Additional information
| Page Count | 60 |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Edge Enterprises, Inc. |
| Year Printed | 2004 |
| Requirements |
ORDER Routine (eBook)
Every year, there is more information to be taught and less time to teach it. How can students even begin to see the forest through all the trees? One way to help them see the relationships among the pieces of information is to teach them to find those relationships.
To do this, teachers can use the ORDER Routine to teach students to recognize four basic types of relationships (e.g., compare and contrast, problem-solution) and to draw pictures of those relationships. At first, the teacher guides the discussion as students suggest ways to depict the relationships among pieces of information. Later, as students understand the process and become proficient at the higher order thinking skills required, the teacher can turn the process over to the students so that they are either working with each other or independently to depict the information. Since the information in their depictions will represent some of the most important information in the course, students can use their pictures as they study for tests and write essays. This instructor’s manual provides step-by-step instructions on how to introduce this routine to students and transfer use of the process over time to the students.
$10.00 – $500.00
Description
Research on the ORDER Routine
Overview
The purpose of this study was to determine whether subject-area teachers could implement the procedures associated with the ORDER Routine in their academically diverse general education classes and whether students could learn to use a strategy for organizing information as a result of teacher use of the routine. Twelve middle-school social studies teachers and students in one of their history/civics classes participated. A total of 204 students were involved in grades 6, 7, and 8. Six teachers and their students participated in the experimental group; six teachers and their students participated in the comparison group. Students with learning disabilities (LD) and without LD (NLD) participated in each group; they were regularly enrolled in the inclusive general education classes. An observation checklist was used to record teacher use of key behaviors and procedures in the routine. Student creation of organizers was measured with a test in which students were presented with a written passage and were asked to create a graphic device depicting the information in the passage. They earned points according to which elements of the device they included and the appropriateness of the device for the information. A multiple-baseline across-teachers design was used for the teacher portion of the study. A pretest-posttest comparison-group design was used for the student portion of the study.
Results
The targeted teaching behaviors occurred at or slightly above the 0% level for all teachers during baseline (before instruction). After they were instructed to use the teaching behaviors, their mean percentage implementation scores were 72%, 53%, and 66% for the first, second, and third lessons.
An analysis of covariance revealed a significant difference between the experimental and control students’ scores on the posttest [F(1, 199) = 13.590, p < .0005] when controlling for the results of the pretest. There was no difference between the scores of students with and without LD.
Conclusions
After instruction, the teachers’ behaviors associated with teaching students to create graphic organizers related to content information increased. Students who participated in the instructional routine earned significantly higher scores on a test of graphic organizer creation than students who did not participate in the routine.
Reference
Scanlon, D., Deshler, D. D., & Schumaker, J. B. (1996). Can a strategy be taught and learned in secondary inclusive classrooms? Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 11(1), 41-57.
Scanlon, D., Schumaker, J. B., & Deshler, D. D. (1994). Collaborative dialogues between teachers and researchers to create education interventions: A case study.Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 5(1), 69-76.
About the Author
David Scanlon, Ph.D.
Affliations
- Associate Professor
- Lynch School of Education
- Boston College
- Chestnut Hill, MA
- Editor
The Learning Disability Quarterly
- Certified SIM Professional Development Specialist
- University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning
- Lawrence, KS
My Background and Interests
While to this day I miss being a special education teacher in a vocational agriculture high school, I entered into the higher education field because I wanted to learn more about how people teach and learn. In fact, I only took my first education class while in college because my advisor pushed me to do so. I became so enthralled with thinking about teaching and learning that I switched out of my plant-science major before that semester was even over. I’ve never tired of the basic questions, “How do people learn things?,” and “What does that tell us about how to teach them?” As my life unfolded, I needed a lot more pushing, though. Another advisor pushed me to take my first special education course, and that got me so excited that I changed my new major from vocational education to vocational special education.
