Teaching - Learning Strategies

Many students face challenges to academic achievement. These include English Language Learners (ELLs), Struggling Readers (SRs), and Standard English Learners (SELs). Not only must these students learn standard academic English, but they must do so while learning content subject matter and skills. In addition, all students are now expected to meet the same national and state standards andassessments as proficient speakers, readers, and writers of standard academic English. Longman Cornerstone and Longman Keystone provide challenging content-based language development and learning strategies that help students achieve academic goals.

ANNA UHL CHAMOT
is a professor of secondary education and a faculty advisor for ESL in George Washington University’s Department of Teacher Preparation.She has been a researcher and teacher trainer in content-based, second-language learning, and language-learning strategies. She co-designed and has written extensively about the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) and spent seven years implementing the CALLA model in the Arlington Public Schools in Virginia.

Why teach learning strategies?
One way to accelerate standardacademic language learning for all students is to teach them how to learn more effectively and efficiently. Learning strategies are techniques for understanding, remembering, and using information and skills. Learning strategies are particularly important for students seeking to master both academic language and academic content simultaneously, as they do in Cornerstone/Keystone.

Learning strategyinstruction can help students by:
• Showing them techniques for “how to learn” • Developing their independence and confidence as learners • Increasing their academic motivation by helping them become more successful in school • Developing their awareness of their own thinking and learning processes
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esearch has shown that when students develop metacognition, the awareness of the learningprocesses and strategies that lead to success, they are more likely to plan how to proceed with a learning task, monitor their own performance on an ongoing basis, find solutions to problems encountered, and evaluate themselves upon task completion. All kinds of fiction, poetry, and informational texts provide students with models of academic and literary language. To make full use of thesemodels, however, students need to comprehend what they read. Reading strategies presented in Cornerstone/ Keystone in boxes immediately before each reading text provide detailed instructions on how to apply the strategy to the text they are about to read. These reading strategies will help students develop improved comprehension. Many of the reading strategies in Cornerstone/Keystone have broaderapplications and can be used as learning strategies for listening, speaking, writing, and remembering both vocabulary and content information.

Some examples are:
• Predict – Anticipate what is coming next during a listening activity. • Visualize/Use Visuals – Make a mental image of the events and characters in a story you are writing; use or draw a picture, diagram, or other visual aid to learnvocabulary or new information. • Make Inferences – Use the context of a listening activity and what you know about the topic to figure out the meaning of new words or ideas. • Ask Questions – Ask the teacher or others to explain what you do not understand; after speaking or writing, ask yourself or others how well you communicated your meaning. • Scan/Selective Attention – Focus on specific contentinformation, academic words, or literary words as you read, listen, speak, and write. • Take Notes – Write down important ideas as you listen and as you prepare to write. • Summarize – Create a mental, oral, or written summary of information you learn. • Classify/Sequence – Classify new words and ideas according to their similarities; sequence events, directions, and steps to solve a problem....