Back this week with Technique Number 14 from Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov, we will further explore ways to structure and deliver your lesson. This week's technique:
Board = Paper.
This particular technique requires preparation, at least the first time you teach material. A name commonly used for this technique in special education is "graphic organizers," with this particular organizer referred to as "guided notes." It is a great way to teach note taking and help all students, both special education and typically developing students, learn to look and listen for cues as to what is important in a lesson or a textbook passage.
The teacher prepares an outline for the days lesson with the things he/she wants the children to learn. The teacher then prepares a mock up of the same outline, with lots of blanks. Start out with only a few missing words and circulate as you teach to be sure the children are filling it in: you may also want to put the whole outline with the missing words on a Smartboard or on a transparency with an overhead. The trick is to increase the number of spaces, to the point that there is just a bare outline, and students listen for what needs to go next to a, b, and c.
The guided notes are also a good place to differentiate instruction: you won't be able to withdraw the support for note taking as quickly as you can for typically developing children, but the notes can be part of the special education students test preparation. A "study guide" based on the guided notes (the student searches his or her own guided notes for the answers) is a good way to help students with specific learning disabilities prepare for tests. Be sure that the student, not an educational aide, fills in the guided notes: this is one place where an educational aide will get frustrated with a student's slow pace and will over function for them.
Comments
Hi,
I wondered if the ’study guide” that the article mentions would be the objectives covered by that test, model questions that the teacher would present in the test or just highlights of the target topics for the test? What would be better to deliver in this study guide for special education students?
You got it, Lyla! If you don’t actually give students questions that will be on the test, give them some that will be similar, so they get familiar with your testing format. Students with Specific Learning Disabilities often freak when they see their test, and will guess all the way through. Giving them a study guide with similar content, in my experience, will help them succeed on the test.