Mrs. Bradham

Learning Focused Strategies

 LEARNING FOCUSED STRATEGIES are part of the best practices in education.  
These strategies help learning to become the center (focus) of teaching any 
particular concept.


Activating Strategies (hooks, motivates, and links to prior knowledge)
Recall or Brainstorming Ideas (connect to prior knowledge and personal 
experience)	
•	KWL
•	Brainstorming Carousel
•	Carolina Four Corners
•	Give one, Get One
•	Key Word

Making Predictions (motivates because students want to know if they are 
right)	
•	Wordsplash
•	Picturesplash
•	Anticipation Guide
•	Making Predictions

Games (recall prior knowledge while playing a game)
•	The Envelope Please
•	Label and Sort
•	What Am I?
•	Today’s Number
•	Row Relay
•	I have, Who Has?
•	Matching Game
•	It’s Only Words

Explorations or Experiences (provides an experience on which to build new 
learning)
•	Simulations/Demonstrations
•	Explorations
•	Problem Solving

Literature and Art (use to motive and link to prior knowledge)
•	Art
•	Photos/Slides
•	Music
•	Poems
•	Literature Excerpts

Mystery, Intrigue, or Humor
•	Algebra Tricks
•	What’s my Rule
•	Cartoons

Acceleration (provides prior knowledge BEFORE student gets it presented in 
regular classroom lesson)
•	Previewing vocabulary
•	Phonemic Awareness
•	Spelling


Vocabulary
•	Word map (What is it? What is it like? Examples)
•	Frayer Model

Teaching Strategies
•	Essential Question
•	Linking prior knowledge
•	Constructing meaning
•	Scaffolding/Preview
•	Collaborative pairs
•	Distributed practice
•	Distributed summarizing
•	Graphic organizers
	Lotus diagram
	Fish bone
	Cause/effect
	Flow chart
	Cycle graph
	Compare/contrast

•	Graphic Organizers (continued)    
	Descriptive organizer (Topic/details/main idea sentences
	Word problems – math
	Justify your answer 
	To solve this problem, first I…. 
	Then I… 
	The answer is…
	Because, to solve this problem… 

Summarizing Activities (learning strategies distributed throughout the 
lesson)
•	Answering the essential question
•	KWL
•	Ticket out the door
•	3-2-1
•	Key word
•	Study Cards
•	Learning log
•	The Important thing about ____ is ____, 3 sentences with details, 
5th sentence  But, the important thing about _____ is _____
•	Draw a picture
•	Physically demonstrate
•	Create organizer
•	Reflection questions
•	Inner/outer circles
•	Prompts for summarizing prompts
•	Today I learned
•	I would like to learn more about… 
•	What would you do differently next time?
•	What part did you struggle with?
•	My work shows… 
•	I’ve been thinking about… 
•	What changes did you make?
•	Three things I wonder about… 
•	The best parts of my work today were…
•	Something new I learned today is…
•	It was hard for me to learn about… 
•	How did your thinking change?
•	I would like to find the answer to….. 

Extending/Refining

•	Abstracting – to find, identify and explain general patterns in 
specific information or situations

•	Classifying/Categorizing – grouping items into definable categories 
on the basis of their attributes

•	Constructing support – to provide support or proof of statements

•	Analyzing perspectives – to describe reasons for our viewpoint as 
well as the viewpoint of others

•	Deductive reasoning – identify specific examples to support a 
general statement, rule or principle

•	Inductive reasoning – inferring unknown generalizations from 
information or observations

•	Error analysis – to find and describe errors in your own or others 
thinking or performance

•	Comparing/contrasting – identifying and articulating similarities 
and differences among items.

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