As I was studying, the “paradigm wars” between explicit instruction and constructivist instruction and between phonics instruction and whole language instruction were raging. I found myself intrigued by all perspectives, and I was thoroughly confused as I tried to figure out with which side I agreed. Finally, I had the epiphany that both sides were right; we just need to figure out the right balance. That’s why the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM) made a lot of sense to me: it bridges top-down and bottom-up teaching and learning practices. Thus, I worked at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (KU-CRL) for a few years as a researcher to learn more about SIM, and that is where I conducted the initial research that eventually resulted in the ORDER Routine.
I continue to be interested in higher order literacy strategies for the content-areas, and I continue to do research in that field. I also have interests in adult literacy and adult education. Recently, I have begun to study speech and language instruction for children with Asperger’s Syndrome and related conditions. Talk about a fish out of water! There is so much I have yet to learn, but I am very much enjoying getting a further education.
Since I left the KU-CRL, I have had regrets about that decision, too. However, I have been very happy teaching college courses, with students ranging from freshmen to doctoral students. Teaching about the things I research has provided me a whole new way to learn about them, plus I get to be at the front of the classroom again!
The Story Behind the ORDER Routine
When I arrived at the KU-CRL, inclusion was a relatively new phenomenon, but Don Deshler and Jean Schumaker were already at the vanguard. They asked me to help them think about how to adapt SIM to this new context. I brought my interest in the literacy skills students need to be successful in the content areas to the table. We had general ideas of the challenge we wanted to address, but we wanted to seek the input of teachers to more fully understand the complexities of the situation. We decided initially to consult with social studies teachers, because that content area reflects a variety of the literacy skills students are typically called upon to perform across the school day. We also involved special educators and a few teachers from other content areas at the middle-school and high-school levels.
The first thing the teachers informed us about was the variety of academic skills needed for students to be successful in their courses. We gathered their information, and then we talked and studied for many hours on how to address their concerns. At the same time, we considered the applications of strategic instruction to their inclusive contexts. We knew that the task before us was not only to apply strategic instruction in fast-paced, academically diverse classes, sometimes with minimal direct special education support, but also to guide students in performing higher order thinking and learning skills.
After several experimental iterations, we arrived at the ORDER “Strategy,” a set of steps that students could follow to depict relationships among the information they were learning. A large number of middle-school and high-school teachers and their students collaborated with us as the teachers implemented the strategy instruction in their classrooms and gave us feedback. There were a few teachers who stuck with us through multiple years of research. They all provided great practical insights about how the ORDER Strategy could be used by students to fit the demands of the context. In fact, we came to realize that the ORDER Strategy needed to become the ORDER Routine, based on feedback from teachers about how they needed to support students in learning such a higher order process while also attending to the many demands on them to “get through” the curriculum with a diverse student population. We are very proud of the fact that the ORDER Routine provides students with procedures to facilitate their critical reflection on lessons or readings, which includes recognizing the relationships required for comprehending content and explaining what they know.
My Thoughts About The ORDER Routine
While I have already confessed to being a fan of strategic instruction, I take particular pride in the ORDER Routine. I think we developed something really special. This routine helps students with LD, other struggling learners, and their peers to think critically, instead of simply getting “the right answer.” Students who learn to use ORDER Steps are really learning to think. Another great thing about the routine is that it facilitates students’ performance of skills that good learners use. The routine is not a convoluted procedure, and it does not reduce the content to isolated bits of basic information. With this routine, students are actively engaged in thinking about what they are learning.
Teacher and Student Feedback on the ORDER Routine
Nearly twenty years after we began the research that resulted in the ORDER Routine, I still exchange holiday letters with one of the teachers who helped us from the start. Almost every year, she writes about how our project “saved her” or was “the first thing” that really helped her to engage her students. She, too, knew that real learning required engaged thinking, not just regurgitation. Many of the teachers who have learned to use the routine have given us similar feedback. They find that they can use it with students of varied ability levels and that it makes a difference in how thoroughly their students comprehend lesson or reading content. Perhaps the best feedback of all is watching students as they learn the routine; over time, their ability to explain their knowledge in rich and expansive ways improves dramatically!
My Contact Information
David Scanlon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Special Education
Lynch School of Education
Campion Hall
Boston College
140 Commonwealth Ave.
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Email: scanloda@bc.edu
Work Phone: 617.552.1949
