Spotlight on Strategies: Get Venn-y with It
Even though there is always a mind-boggling amount of invaluable info shared on the Discovery Educator Network (DEN), one of the best resources available is the Spotlight on Strategies (S.O.S) series, a must-see DEN favorite designed to provide teachers with simple yet effective instructional practices for using digital content to support student learning.
To date, there are 70+ teacher tried and tested strategies featured on the DEN blog and now thanks to Lance Rougeux, Vice President of Learning Communities and Educational Consultants at Discovery Education and all-around DEN tech guru, I will now be featuring these techniques on my space. Two thumbs up to this guy!
So, enough of that. Let’s fast forward to the really good stuff…
This week’s feature—Get Venn-y with It—is an instructional strategy that improves comprehension skills.
Big Idea
According to Robert J. Marzano, one high-yield instructional strategy is to helpstudents identify similarities and differences. And Harvey Silver states, in his book Compare and Contrast, that this strategy “strengthens students’ memories by focusing their thinking on analyzing pairs of ideas, enhances their ability to remember key content and improves comprehension by highlighting important details.” By using digital resources, educators are able to level the playing field for students who may not have had real life experiences on which to base their reasoning.
Now that I have your attention, all you have to do is click here to snag a PDF version of this super cool strategy which includes info related to materials needed, steps for integrating the Get Venn-y with It strategy into lessons, an example and extension activities.
Better yet—click here to check out the entire S.O.S. series on the DEN blog!
So, there you have it: Another S.O.S. trick to add to your edtech toolbox. Stay tuned for additional ways to activate learning in your classroom…
Like what you see? Then take the digital integration challenge by trying to implement the Get Venn-y with It concept and/or one of these additional ideas into a classroom lesson: