Instructional Strategies That Move Learning Forward

Now, it's my pleasure to introduce our presenters for today. Nancy Fry is a profess professor in educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. She is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist, and administrator in California. She is a member of her International Literacy Association Literacy Research Panel. Her published titles include 50 strategies for activating your PLC plus, the illustrated guide to visible learning, welcome to teaching multilingual learners, teaching foundational skills to adolescent readers, and rigor unveiled a videoenhanced flip book to promote to promote teachers expertise and relationship building instruction goals and relevance. Kirstston Barbie holds a doctoral degree in educational leadership and literacy from the University of Houston. She brings 20 years of education related experience in preK through 12 settings. She has served as a secondary English language arts teacher, an academic coach, and a professional development supervisor in urban districts, as well as a project manager of assessment for learning, which involve creating systemwide professional learning programs for central staff and campuses, promoted spread of research and evidence informed practices to maximize teaching and learning. Through an emphasis on relationship building and human centered design principles, Kirstston has coached preK through 12 principles, teachers, and district leaders on pediological practices that promote equality and student agency in learning. And Sarah Ortega is a credential bilingual teacher and an administrator in California. She served as a classroom educator for 19 years before moving into various leadership positions at the site and district level. In 2023, Sarah was recognized as the Chula Vista Elementary School District Teacher of the Year. Her teaching videos have been featured in professional development training and educator magazines. She is a professional learning consultant and works with schools and districts to design and implement learning solutions that support the emotional, behavioral and instructional needs of students. She is the co-author of teaching foundational skills to adolesccents and instructional strategies to move learning forward. So ladies, I will turn this over to you >> and thank you so much Melissa and and welcome to all of you. Uh it certainly I think I I should probably make this clear. Kirsten and Sarah and I started our careers as children. Um for any of you that are wondering like, "Oh my gosh, these people have been around a long time." Um uh really we started as children. Um uh but we also bring with us collectively uh a pretty varied experience uh in terms of uh being uh researchers, being instructional coaches uh being professional development uh coordinators uh and so on. And one of our areas of interest and a longlasting area of interest has been around learning strategies. In other words, what are those learning approaches that have a solid research base? Uh, and and that interest in the work that all of us do, especially as coaches, uh, and as leaders, is in helping teachers to be able to think about and reflect upon their own practice. Um, and uh, so what we thought we would do is just start out by uh, hanging out, spending a little bit of time in a classroom. Now, of course, I've got a task for you. And so, here's your task. Uh, using your expert uh, looking, expert noticing, uh, what are you seeing the teacher doing and what are you seeing the students doing? Right? I want you to think about both of those things at the same time. Same thing goes with hearing. What are you hearing from the teacher and what do you hear from the students, right? We can't just look at things from the standpoint of the teacher only. We want to see that interaction teacher side, student side. And a as you are watching this, your reflective thoughts are what does this make you think about uh when you think about effective teaching and learning? And so with that, I'm going to turn this over. Let's take a peek into this math classroom today. You're going to need >> a bag. >> Count that on your finger. A bag. >> You're going to need a paper. >> And you're going to need a bowl. >> A bowl. That's right. Look what I have for you. We're going to play the same game with a partner. How many dots are under the bowl? The sum is going to be what? >> 10. >> 10. How many dots do we have? >> 10. >> We have 10 dots. >> So, if you're with a partner, should you get to be the one that hides them every single time? >> No, you should take >> No. What happens when we have a partner? >> You have to take turns. >> My turn. Your turn. [clears throat] can't have it. You can't do it by yourself all the time. >> Why do you think these 10 frames are blank? >> Because you didn't there yet. >> I didn't put anything on there. What should I put on there? >> Our dots. >> Oh, no. >> Yeah, your dots. Not necessarily our dots, but we're going to put the color. So, if Mrs. Squid has four red dots that are on the floor. How many would I color in on my 10 frame? >> One, two, three, four. >> And then the other color would be yellow. That's under the >> Yeah. But you need >> We call that a combination of 10. So the rest, the empty boxes, I'm going to fill with >> yellow. Now I've just made an equation. Even though we haven't written out the add-ins and the sum, the digits, the numbers, we've made it on our 10 frame and we're able to show our learning. Let's count. Four + 6 makes 10. How many dots are outside of >> color it in? Three, four, five dots. >> Five. >> Yeah, there's five. Okay, open it. >> There's one, two, three, four, five. >> Name on a paper. I have to do it. I don't >> I >> How many are >> six? Show that on your TR. >> Show your thinking. I see six. Show me