In the last part I talked about retrieval structures and their role in understanding what you’re reading. As promised, this month I’m going to focus on understanding scientific text in particular, and how it differs from narrative text.
First of all, a reminder about situation models. A…
Context is absolutely critical to successful communication. Think of the common experience of being a stranger at a family gathering or a meeting of close friends. Even familiar words and phrases may take on a different or additional meaning, among people who have a shared history. Many jokes…
Broadly speaking, a concept map is a graphic display that attempts to show how concepts are connected to each other. A concept map is a diagram in which labeled nodes represent concepts, and lines connecting them show the relationships between concepts.
There is one type of concept map…
In general, the weight of the research evidence suggests that college students tend to have a poor sense of how prepared they are for testing, and having been tested, they have a poor sense of how well they did! (This, of course, is even more true of younger students).
Does it matter?…
This post is the second part in a four-part series on how education delivery is changing, and the set of literacies required in today’s world. Part 1 looked at the changing world of textbooks. This post looks at the oral equivalent of textbooks: direct instruction or lecturing.
There’s…
Elaborative interrogation is a strategy to help you remember meaningful information. The idea behind the strategy is that relevant prior knowledge is not always readily activated when you are trying to learn new information, and sometimes help is needed to make the right connections. The…
As we all know, we are living in a time of great changes in education and (in its broadest sense) information technology. In order to swim in these new seas, we and our children need to master new forms of literacy. In this and the next three posts, I want to explore some of the concepts,…
This post is the third part in a four-part series on how education delivery is changing, and the set of literacies required in today’s world. Part 1 looked at the changing world of textbooks; Part 2 looked at direct instruction/lecturing. This post looks at computer learning.
The use of…
Michael Gove is reported as saying that ‘Learning facts by rote should be a central part of the school experience’, a philosophy which apparently underpins his shakeup of school exams. Arguing that "memorisation is a necessary precondition of understanding", he believes that exams that require…
Graphic summaries are summaries that reorganize the text. Two examples of graphic summaries are outlines and graphic organizers.
In an outline, topics are listed with their subtopics in a linear format, like this:
Branches of Government (U.S.A.)I.…