Challenge
Initial Thoughts
Wrap Up
Assessment

What advice would you give Mr. Carter?

Page 1: Understanding and Using Strategies

girl check marking a listA strategy is a series of steps that we use to more quickly or effectively perform a specific task. We are always using strategies. In fact, we use them so automatically that most of the time we’re not even aware that we’re doing it. Strategies allow students to use the knowledge they already possess—to complete an assignment or to accomplish a goal.

Something to Consider

box of tools next to a car
Strategies are like tools; they make a job easier. For example, can you lift your car? Of course you can! It is simple: All you need is a jack. But many students are in the position of being asked to perform an academic task without having the proper tools or knowing how to use them.
Characteristics of Strategic Learners Characteristics of Non-strategic Learners
two students working near the teacher boy daydreaming
  • Able to analyze a problem and develop a plan
  • Able to organize multiple goals and switch flexibly from simple to more complicated goals
  • Access their background knowledge and apply it to novel tasks
  • Develop new organizational or procedural strategies as the task becomes more complex
  • Use effective self-regulated strategies while completing a task
  • Attribute high grades to their hard work and good study habits
  • Review the task-oriented-goals and determine whether they have been met
  • Unorganized, impulsive, unaware of where to begin an assignment
  • Unaware of possible steps to break the problem into a manageable task, possibly due to the magnitude of the task
  • Exhibit problems with memory
  • Unable to focus on a task
  • Lack persistence
  • Experience feelings of frustration, failure, or anxiety
  • Attribute failure to uncontrollable factors (e.g., luck, teacher’s instructional style)

Listen to Steve Graham talk about using strategic behavior (time: 0:26).

Steve Graham, EdD
Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation,
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

View Transcript

Steve Graham

Transcript: Steve Graham, EdD

Strategic behavior helps you approach a task in a thoughtful, planful, and reflective way, providing you with the cognitive steps to get the job done in each of the academic domains, whether that’s a strategy for reading comprehension, whether that’s a strategy for writing persuasive text, or whether it’s a strategy for doing a long division problem. It helps you know what to do first, second, third.

 

 

 

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