six. >> You're surprised. >> Yeah. Let's see what surprise is under the bulb. Okay, ready? Open your hands. >> And let's see if we did both of these things today to show our learning. Did we describe ways to make 10? >> Yeah. >> Did we find the missing parts of 10? Yes, we did. I noticed that some of us are still struggling. You may sit down with composing numbers to 10. Is that okay? Your exit ticket is this. >> Very quickly, you're going to write two ways to make 10. How many ways? >> Two ways. >> Two ways. You can draw it. You can write the equation. But I need to see two ways to make 10. What's your level of understanding? And then this is how we're lining up to specials today. >> Oh yeah, you can read. >> Oh, he's right. I'm sorry. >> Look for it. >> Do you see one? Where's mine? >> A R I Y A. >> Where's your name? >> I can teach anybody. >> Teach anybody? >> Hand it to me. I want to see it. Line up, Brenley. Thank you, Brenley, for following directions. >> Okay, >> write one more way. Gabby, you only showed me one. Thank you so much to all of you who were participating in the live chat. Uh it it's uh it's really wonderful to be able to see how observant uh all of you are and really being able to focus and lock in on that. Mrs. Gwyn used a lot of different strategies in order to be able to get there. And really importantly, she knew what the concepts were that she wanted to teach and how it was that she was going to go about self or go about assessing to be able to check for understanding while at the same time promoting those habits with her students. Those strategies are uh an important and essential part of lesson design. And lesson design has the potential to really be able to forward uh students thinking and learning to accelerate what it is that uh that looks like. For a couple of decades now, and remember I started when I was a child. um for a couple of decades now. Uh uh our colleague Doug Fischer and I have been working toward uh this particular lesson design, that gradual release of responsibility. And I I think about gradual release in ways that I think about uh dancing with the stars. I'll use that as an analogy. You know, if you're familiar with Dancing with the Stars, uh the dance couples come out and they compete against one another and there's always a particular theme assignment for the night. It perhaps is salsa night and so everybody comes out and they dance the salsa. Now, there's artistry that is involved with that as well, but there are conditions that make it a salsa and not a waltz. In other words, there are particular steps that make it a salsa. In the same way, when we think about instructional moves that we do, there are specific instructional moves that are meant to be able to achieve different things with students. When we talk about responsibility, we're talking about the cognitive responsibility. We're not talking about make your bed, clean your plate kinds of responsibility, right? And there are times during the lesson where the teacher is carrying more of the cognitive load. And there are times during the lesson where students are carrying more of the cognitive loan lo uh load. We call that learning. And these four steps help to be able to move the learning forward. Now, a misconception we have never ever ever said or written anywhere that they have to be done in this order. When you go out in salsa, you're using different combinations all the time. And we never have said that they had to be distributed in equal fashion. Now, let's take a look at some non-examples before we come back to that. We like to call this the sudden release of responsibility. I do it now. You do it alone. For some of us, we had these experiences, right, of watching the teacher do something and then it was turned completely over to us. Here's an even worse model, a lesson design. Do-it-yourself school. Here's a packet of shutup sheets. Now, shut up. Right? Students are having to direct all of their own learning. For example, I'll give a different example because you're you may be thinking like, well, I don't do packets. Hey, read chapter 4 and answer the questions at the end of the chapter. Do-it-yourself school. Little in the way of instruction. And this is a a a far too common model that happens. And and the thing is this will work for some kids, but it doesn't necessarily work for all students. That there's time when the teacher is providing that focused instruction. We saw Mrs. Gwyn uh doing that at the beginning of their lesson. and that there are opportunities for guided instruction to take place, questions, prompts, cues, and so on to help the student be able to do a heavier cognitive lift. And then there's time where students are working independently. Here's the problem. There's no collaborative learning in there. And we have a whole lot of students that need to engage literally with the language of the lesson. in order to do so. We know so much about how important dialogic teaching is, engaging in the language of the lesson. And so I don't want to imprint on that uh for too long. So let's go back to looking at that model. Now there are strategies that are associated with all of these instructional moves. They can be done in any order and in fact they're done again and again and again. um often implemented multiple times throughout the lesson as well. But what we were interested in especially was in thinking closely about what is important around lesson design. One of the things that's important is the timing. understanding when it is that you need to use different instructional moves in order to forward students thinking. And the second part of that is that we have to bolt on effective strategies that serve as vehicles to be able to carry that clarity, that connection, and that cognitive work. Now, it's always important to note that students