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WHAT EXPERT TEACHERS DO: PROCESSING (CH. 5)
There is a distinction often noticeable in students between knowing information, and being able to apply it in different ways and situations. Teaching for the latter, which most would argue is a higher quality of education, requires that information is processed. Processing of information means that it is deconstructed, looked at from different perspectives, and then linked to existing knowledge and ideas so that it might be able to be used in different ways and appropriately applied in different situations. Processing is what helps a learner organize and store information in ways that make sense so that it can be more easily retrieved and used in the future. Processing is also a way to consolidate learned information from short-term memory into long-term memory. To do this, students must pay attention, or attend, to the information in ways that will encourage processing
Some teaching procedures that Loughran suggests to encourage processing are: 1) Jumbled text: One page of text is cut up so that each paragraph is a separate block. Students must then read the text and arrange the blocks in an order so that the information makes sense. 2) Creating headings/sub-headings: Students are given a block of text with the headings and sub-headings removed. They are then asked to read the text and create their own headings and sub-headings. This will encourage students to process information in such a way that the headings and sub-headings they create are good indicators of the theme of text that follows. This activity can be extended by asking students to paraphrase the text paragraphs into bullet points. 3) Question grid: Students write questions that they have as a result of thinking about a given topic or other form of information. Classifying these questions into the 5 W categories (who, what, where, why, when and how) help students to begin to think about how to organize their learning on the topic.
Unlike the previous chapter on the topic of prior knowledge, encouraging the processing of information by my students through teaching strategies was not something I had thought about before reading this chapter. I find it exciting that by simply presenting information in the ways outlined in the procedures above (and many others presented in this chapter) I may be able to elevate my students’ learning from a knowledge level to an understanding level. I have not tried any of the above procedures in my previous teaching practice and look forward to implementing them in the future.
