A colleague completed her PhD in the field of dyslexia. Thanks to her expertise – her knowledge, skills and experience in this field – her ability to synthesise new information about reading difficulties, to make meaning, is masterful.
By identifying key features in information, she refines what is important. This facilitates efficient comprehension of the information, supporting her to embed relevant information from the new source with her existing knowledge. The result is a broadened knowledge base and a deeper understanding of the information. Subsequently, she takes complex ideas and distils them succinctly and with clarity.
To share or apply knowledge efficiently shows a deep understanding. For educators, this is an outcome desired for our students. But when they are not experts in every skill, concept or content area being taught, how can we support our learners to recognise valuable information? To support the assimilation of valuable information into their knowledge banks? To disregard the insignificant and focus on the substantial?
Practical Strategies
CAST, the home of UDL, recommends educators provide explicit cueing to assist students to distinguish critical information.
This may be supported by emphasising key elements in information sources (for example, text, graphics, diagrams, formulas). This may be achieved visually or verbally, through the students highlighting these points or the educator making bold or italic key information, or through expressing the points aloud.
When using highlighters, different colours may be used to distinguish different classifications of information.
Scaffolding including learning routines, mastery routines and graphic organisers may be valuable for students to identify important concepts and emphasise relationships between them.
Concept or brainstorming maps, webs or trees support learners to visually document key concepts and relationships.
Use many examples to illustrate real-world examples of concepts. Be sure to support the development of mastery by providing non-examples, too. The Frayer Model is a graphic organiser tool useful for developing critical vocabulary.
Additionally, educators should prompt students to make explicit connections between previously learnt content, knowledge and skills. This supports the consolidation of the existing content or knowledge whilst also providing an opportunity for the students to build relationships to new concepts.
Do you want to learn more to help develop your students into expert learners? There are more practical suggestions on reducing barriers to learning on the CUDA website.