PROMOTING INDEPENDENT

LEARNING
 If teachers are to prepare an ever more diverse group of students for
much more challenging work-- for framing problems; finding integrating
and synthesizing information; creating new solutions; learning on their
own; and working cooperatively-- they will need substantially more
knowledge and radically different skills than most now have and most
schools of education now develop.

--Darling-Hammond, 1997 ,p. 154

FOUR AREAS OF TASK MANAGEMENT

1. TASK ANALYSIS
2. IDENTIFYING RESOURCES AND PLANNING ACTION
• ability to identify the resources available to assist in completing the task, including
the learner’s own knowledge and skills
• developing a plan of action for completing the task based on the resources that have
been identified

3. TAKING ACTION BASED ON PLANNING

4. ASSESSING ACTIONS AND REVISING PLANS
WHERE SHOULD STUDENTS LEARN TO
BECOME INDEPENDENT LEARNERS?
WHY STUDENTS UNPREPARED TO LEARN
ON THEIR OWN?
8 SKILLS NEEDED TO LEARN ON THEIR OWN
SKILL ONE: FINDING AND EVALUATING QUALITY SOURCES
OF INFORMATION
The five traditional criteria for evaluating print and media materials are;
 accuracy
 authority
 coverage
 currency
 objectivity
SKILL TWO: IDENTIFYING IMPORTANT INFORMATION IN
QUALITY SOURCES

Setting a Purpose for the Reading

Many of our students have been taught that every word, sentence, and
section requires equal attention. If our students could learn to read
efficiently, and with a clear purpose in mind, they would be less inclined to
skip the reading entirely, and more inclined to read it, skipping the material
that is unimportant.
Helping Students Find the Main Ideas and Significant Details in
Their Readings
1. Turn headings and subheadings into questions and read the material to find the
answers to these questions. The answer will almost always be the main idea.
2. 90% of the time in college textbook writing, the first sentence of the paragraph is
the main idea. If the main idea is not found in the first sentence of a paragraph, the
next likely spot is the last sentence.
3. There are two simple guiding questions that can direct students to the main ideas
when no headings are available.
• Whom or what is the author writing about?
• What is it that the author wants you to know about the who or the what?
SKILL THREE: ORGANIZING INFORMATION IN MEANINGFUL
WAYS

Concept Mapping
 SKILL FOUR: WRITING REPORTS AND PAPERS

As a teacher, we can teach and model some basic organizational skills for our
students that will help them prepare the written reports and paper we assign.
These organizational models will not cure their grammar errors or syntax
problems, but they will provide an effective structure to enable students to
produced well organized report and papers.
SKILL FIVE: MANAGING TIME

There are theree pronged- approach to develop an effective system of managing their time;

1. develop a philosophy about using their time

“ Time is life. To waste your time is to waste your life but to value your time is to value
your life.” -Alan Lakeins
2. teach students how to determine which, of all possible uses of time, are the most
important and should be given priority
3. teach students to use the tools of time managements
SKILL SIX: REMEMBERING WHAT HAS BEEN
LEARNED
Factors that can lead to learning new tasks and concepts successfully:

 Frequency
 Intensity
 Cross- training
 Adaptivity
 Motivation and attention
SKILL SEVEN: USING PROBLEM- SOLVING SYSTEMS

If students are to be effective independent learners, we must teach them how to solve
problems on their own. Our job is to design authentic problems and help our students to
learn how to examine and solve them on their own.
SKILL EIGHT: MONITORING ONE’S OWN LEARNING
(METACOGNITION)
It is important not to do too much thinking for your students. When you think of
them, your students will become experts at seeking help, rather than expet thinkers.