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Strategies to support writing. What Every Teacher and Student Needs to Know About Memory. In a recent article, Stephen Chew and William Cerbin claim, “Teaching and Learning are lost in a buzzword wasteland.”

What Every Teacher and Student Needs to Know About Memory

Teachers struggle to figure out what works and what doesn’t, some quickly adopt any new strategy while others are stuck on worn out ideas that long ago ceased to work. “Another nail in the coffin for learning styles” – students did not benefit from studying according to their supposed learning style. By Christian Jarrett.

“Another nail in the coffin for learning styles” – students did not benefit from studying according to their supposed learning style

Memory under stress: from single systems to network changes - Schwabe - 2016 - European Journal of Neuroscience. It has been known for more than half a century that stress and stress hormones affect learning and memory processes (Lazarus et al., 1952; McGaugh, 1966).

Memory under stress: from single systems to network changes - Schwabe - 2016 - European Journal of Neuroscience

Since then, a plethora of studies has demonstrated that stress can have both enhancing and impairing effects on memory and technical progress, such as the development of neuroimaging techniques in humans, has helped to shed light on the mechanisms involved in these effects. Most of this research focused on how stress alters the functioning of single, memory-relevant brain areas. The area that received most attention was the hippocampus, yet evidence for stress effects on other, non-hippocampal memory systems is accumulating. Stress, memory, and the hippocampus. School culture determines blended-learning success – EDUWELLS. When you were at school, you may have agreed with so many current students that ‘seeing your friends’ was by far the most significant positive about school.

School culture determines blended-learning success – EDUWELLS

This has been said to me in numerous schools of all types. These same schools all claim to have modern blended-learning environments (real+online). So, why has the internet and millions of dollars in technology around the world seemingly made little difference to the significance of learning at school? Increased achievement thanks to the opportunities offered by mixing on-line and off-line learning hangs on one important point – a mindset that allows these opportunities to flourish.

What the internet doesn’t change, is the feeling you are doing someone else’s work. Downloadable Materials — The Learning Scientists. About the six strategies for effective learning resources: These resources were created based on research from cognitive psychology from the past few decades.

Downloadable Materials — The Learning Scientists

To learn more about how we created the materials, see this blog. The materials are intended to teach about principles of learning and to provide teachers and students with flexible guiding principles to guide learning and studying. Learning Styles: A Misguided Attempt to Highlight Individual Differences in Learners — The Learning Scientists. Another learning styles concept is to differentiate between abstract versus concrete learners.

Learning Styles: A Misguided Attempt to Highlight Individual Differences in Learners — The Learning Scientists

The idea put forward here is that concrete learners need concrete entities and examples for successful learning whereas abstract learners enjoy abstract rules and representations. However, a much better way to look at individual differences is to take their prior knowledge and expertise into consideration. Doing so, makes clear that novices often use concrete steps and examples because they simply don’t have the knowledge yet to extract abstract rules or understand more abstract information. The Skill-Theory principles which underpin my teaching approach. Educational Leadership:Instruction That Sticks:Strategies That Make Learning Last. Daniel T.

Educational Leadership:Instruction That Sticks:Strategies That Make Learning Last

Willingham. Recognising the power of voice recording. Gone are the days when "computer assisted language learning" (Call) was restricted to practising writing, reading and listening skills.

Recognising the power of voice recording

The emergence of web 2.0 tools and the development of mobile and tablet applications are offering numerous ways for students to explore their own voice by recording themselves speaking. The teacher can then listen and provide feedback on their oral performance or get students to peer review or even self-review their work. Amongst the tools I have been experimenting with at the University of Warwick are MyBrainShark, Vocaroo and MailVu. All these tools are free to use and allow students to easily record their voices using a variety of devices and then share the recordings by emailing, embedding them into a blog or uploading onto a virtual learning environment such as Moodle. Vocaroo has to be one of the easiest tools I have ever used for making simple audio recordings.

