A Basic Strategy for Really Boring Papers and Really Interesting Books

And that about sums up this blog post.

Not really.

But since everyone else was putting cool pictures on their blogs, I figured I would follow the crowd. Next time, I'll be relevant.

Speaking of which(!), I have a blog topic: Pre, during, and post strategies, and how they help students.

First, and explanation of pre, during, and post strategies for language arts instruction. These strategies are reminiscent of that effective, but supremely boring, essay strategy from Composition I. First, you tell them what you are going to tell them. In this case, them is the students, and this step is the 'pre stage.' You inform the students , or get the students thinking about what they will be learning, and get them to engage the material they will be learning. Then, you 'tell them.' This is parallel to strategies during the reading phase which reinforce student interactions with a text and with language in general. When the lesson is over, you tell them what you told them: Post lesson strategies. These strategies are ways to elaborate the learning that has taken place, and to make the learning their own.

Pre, during, and post lesson strategies are actually a whole lot more interesting than the essays I wrote in Composition I though; primarily because of the way they offer engagement. For example, one can use prediction or exploration to engage students with subject matter before presenting them with the book to inspire curiosity; teachers can teach vocabulary concurrently within a text, and then check predictions, recap vocabulary, and elaborate on story topics, words or settings in post story writings, or send students to the library to find other information on topics that interested them within a text.

So, what's the point of all this? A lot of things, actually. Hopefully, the students have acquired multiple references to the text in their file storage system (read: brain) which makes the story easier to access, and by extension, the lessons that were imbed into the story, such as vocabulary and sequencing. Also, it allows a variety of language arts to be taught in an organized manner through a single story. This is especially effective if the story content is appealling to the students. The cummulative result is that students remember more information in a more organized manner that is accessible through a wider variety of connections; and they enjoy a great book and learn a lot from it.

P.S. Narwhals rock.