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For children and teens,
visual cues such as writing the daily schedule on
the blackboard are very helpful because they help
the student literally see where they're up to and
reduce any stress associated without having to
actually remember what to do next:
- Teachers can check off
each item on the blackboard throughout the day
and edit the schedule to point out/highlight
changes in the usual routine.
- Parents can be asked to
support training the child or teen to consult a
visual list or organizer by using them in the
home for the family's activities and asking the
child to consult the calendar each day, check
off activities, enter notes, etc.
As students get older, their
schools frequently provide them with planners or
agendas. Not all planners work for students with
large sloppy handwriting, so do consider whether
you need to look for another type. Similarly,
consider whether the planner shows one day at a
time or one week at a time.
The image at the top of this
page is from the author's "Good Ideas Gone Horribly
Horribly Bad File." The teacher wanted the student
to be able to look ahead so that he wasn't
surprised to turn the page and find out he had a
test that day, so she picked a "weekly view"
planner. The idea was fine, but the plan didn't
work because (1) it didn't allow enough space for
the student's very large handwriting, and (2) the
parent and teacher tried to use the page for their
communications. In general, it's usually best to
keep parent-teacher communications in a separate
notebook or folder.
Visual cues can also serve as
reminders of events or steps we might neglect.
Dornbush and Pruitt (1995) provide visual cues or
editing strips that can be pasted on young
students' desks (see their book,"Teaching the
Tiger," published by Hope Press). These strips
contain pictorial representations of steps in the
editing process such as checking punctuation,
checking for capitalization, etc.
Another way in which visual
organizers are particularly helpful in the area of
thought or idea organization. If you have trouble
getting started writing a big paper or essay or
organizing your thoughts for a presentation, have
you ever tried a visual organizer? Inspiration.com
provides software for children and teens that you
may wish to explore or download for a free
trial.
Color, used properly, can
also be an organizing aid. If you're not already
using this technique in the classroom, consider
using color organize materials. Color code school
books so that all "science" books, workbooks, and
notebooks are one color, while all "social studies"
books and materials are another color. At the end
of the day, if the student has science homework,
they just grab everything that is the science
color. It saves a lot of time and increases the
chances of the right workbooks and notebooks coming
home. When I was in a school recently observing a
student, I commented to the teacher that the
use of color-coding notebooks seemed to be working
well in her class. She informed me that the
color-coding system was now being used
building-wide. What a great idea! Once a student
learns that "science is blue," they stick with that
color code throughout all of their years in the
school.
Color-coding notebooks and/or
textbooks works even more effectively if the
classroom teacher also uses color coding for
corresponding bins where the students turn in their
work (e.g., all science homework would get put in
the blue bin, all language arts in the green bin,
etc.). [Because some children may be color
blind, adding easily discriminable shapes to the
bins and notebooks may be helpful in some
cases.]
Color can also be used to
help prioritize, another executive function. Teach
the student to color highlight information as they
study, and establish a different meaning for each
color (e.g., yellow for definitions, green for
facts, etc....).
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Cognitive cues are strategies
that help you remember the sequence of steps as
well as the content or steps themselves. They are
especially important to those who can't seem to
retain or follow multi-step or multi-element
situations.
When you wanted to learn the
order of the planets from the sun, did you develop
a sentence (mnemonic) that preserved the order of
the planets, as in "My Very Educated Mother Just
Sent Us Nine Pizzas" (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto)? What
other mnemonics have you used over the years to
help you remember the sequence of items? And what
are you doing to help your student use or develop
useful mnemonics?
Mnemonics are an example of a
cognitive strategy or cue. And whereas young
children may need or benefit from pictorial editing
strips, older students might be taught mnemonics
for editing such as "CLIPS" (Packer, 1999), where
"CLIPS" reminds them to check for: Capitalization,
Leave space between words, Ideas complete,
Punctuation, Spelling. At the beginning, you can
leave a few paper clips on the desk with a reminder
as to what the mnemonic stands for. Later on, you
can just leave a few clips on the desk.
Providing your child with
mnemonics or cognitive strategies will help them
retain the sequence of steps. If you can teach them
a general strategy that whenever they have a
multi-step task, they should try to develop a
mnemonic, you will be teaching them a lifelong
strategy. And the funnier or wackier the mnemonic,
the more likely they will remember it.
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