are the focus, not the strategy. Please, please, please don't ever hold a strategy, an instructional strategy in higher esteem than the learning of your students. But we need to have reliable researchbased vehicles called strategies in order to be able to move the lesson forward. And so that's really what our focus is in putting together this work. So we're going to go ahead and start not with focus, but we're going to start in collaborative learning. And this phase is all about students working together. They're co-constructing meaning. They're testing ideas. They're deepening their understanding. And when students start talking through the process, it allows them to uh surface misconceptions either for themselves or for the teacher. It allows them to say, "Oo, I thought I knew this, but here's where I'm still struggling." So sometimes when we do that, um we when we skip the collaboration, teachers engage with students and students are like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, this makes sense when Miss Fry is doing it with me." But then when I go to do it by myself, it doesn't seem to make as much sense. So this piece is absolutely critical and serves a unique purpose. Now, we do have a book as you saw in some of the opening slides and here were some of the strategies that we listed. Um allowing collaborative annotations for students to make sense of a text together. um jigsaws where we're moving from home groups to expert groups to home groups to expert groups where we're all getting the chance to have that diversity of voice and perspective and ultimately seeing how does this piece fit in with the other pieces that I read. Peer assessment, right? Um peer assessment relies on students having a strong mental model for what it looks like to be successful. And we'll see in focused instruction where that starts taking place. But we want students to be able to say, "Ooh, I'm looking at the success criteria and I'm noticing you're doing this really well." The strategy that we're going to spotlight though for this particular webinar is the fiveword summary. So this is just a snapshot of what it looks like in the book. So all of the strategies then follow. Here is an explanation. Why is this impactful? How does this fit into the gradual release of responsibility? How would I then check for understanding with students? Um, there's a lot of variations of things out there. We call those out. Let's look at some related strategies and use a step by step. And this really stemmed from several conversations that I uh that we had out in the world where people were saying, okay, we know that there are high lever strategies, but how do we know how to do them? So, that's what every [clears throat] strategy looks like. But when we think about fiveword summary particularly for collaboration um we engage in a collaborative task okay where students as they are reading they're identifying the five most significant words independently and then they're going to work with partners and then with groups of four to start negotiating well what are the most significant words and why to come up with a master list of five words then to create a summary based on those five words. So you have a lot of student talk, negotiating, meaning making and we love this strategy. We use it a lot in our prof a lot of our professional learning because it helps us avoid group think. So even if Nancy has five words and Sarah has a completely different five words and I have some that overlap with both, it allows us to negotiate, get multiple touch points with the language of the text to form a deeper understanding. Okay. So, here's again what that might look like. We're going from independent work to collaborative work back to independent work. So, we see a couple different phases represented here. And then again, as a teacher, what am I looking and listening for? Well, as I'm looking at those five words, I want to see how students independently started making sense of the text based on their five words. Ben, I want to see how the their thinking starts to change as they negotiate meaning with their partner and ultimately their groups and then ultimately is that sentence that they or the summary that they form um does it match the text? Is it an accurate summary? >> Hey Louis, >> can we mute Miss Sarah please? So collaborative, right? Then we have we're going to move into our focused instruction, right? And focused instruction is one of the se things that we see a gap in oftentimes in instruction. There's a lot of telling and there's a lot of directing. But the focused instruction in itself we often see lacking. Sometimes this is a fault of the curricula and other times it's just a misunderstanding of what does focused instruction mean? So focused instruction then is a deliberate and structured teaching move where the teacher models and explains and demonstrates new learning with clarity and purpose. This is where they're uh making their own thinking visible so that every students understands well what does it look like to be successful here? What does that sound like? What is the thought process behind the teach uh the teacher's thinking? Okay. And this is really a critical entry point for learning because students start to gain clarity about what it is that they are coming into learning. And again, we might see this section multiple times throughout a lesson cycle. A lot of times we lead with it and we don't often have to. We may start off with some collaboration and see like, oo, okay, I see where the gaps are. Now that I know the misconceptions or m misunderstanding, let me then dive into focused instruction. And again, we included about 11 strategies here from advanced organizer where we're just helping students. Hey, here's the structure of the lesson. Here's some big ideas to help them