Show Me How to Learn
Practical guidelines for creating a learning community
Author: Robyn English & Sue Dean
Format: 96 pp book
ISBN: 1863667075 SCIS No: 1021064
Publisher: N/A 2001
Audience: Professional reference
Price: $39.95
Audience year level
Provides simple and straightforward steps explaining how to set-up and run learning centres in the classroom, with photocopiable pro formas to support a range of assessment techniques.
- Provides simple steps that show how to set-up and run learning centres.
- Guides students to set their own learning goals and take responsibility for their learning.
- Improves students` ability to reflect on their own learning through self-evaluation and peer-evaluation.
- Outlines step by step strategies for teaching English such as text schema, concept mapping and bundling.
- Includes reproducible student instruction sheets to support learning centre tasks.
- Offers a guide to planning the curriculum including valuable tips for recording ongoing assessment.
Judy Matthews, Education Officer in The arts, Middle Years literacy and Assessment and Reporting
This book is user-friendly, practical, easy to read and encompasses best practice over the last 10 years. The language is easy to understand and the headings are clear and easily locatable. This is a valuable resource for the busy classroom teacher and the teacher has permission to reproduce and use the proformas which include venn diagrams, scaffolding ideas, data charts, concept maps, peer assessment , just to name a few. . The book promotes self-assessment, peer assessment, the importance of monitoring group work and empowering students to be active participants in their learning.
The Goal setting and Reflection chapter is particularly appealing as it highlights the significance of a productive partnership between teacher and student. Students need to feel engaged and empowered in their learning and this book promotes this element. It recognises the need to organise, facilitate and construct team dynamics and is mindful of individual learning styles. My only criticism of the resource is that it does not address the full range of multiliteracies such as evaluating student powerpoint presentation, authentic demonstration of learning outcomes through presentation and other innovative and creative ways.
Overall the book promotes the creation of a learning community and attempts to promote the importance of higher order thinking skills and the need to accommodate different learning styles. The language is simple and non-jargonistic and lends itself as a resource that has a range of best ideas and proformas for the teacher to have at their finger tips.
*Reproduced with permission
The Catholic Education Office, Melbourne
ALEA Victoria News
This book is full of practical suggestions for the busy teacher and classroom. The layout is inviting, the ideas are exciting and the proformas provide useful tools for the busy teacher of any class level.
Written and practicing classroom teachers, this book cannot fail!
Tried and tested strategies ranging form suggestions to make your classroom a supportive, cooperative community; goal setting and reflection for students; establishing learning centres that really work; and a feast of English strategies.
A must have teacher reference book; one you can actually enjoy reading in bed at night!! Reviewed By Sue Young, President of the Melbourne Council of ALEA and teacher at Ivanhoe Girls Grammar School.
* Reproduced with permission
Term 3 2001, p4.
Canadian Review of Materials
A little learning is a dangerous thing. But a love of learning is a gift a teacher can create within students that will last a lifetime. Show Me How to Learn offers step-by-step guidelines for empowering students and creating a powerful learning community within a classroom.
Through six reader-friendly and easy to follow chapters, the authors provide tasks and best practices to engage all types of learners in grades three to eight (and beyond). Busy teachers will find the support, strategies and tools they need to build skills in reading, writing and research, and thus empower their students to be active participants in their own learning.
The book starts with practical ideas for the daily business of classroom organization: how to best meet the needs of students by creating an environment for learning that addresses the unique individuals in each class community, and how to establish a code of conduct to foster a positive environment are discussed with examples. The chapter on goal setting is extremely practical and offers a five step implementation plan:
- set the time frame and behaviour target (two months works best)
- identify learning strategies to make the goal happen (e.g. practising, researching, asking questions, being coached)
- make a plan of the strategies to use to achieve the goal (four or five things)
- keep the goal in mind
- revisiting and evaluating the goal
This process is useful for other situations as well. The chapter on student self-evaluation offers skill checklists, and annotated work samples. The furniture layout diagram in the chapter on establishing learning centres is very helpful, as is the list of criteria to be used in selecting group membership and the chart about how to set appropriate activities.
Teachers can easily put the principles into practice with the reproducible blackline masters at the back of the book. Pages of self-evaluation check- lists, data charts, Venn diagrams, scaffolding ideas, peer assessments and more are ready tools for assessment. There are also sheets to be used by students to support learning centre tasks. These include strategies for teaching English, including read and retell, context, and readers theatre. The book concludes with a professional reference list and a detailed index.
This book is the Canadian edition of a work originally published in Australia. My only quibble with the authors is that all we know about them is that they are practicing classroom teachers. I would have appreciated a little more background information on them. However, this is a moot point as the learning community they created that teachers can recreate by following their well-written guidelines is the true gift of Show Me How to Learn.
Highly Recommended.
Gina Varty is a librarian in Edmonton, AB, currently providing library supply for Edmonton Public Schools.