For higher levels, MyBrainshark offers interesting opportunities. 5 Reasons Language Learners Should Acquire More Vocabulary. Posted on 25.

5 Reasons Language Learners Should Acquire More Vocabulary

Nov, 2013 by meaghan in Language Learning, Trends “While without grammar little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” – David Wilkins New language learners may assume that learning grammar is more important than learning vocabulary. Visible Thinking Routines for Blogging  Our school‘s fabulous PE teacher, Claire Arcenas, is bringing blogging to her PE classes.

Visible Thinking Routines for Blogging 

She is incorporating Visual Thinking Routines to help her students become reflective commenters. In a recent planning session, she reminded me of the book Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchard, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison, that I had download but not read yet. We then started diving into the core routines outlined on Visible Thinking from Harvard University. The core routines are a set of seven or so routines that target different types of thinking from across the modules. Bilingual Mind: Understanding How the Brain Speaks Two Languages. Learning to speak was the most remarkable thing you ever did. It wasn’t just the 50,000 words you had to master to become fluent or the fact that for the first six years of your life you learned about three new words per day.

It was the tenses and the syntax and the entire scaffolding of grammar, not to mention the metaphors and allusions and the almost-but-not-quite synonyms. But you accomplished it, and good for you. Now imagine doing it two or three times over — becoming bilingual, trilingual or more. The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself. 10 Reasons why Songs with Subtitles make Sense. Les personnages dans La Peste. Séquence 2 Nous allons étudier le roman de Camus en Oeuvre Intégrale (OI) : vous devrez avoir la connaissance la plus fine possible de ce roman.

Comment faire ? Lire le roman, mais surtout le relire et l'annoter ! En effet, d'ici la fin de l'année, vous aurez tellement lu qu'il vous faut des notes pour retenir tout cela ! (photo de zimpenfish) Lire, c'est bien, mais relire, stylos et petits papiers en main, c'est mieux ! Transition materials - moving from A-level to degree level - Language Box. 5 Fun Ways to Learn a New Language. For many of us, the start of the new year is the time we often dust off our language dictionaries and workbooks and resolve to learn a new language. We conjure up dreams of communicating seamlessly with locals during our next trip and impressing our friends with newfound skills. But most of the time, as we get caught up in work and life, our plans get shelved along with our books. What we know about second language acquisition. Education researcher and trainer Dylan Wiliam tweeted this abstract today.

The study concerned has analysed 71 peer-reviewed studies in order to find out the optimal conditions for learning a second language. Here is the relevant part for teachers of French in the UK, or teachers of English in France: (1)... L2 learners with little L2 exposure require explicit instruction to master grammar; (2) L2 learners with strong L2 aptitude, motivation, and first language (L1) skills are more successful; (3) Effective L2 teachers demonstrate sufficient L2 proficiency, strong instructional skills, and proficiency in their students’ L1; (4) L2 learners require 3-7 years to reach L2 proficiency, with younger learners typically taking longer but more likely to achieve close-to-native results.

On Language, Texting, & Being. I can speak some French. I took it all through school but learned it mostly when writing my dissertation which involved several French books that were, at the time, not yet translated. And for the books that were translated, I read the French not for accuracy per se but to get a sense for the writing — its style, its rhythm, its mode of being. Now, I love translations. I find the act of translation as amazing and erotic (such intimacy with another) as it is impossible (however actual).

Nevertheless, the two books side by side — one in English, the other in French — are two different characters. Strategies for Developing Listening Skills. Language learning depends on listening. Listening provides the aural input that serves as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication. Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their listening behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and listening purposes. They help students develop a set of listening strategies and match appropriate strategies to each listening situation. Listening Strategies Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input.

Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. Listening for the main idea predicting drawing inferences summarizing listening for specific details recognizing cognates recognizing word-order patterns. Winkegasssydorenko.

Howard Rheingold on managing your attention through meta-cognition. The many reasons (29 so far) why we DON'T succeed in learning languages, and retorts for why we can. Let's hear your reasons/solutions in the comments!