orient their thinking. We might use what I've been doing a lot, uh, gestures to help students make sense. And we're going to combine whether I'm doing um, uh, hand motions, right? kinesesthetic type movement as a pneummonic to help students remember or just giving uh students we need to think about this really quickly right in pairing pairing with my words I might do a think aloud where it's eye language not we language again as a teacher to make my thinking visible but the strategy I'm going to talk about at a high level then is exemplars okay and exemplars um sometimes we we mess these up okay so exemplars authentic model showing performance from emerging understanding to mastery. Usually when we think exemplar a lot of people think oh it has to be the highest level of mastery and having that range allows students then to be able to see where am I in my work. So although I'm going to show proficiency and I'm going to show mastery, it's often helpful as students start to analyze, okay, well, what would then make this a four in writing? What would make this um a beginning in math? Okay. And this really helps again students see clearly what it looks like to be successful and perhaps where some gaps might exist. So um what is the main goal of the strategy? Why does this matter for learning? Well, again, it helps students see a range of examples. It's not just the highest level of learning. We know that with various funds of knowledge and the various uh background knowledge that our students possess. having an entry point to see, okay, this might be closest to my level and what do I need to do to move my thinking along to the next place. So, Nancy, I'm going to hand it back over to you for some guided instruction. Well, and I I I love the the question that Lily posed in the chat about, you know, you make some decisions about uh particular strategy that's going to be utilized, but how do you know and how do you make decisions about whether it was effective or not? And what we invite you to really consider is that in particular what each of these strategies has to offer is the opportunity to be able to generate evidence. Now having said that the evidence is there. Do we choose to use it? That might be a different question, right? Um, and we wanted to kind of rest on guided instruction for uh a little bit longer because uh all of us really think, man, this is where the art and the science of teaching truly come together. Because when we're talking about guided instruction uh in particular, what we're talking about is how it is that we are being able to provide uh questions, prompts, and cues in order to get students to do the thinking. Now, there are two ways of considering what happens in guided instruction. And there are a number of different strategies that are used to be able to do so. And and we invite you to think about them in this way that when it comes to guided instruction that these are scaffolds. The the intention of these is for them to be scaffolds. And there are two ways that we think about scaffolds. Some of the scaffolds that we use are those distributed scaffolds. Think of these as those just in time uh kinds of scaffolds. You've got a student and the student is kind of stalled and you immediately move into that space of being able to pose a question to get the student to do the thinking. And when that question alone isn't enough to spark up their thinking, then you might pose a prompt. In other words, helping them to be able to uh perhaps activate or remember or recall some newer information that they temporarily forgot. And in other cases, you may be using cues. Take a look at the diagram that's on page 59. And then think about my question again. In other words, you're shifting their attention. Some of the scaffolds that we use are distributed scaffolds like that. And many of the scaffolds that we use are a different kind of scaffold, which is what these are. And these are just in case kinds of scaffolds. In other words, we put these into play because we're pretty sure that our students are going to need that little bit of lift in order for them to be able to take on more of that cognitive responsibility. So, we're going to we're going to spotlight one in particular, but I'd like to invite you Chris. Yeah. Um, uh, I'd like to invite you to be able to consider what some of these just in case kinds of strategies can do. I I'll take one as an example. Uh, anticipation guides. Anticipation guides, uh, which I, in my opinion, don't get used often enough. Um, uh, anticipation guides are when you have a couple of statements, some of which are true and some of which are false, and you ask students in advance of instruction about that, to be able to determine what do they believe is true or accurate and what do they believe is false. Now, we're not grading students. We're not scoring them, but that already you've generated some feedback to yourself about what it is that my students know and don't know moving into that segment of the lesson. And then through the teaching, they return back to those anticipation guides again. How is their thinking changed? What do they believe was accurate or true? What do they know is false or not true now that they've had additional uh instruction uh about that? Again, shifting their cognitive load so that they're the ones that have to do the thinking. And once again, you've generated some evidence in how to utilize that. That's just one example of instructional strategies that help with guided instruction. Now, I'm going to spotlight one in particular, and it's close reading. And close reading um uh is uh certainly a rigorous and demanding kind of just in time scaffold. And here's why it's a just in time scaffold. The alternative is I hand you a challenging piece of text and I have you read it independently and then I keep