Ready, Set, Learn: Integrating Powerful Learning Skills and Strategies into Daily Instruction

For the vast majority of students, the skills and work habits that are crucial for successful learning are not in place when they arrive at the school door. These skills must be explicitly taught by teachers who recognize the unique learning styles, preferences, and interests of their students. Ready, Set, Learn focuses on the importance of encouraging students to set their own personal learning goals and persevere to achieve them. Along with organizers, prompts, and specific activities, this timely book includes lessons that explicitly teach organization, collaboration, communication, independence, memory, and initiative.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Learning to Learn 1. Learning Skills and Preferences 2. Teaching Learning Skills and Strategies 3. Organization 4. Collaboration 5. Initiative 6. Memory 7. Evaluating Skills and Effort, Index.

About the Author :
Brenda Stein Dzaldov is a school administrator who has worked for more than twenty years as a classroom teacher, educational consultant, and teacher mentor. She is the author of numerous children's books and has published many articles on student literacy learning. Throughout her doctoral studies at the University of Toronto, Canada, Brenda's research interests included children's literature, texts for literacy instruction, multiliteracies, and finding new ways to engage learners using 21st-century pedagogies. Her greatest love is watching children learn, grow, and teach us to be better at what we do as teachers

Review :
This practical book transcends the often vague descriptors for assessing learning skills and delves into explicit instruction about how to actually teach those skills so that students can learn how to expand their knowledge. Learning skills transfer between all sub­ject areas and are essential components and indicators of student success. Organization, collaboration and initiative are among some of the basic skill sets explored in this treas­ury of high-interest lessons and activities for elementary-level students. As the book progresses, communication and mem­ory skills are also considered. The book includes rubrics, organizers and models designed to meet the needs of both individual students and whole classes. Students’ learning styles, preferences and interests are acknowledged through­out the book, and closure for each activity includes a self-reflection piece and suggestions for descriptive, ongoing feedback to both students and their parents about learning skills. Teachers recognize the valuable role next steps play in assessment. This book shows them how to create opportunities for discussion and for modelling strategies so that students can learn how to set specific goals and success criteria for measur­ing their own development. Open the pages of this book to identify what learning skills your students need. Then learn how to collect the evidence and take the next steps to support their continued growth as part of your daily instruction. Anne Marie Landon, OCT, is acting prin­cipal at George Vanier Catholic School in Combermere, Ont., with the Renfrew County Catholic District School Board. Professionally Speaking (the official magazine of the Ontario College of Teachers) June 2017