in the picture attached to this slide. The next stage is the planning stage. Planning means outlining the goals and objectives and listing the tasks that are need to accomplish the goals and objectives. This part involves deciding what to do and how much time and resources are available to do it. A planning sheet like the one in the picture can help. Each inquiry project will require some amount of research. Researching involves working with media, technology, information and people. While researching, a good system for organize notes is important. This twocolumn note page in the picture keeps track of fundraising ideas on the left and comments on the right. Creating: After the research is conducted, and all the
materials are gathered, it is time to develop the project. All of research and planning come together to create something new. Improving: After creating something, it is important to look closely at what was created to see if it met the goals of the project. This stage also involves analyzing what could have been done to improve what was created. Presenting: Once the work is ready, it is time to present to an audience. This is also the time to see what was learned as the work was completed. 15 TEACHER GENERATED Literal How long do Emperor penguin chicks stay in a kindergarten? How old is a giraffe calf when it enters a kindergarten? Inferential When would Emperor penguins and giraffes form kindergartens? Extended Giraffes and Emperor penguins use kindergartens to protect their young. What might other animals do to protect their babies? STUDENT GENERATED Level One Right there questions Answer can be found in one place in the text. Requires a one word, or phrase answer Level Two Think and search question Requires the person to go to two places in the text to find the answer. Level Three Requires information from the text and information from another source to answer the question. Inquiry is about questioning. It is important that questioning take two forms; the questions that teachers ask students and the questions that student generate about the texts they are reading. Even in the primary grades it is important that educators are asking deep thinking questions during their question-answer sessions with students. Open-ended questions that follow the following categories will help students think deeper about the texts they read or are being read-aloud to them. For instance a literal question might be, How long do Emperor penguin chicks stay in a kindergarten? or How old is a giraffe calf when it enters a kindergarten? Taking those questions up to a higher level, would be inferential questions, such as When would Emperor penguins and giraffes form kindergartens? These types of questions require deeper understand. The next level would be the extended level, such as Giraffes and Emperor penguins use kindergartens to protect their young. What might other animals do to protect their babies? At the top of the presentation is a resource link to additional questioning stems for each of the types of teacher generated questions. In addition to students being asked to answer questions it is important that they participate in generating their own questions from the texts that they read. There are three levels of student generated questions. Level One questions are right there questions. The answer to the
question can be found in one place in the text and the answer is usually only one word or a short phrase. This is similar to the teacher generated literal questions. The level two questions require the reader to think and search throughout the text to answer the question. The question can t be found in one place in the text, rather they must search at least two places to locate the answers. Note how this is similar to the inferential teacher generated questions. Finally, level three student generated questions. These questions require the student to link information from another source to the information in the text he is reading. This information may be something from another piece of text or information from the world to generate this question. There is many resources, including your textbook on page 347, available on incorporating student generated questioning into the classroom instructional practices. 16 The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Research strand contains the state standards at each grade level for research.
17 This page shows the overall requirements at each grade level; the subsequent pages list the specific grade level requirements. Note, that students at all grade levels are expected to ask open-ended research questions and develop a plan for answering them. The complete list of the TEKS is available from the TEA website. 18 Study and inquiry skills as tools for learning. Final module four assessment. Part two of module four covered understanding the importance of study and inquiry skills as tools for learning. Rather than a practicum, the information from this short training is included in the final module four assessment.