my fingers crossed about whether you got it or not. Right? And some kids are probably going to get it and other kids are not. In a close reading, what you're doing is you're taking and zeroing in on a shorter passage, often in a longer piece of text to really be able to deconstruct it. Now, close reading is a more complex instructional strategy to be able to implement. And so, once again, I want to come back to the overall structure that we have for each of these strategies. Um, being able to talk about what the definition of it is, why it is impactful, always important with every one of these strategies. How is this strategy helping us to check for understanding? How is it that this strategy is helping us as teachers generate evidence so that we know what is sticking, what's not sticking, what's effective, what's not effective. There are variations. We always talk about Kirsten, can you go back to that for just a second? Um, there are always variations for many of these strategies. And then over on the on the second page, a step-by-step guide and ways of being able to see how it is that that's implemented. So, let's take a look at close reading in more detail. So, the definition of close reading is that it is a structured rereading. In other words, they read the text multiple times and it is short. It is complex. And the purpose, the reason that we're doing this is to deepen their comprehension. The process is, as I noted, that students are rereading the text multiple times in order to be able to understand it. First at the level of how the um what the text says um and then moving into the deeper understanding. How does the text work? We're going to look at the structure of what's going on with the text and then going deeper still. What does the text mean? In other words, that critical thinking that is needed, being able to apply verbal reasoning and those sorts of things. The purpose of uh engaging with a close reading is because I want to make sure that my students are getting access to grade level complex text but at the same time that I'm also building not just their stamina but their critical thinking about meaning because that is what reading is all about and the outcomes that I'm looking for. In other words, what is it that I want to be able to see um to know whether this is a strategy that is useful for me or not? I want to see that my learners are strengthening their comprehension, they're strengthening their vocabulary skills, and they're strengthening their analytic skills. All of these strategies are not just things that you do, but ways in which you generate evidence to find out what is working well and with whom and how I might need to uh very refine um uh what it is that I'm using. So, as a reminder, the purpose of uh close reading is um always to be able to have students engage with that complex grade level uh text. Um but consider as well the application of that. How might that strategy look like in your classroom or in your context? If you're a second grade teacher, what you may be doing with a close reading, for example, is much more at the level of being able to model with students. If you are a middle school science teacher, you might be pulling out a particularly complex passage in their science textbook in order to be able to really engage with a deep level of knowledge for that. If you're in a high school CTE class and they're engaged with a technical manual, then you may be pulling out that stepbystep guidance about how it is. I was just watching a CTE lesson today on ladder safety in uh in a fire science class. Um pulling out that stepbystep guidance about how a team of firefighters works together with the ladder. So my my purpose is always going to be to deepen their learning, but my application of how it is that I'm using it is going to vary by my context and my outcomes. How will I know it's working for my students? Because I pay attention to the evidence that it's generating. Thanks, Nancy. And Kathy in the chat brought up just a really great point. Like we were talking about so many different strategies that are also applicable in adult learning as well, right? There's so many strategies that when we're leading PD or leading kind of learning at our school sites and at our districts, so many of these strategies um can be used for that as well. So, thank you for that point, Kathy. I appreciate that. So, now we are on section four and independent learning. When people hear independent learning, they often picture a student working alone after a lesson is completed, right? But it's just so much more than that. Independent learning is when students begin to take responsibility for their own thinking, for their own learning. It's not the end of learning, right? It's where the understanding is going to grow. But students don't get there automatically. There's this interdep interdependence that has to be taught and supported in the classroom. Teachers model the thinking during instruction. They guide students through the practice. And then we're weaving in and out of those phases of that gradual release of responsibility. Um, and so part of that is students having multiple opportunities throughout a lesson to do some independent thinking, some independent learning, right? So that they're not just completing a task on their own, but they're really owning their own learning. And with that, there are so many different strategies um that support that work. So let me give you a moment to take a look at some of the strategies underneath that phase. Some of these strategies might be familiar to you and some of them might be new. In the chat, I would love for you to either put the word new and write the name of a strategy you haven't heard of before or put in the name of a strategy that you feel that you're really confident with. Go ahead and