Chapter 9 - Sabrina

Constant review throughout a lesson is the way to keep tabs on student understanding of what you are teaching. Through various methods, you can test the skills of your students while you are teaching the lesson. For example, during a math lesson concerning patters, you can ask students to name particular patterns while moving forward through the lesson. Constantly asking questions to random students within the group will give you a better understanding as to who is getting your lesson, and who might need a bit more help. These random assessments not only help the teacher understand where the students are, but also gives the rest of the class a chance for an extra review of information. With any lesson including vocabulary, you can ask students to give you definitions of important vocabulary terms at the beginning and throughout the lesson as review. To compare, once again, to the Reading Mastery program, there are ample opportunities to test student levels throughout the lesson; lead, model, test.

I have found that repetition is a fabulous road to student understanding, and retention. I find myself repeating the information three times to my students, emphasizing particular words, and then having the students repeat the information back to me. For example, I might say, "Glad is another word for happy. Glad...is another word for happy. What's another word for happy?" The students will respond with, "Glad."

To ensure students are learning the appropriate way to use the English language, it is important to correct their responses, if they are incorrect. When my students answer with one to three word responses, I repeat back to them the full sentence response, and have them repeat it back to me. This helps them understand what is expected of them within the classroom.