Skip to main content

100 Powerful Learning Specialist and Educational Therapy Materials

This week I wanted to tell you about my online store, Good Sensory Learning. I’m Dr. Erica Warren, and I established this site so I could share all the materials that I have created over the last 20+ years as a learning specialist and educational therapist. When I first began my private practice, Learning to Learn, I had great difficulty finding fun and multisensory materials for my students that were effective and engaging. So back in 2005, I made it my mission to design and distribute high-end, remedial products as well as memorable, motivating lessons that bring delight to learning. If you would like to try a free sampling of my activities , CLICK HERE . How Are the Products Organized at Good Sensory Learning? You can download my Free Printable Catalog or you can browse the site using the grey “search all products” bar in the top right of any page with keywords such as dyslexia, working memory, and executive functioning. What’s more, drop down menus in the red banner allow you t...

10 Strategies that Transform Passive Learners into Active Learners


Students’ forearms prop heavy heads and eye lids become fatigued and weighty. Information fills the room, but the restless audience remains impervious as attention is stolen by fleeting thoughts and boredom. If this is a common scene at your school, most likely the learning environment is passive. Although a passive learning environment can accommodate large numbers of students, it is often an ineffective scholastic milieu. In contrast, an active learning environment should have the opposite effect on students. This way of teaching encourages creativity, self directed learning, mindfulness, interaction, discussion and multisensory ways of processing.
How to get students to be active learners
So what can I do to nurture active learning? 1) Help your students understand the difference between active and passive learning.
2) Encourage your students to complete the free Passive vs. Active Learning Profile offered free here.
3) Let your students brainstorm things they can do to become active learners.
4) Allow your students to brainstorm things you can do to help them become active learners.
5) Integrate active learning activities into the classroom such as acting, small group work and hands on activities.
6) Incorporate fun learning stations in the classroom, so that the students can move around and process with other peers in smaller groups.
7) Encourage students to preview new topics by watching YouTube clips or doing internet searches so that they come to class with some prior knowledge.
8) Give students assignment options so that they can make a choice on how they would like to demonstrate their mastery of the content. Make sure the different options tap into different learning modalities.
9) Consider the 12 ways of learning and teach in a multisensory fashion.
10) Break the class into groups where they take opposing positions on a topic. Allow one student from each group to facilitate the discussion. The teacher can act as the judge and can dole out points for good arguments, creative content and clever presentations.

If you found this blog and activity to be helpful, this is just one of the many resources available in the publication, Planning, Time Management and Organization for Success: Quick and Easy Approaches to Mastering Executive Functioning Skills for Students.

Cheers, Erica
Student executive functioning help
Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning and Dyslexia Materials. She is also the director of Learning to Learn and Go Dyslexia, in Ossining, NY. To learn more about her products and services, you can go to
· Blog: https://learningspecialistmaterials.blogspot.com/
· YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/warrenerica1
· Podcast: https://godyslexia.com/
· Store: http://www.Goodsensorylearning.com/ & www.dyslexiamaterials.com
· Courses: http://www.learningspecialistcourses.com/
· Newsletter Sign-up: https://app.convertkit.com/landing_pages/69400
Follow on Bloglovin

Comments

  1. I love this post! Thanks for sharing. I think our readers would love to hear a bit more about this...if you're interested in doing a guest post for us, let me know at sarah@easyreadsystem.com.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It would be my pleasure, Sarah. I'll send you an email. All the best, Erica

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Strengthen Executive Function for Students

Most teachers have excellent executive functioning skills, so when they come across students that struggle in this arena, they may have little compassion or patience. For many students, executive functioning is relatively easy. However, for some, tasks that require self-initiation, planning, time management, and organization to name a few, can be an immense struggle. What is Executive Functioning and Does it Impact Learning? Executive functioning is much like the conductor of one's brain.  It is a mental process that gathers and creates meaning from sensory information. Allowing us to makes sense of what we experience, executive functioning also enables focused attention, metacognitive skills , and helps us to relate new content to prior knowledge.  Executive functioning affects learning because it is the lens through which we perceive the world around us.  Good executive functioning skills enable students to quickly and effectively absorb and assimilate ...

100 Powerful Learning Specialist and Educational Therapy Materials

This week I wanted to tell you about my online store, Good Sensory Learning. I’m Dr. Erica Warren, and I established this site so I could share all the materials that I have created over the last 20+ years as a learning specialist and educational therapist. When I first began my private practice, Learning to Learn, I had great difficulty finding fun and multisensory materials for my students that were effective and engaging. So back in 2005, I made it my mission to design and distribute high-end, remedial products as well as memorable, motivating lessons that bring delight to learning. If you would like to try a free sampling of my activities , CLICK HERE . How Are the Products Organized at Good Sensory Learning? You can download my Free Printable Catalog or you can browse the site using the grey “search all products” bar in the top right of any page with keywords such as dyslexia, working memory, and executive functioning. What’s more, drop down menus in the red banner allow you t...

How to Develop Reading Stamina for Struggling Readers

Building reading stamina for struggling readers can be a tricky endeavor.  After a few pages of text, many lose interest because reading is a difficult and cognitively taxing chore.  So what can be done to increase endurance and help learners find joy in reading. What is Reading Stamina? Reading stamina is a learner's ability to sustain attention and effort when reading independently. Why Do Some Students Struggle with Poor Reading Stamina? Poor reading stamina is often associated with other areas of cognitive-based weaknesses.  If readers, for example, are placing too much attention and energy on decoding words, there is little mental space left - if any - to comprehend the material.  Perhaps they can decode words, but their tracking, visualization skills, or working memory are lacking.  Again, they may not have the cognitive room to make sense of what they are reading.  Here are a few possible processing areas that could get in the way: Weak visual proces...