[Simtrainer-l] PIRATES Help

[Graner, Patricia Sampson]

Hi Christine,
I appreciated Teresa's response, and you may have received more responses individually.

I once taught the strategy, in summer school, to 30 seventh and eighth graders in an inclusive setting, so I needed to adapt teaching the strategy. Here are some ways we worked through it:

  1.  We worked through the lessons together as a class, and the students helped each other to meet a class established minimum goal of 80 %
  2.  Students scored their own work together. They used orange pens to mark their papers. Instead of me telling them the answer, they took turns telling the answers to the class and explained why that was the best response. We practiced some Talking Together to negotiate the best responses when everyone was not in agreement.
  3.  They could earn credit for applying any part of the strategy in their other classes - some bragging rights.

During the school year, with my strategies classes, we used the Teams-Games-Tournament process for practice and study. I think that was quite successful because one of their assignments was to create the games.

Finally, I wonder if they are checking to see how this strategy is useful to them now? That could be a useful conversation, because their commitment might be swayed by that.  Also, I do wish I had had the cd lessons for them.

Good luck!
patty
--
pgraner at ku.edu
O: 785.864.0622 :: F: 785.864.5728
"Teachers make every other profession"
Start here to find The SIM Page<http://sim.kucrl.org>
SIM® is on Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/kucrl.sim>
KUCRL's Mission: Our work centers on solving the problems that limit individuals' quality of life and their ability to learn and perform in school, work, home, or the community.


From: Simtrainer-l <simtrainer-l-bounces at lists.ku.edu<mailto:simtrainer-l-bounces at lists.ku.edu>> on behalf of SIM Listserv <simtrainer-l at lists.ku.edu<mailto:simtrainer-l at lists.ku.edu>>
Reply-To: Christine Bouck <christinebouck at gmail.com<mailto:christinebouck at gmail.com>>
Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 9:00 AM
To: SIM Listserv <simtrainer-l at lists.ku.edu<mailto:simtrainer-l at lists.ku.edu>>
Subject: [Simtrainer-l] PIRATES Help

Hello. I am in the process of teaching PIRATES to a group of 9th grade students in a pull-out special education class specifically for teaching study skills (they are in regular classes for their core subjects). We have been working on this strategy since Halloween and are still working on the controlled practice tests. I go over it and go over it and they just don't seem to be making any progress. I even had them create posters or Power Point projects describing the strategy and the reasons for using it. As I'm grading these projects I'm noticing that they really didn't put much effort into them, much like the CP tests. (In fact, I have difficulty motivating them to do much of anything but I digress.)

PIRATES is always a longer strategy-more steps equals more time to teach it. But I've never encountered a group of students who were so reluctant to complete a strategy. Usually PIRATES is a favorite because of all the fun things you can do with the mnemonic and because it's so useful. Does anyone have any ideas as to something I can do to help excite my students or somehow get them on board? I've shown the results, shared personal stories of students I've known who've successfully used it, and even had one student in the class tell the others that he used one of the ACE guessing techniques on a test and it worked. I even bribed them with the promise of 2 days of a murder mystery game if they all finish the test before the end of the quarter. Nothing is working. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: winmail.dat
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 11020 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ku.edu/pipermail/simtrainer-l/attachments/20161214/c92387da/attachment.bin>