take a moment and process those strategies. I I love that. What is raft writing? Raft writing is new to a few people here and screen to scratch as well. [laughter] Yeah. And then Lily, I appreciate that. Confident with entrance and exit tickets and screen to scratch. That one is new. And then some people are loving the raft strategy. beautiful. And then help seeeking, right? Helpse seeeking is way more than just um asking a teacher for, right? It's a strategy that we can teach students um in a very specific way. So, I love all of the ideas on here. And so, what we're going to do is, you know, we decided to why don't we choose one that maybe we are less familiar with on um under this section. And so we are going to look at today the strategy number 53, the self-monitoring reading flowchart. That's the one that we're going to take out uh take a look at today. Um we chose this one just because you probably haven't heard of this before, right? It's probably new because it is new. Um now remember about this phase, independent learning, it's an active learning, right? It's not passive. And so during this students are reflecting, they're making decisions. They're pushing through challenges. And there really has to be two kind of two key habits that we'll focus on this um in order to show that independence. The idea that students are engaging in self-explanation where students talk themselves through their thinking. Right? So I'm dividing by four and I'm doing that because I'm really trying to isolate the variable. Right? And so this kind of deepens their understanding and it helps them catch their own mistakes. And then their self-questioning is another part of it where they're checking their own thinking. Does this make sense to me? What am I missing? Right? That metacognition piece to it, right? That's the engine of that independent learning. And so, let's take a a look at the selfmonitoring reading flowchart, its definition, and the process and the purpose kind of behind it. And so, on the screen, you'll see them go ahead and take a minute to process to to gain some background knowledge on this strategy. Okay. So, I know so as we're gaining a little background knowledge, you are going to be excited to to dive into this one here. And so, here's just another snapshot of the way it's kind of laid out. Um there's there's an example there for you to look at, but I want to take a closer look at that chart in more detail. Okay. So, a chart might look something like this. And again, the goal that you read about is really for students to think their way through a text and really to monitor their own comprehension of that text. So, first a student might ask themselves, they might read a a chunk, a paragraph, a section, and then ask themselves, do I understand this part of the text? And then they have that's a decision making point right there. Right? And so, they're either deciding, yes, I do understand. and they're ready to keep reading, right? There's no reason to pause at that moment. Or they could make the decision, you know, actually, I didn't quite understand that part of the text. In that case, then students are going to think about, okay, wait, let me think about why I might be having difficulty with this part of the text. And so when they they're starting to think about why they might be having difficulty. Sometimes the kids were just distracted. That's okay. I think all of us can connect with that, right? Have you ever been distracted as you were trying to dig into your work? I know that I have. And so students have to make that decision. Was that the issue here? Was I distracted? And you know, if so, that's okay. That happens to all of us. How can I refocus? and together the teacher can help to build in some strategies to be able to refocus. If they're not sure if they were distracted, sometimes a student might give that answer. That's okay. Go ahead and reread that part of the text and then make that decision after rereading. But what if the answer is no? What if the answer is no? Actually, um I was focused like I was locked into that text. I read it and I was still having difficulty understanding. Right? And so in that case, then that's when we begin to provide students with a bank with a bank of different strategies that they can use to begin to tackle that text. So what might some of those strategies look like? Well, sometimes students, we know the importance of background knowledge, right? How important that is for our students to be un to understand a topic. So the student might decide, okay, I really don't know a lot about this topic. So, in that case, what I need to do is I need to review the title, the headings, the images. Um, depending on the grade level that you're working with and the skills kind of the strategies that you've shown them, maybe they're doing a quick two-minute Google search that they have to gain some background knowledge or maybe there's an AI bot interaction there um where they can gain some kind of preliminary uh knowledge about this topic before they decide to go back into it. Right? So, sometimes just gaining a little background knowledge will help. And then connected to that idea of background knowledge, sometimes it's the vocabulary in that text, students can be can be taught specific strategies for tackling vocabulary, right? Some teachers do inside the word and outside the word. And students might recognize, okay, there's lots of vocabulary here. How can I tackle some of that? Because there are some key words here that are kind of holding up my comprehension. Then other strategies um include strategies that are at the sentence level. Many times students are caught up with the leng when you have long complicated sentences where the there's a lengthy noun phrase or the noun and the verb are really far apart from each other in that