How are two or more concepts or words connected? Concept maps make the web of connections between words and ideas come into focus by visually representing their relationship with one another. Better yet, they are easy to use across disciplines as a way to organizing students’ growing knowledge.
How do you help students become better at summarizing what they read and be more aware of when they are or are not understanding what they read? Paragraph shrinking combines summarizing with peer feedback to create a powerful approach to growing students’ understanding and confidence as readers.
Power Notes help students differentiate between main ideas and details using a hierarchical structure that clarifies how ideas are connected. Power notes can also support students’ writing, helping to organize students’ ideas and help students organize their ideas before composing paragraphs or multi-paragraph essays.
The RAFT strategy encourages students to write creatively, consider a topic from a different perspective, and to gain practice writing for different audiences.