sentence. Students get lost in that sentence. Right? And students can be taught strategies at the sentence level for how to comprehend uh those sentences and that'll help with the comprehension and the cohesiveness of that text. Right? So there are so many different strategies that you know there's if you're uh familiar with Filmore's juicy sentences protocol that might be one that's explicitly taught to students and that could be added into the flowchart. Um you could teach the students to ask questions as they read. And some of some of the times we teach these strategies, but really what we're looking for here is for students to understand that all of these strategies are tools in a toolbox. They have to have the power. They have to have the wisdom to be able to pull out those strategies. sometimes just read rere reading there is a great strategy that I love if it's a really long complicated text where students identify three key words in that section and then kind of orally retell that paragraph to themselves using those three key words that helps them hold on to more information kind of trying to move some information out of their working memory um so they can kind of grapple with the next piece right there's lots of great strategies that can be taught so there's a bank of them there for you to kind of think about but Again, the purpose of this this self-monitor um self-monitoring flowchart, it just reminds us that it's they students need a set of strategies, but that's not enough. What matters for students is knowing when to use a strategy and why to use a strategy, right? A toolkit is only powerful um with the wisdom to choose what's the right tool for this moment. Right? There are times where uh year after year students are taught main idea. Do students know when to use that as a strategy for a complex text, why they would use that strategy? Right? It's that's what transforms the strategies from just being techniques into like these meaningful supports for learning. Okay? So, there's lots of great um work to be done around the the reading flowchart, but then we bring it all together, right? We're we're choosing choosing one of these strategies is just one piece of designing these meaningful learning experiences because great instruction isn't about pulling a strategy from the book, right? And plugging it into the lessons, right? It's about responding like Nancy was saying to what students need and the evidence that we see in terms of the evidence in the moment for the impact of the work that we're doing. So, because strategies are not um the they're just tools here. They're not they're not the ultimate goal. So what matters is really about how we use them based on what students um how students are doing and what they're learning. So it's really important for us to see how these strategies come together as the lesson flows. And so that's in here too, right? Where there are lesson flow examples from kindergarten in funological awareness to US history and algebra where we put these strategies together. So that way we can begin to see how someone might kind of pair these strategies up and how we might weave in and out of these strategies as part of the gradual release of responsibility framework. Um so that students are practicing and they're applying that learning. And so Nancy is going to kind of connect us back to the gradual release to begin to kind of wrap us up for our time. Well, and I so appreciate and I know that that uh the three of us have have talked about this on more than one occasion that the idea is that these instructional strategies are tools. They have a research base. They've been demonstrated to be effective in lots of different places, but tools in and of themsel are not sufficient. Tools in the hands of an expert are able to accomplish amazing things. Tools that are in the hand of somebody who doesn't know what to do with that tool or what the purpose is are not going to yield those desired results. Uh in particular when we think about lesson design, a gradual release of responsibility, it what brings it together is that the tools in the hands of an expert become a way to be able to move learning forward. We don't walk around the house on a Saturday morning with a tool in our hand like a hammer, let's say, and walk around the house and go, I wonder if there's anything that I can hammer. That's not how it is that we use tools. As experts, we understand what is the condition, what are the characteristics, what's the problem that I'm trying to solve, and then we strategically choose the tool that's going to help us to be able to do that. We do the same thing in our teaching as well. And that lesson design becomes a much more flexible, responsive kind of a an approach than just a lock step. You've got to do it in this order and it's got to be equally distributed and you have to do each of these things one time. No, no, no. Expert teachers understand tools and they understand how to be able to use those tools. Now, if Doug and I had a chance to uh rename uh a gradual release of responsibility, maybe we might have changed it to this. I love this one. [laughter] As rapidly as possible, but as slow as necessary framework, they don't have to be done in any particular order. The learning of your students is what matters. If you need to on a particular day, start with some collaborative learning and move into some guided instruction and then some focused instruction and then some independent learning and that all happened in the first seven minutes. Awesome. That is wonderful because that's exactly how it is that we combine instructional moves, gradual release with tools, strategies that help us to move learning forward. I'd like to thank our presenters again for uh spending time with us today. >> Thank you everyone. >> Thank you to all of you.