Teaching Four Study Skills

Teachers instruct students in outlining as a study skill through both: a) modeling the behavior (such as when they outline a lecture they are presenting on the chalkboard or provide students with written outlines of materials they are going to cover in the class) and b) through formal instructional processes (Ornstein & Hunkins, 1993). Although no evaluations have been conducted of the instructional efficacy of modelling outlining, there has been some research examining the effectiveness of formal instruction in outlining.

For example, one instructional plan for teaching the reading study skill of outlining involves ten days of instruction for a thirty minute period in how to outline various reading passages. The plan teaches students three categories of outlining: (1) title/main topic selection and format; (2) subtopic selection and format; and (3) detail selection and format. (Bianco & McCormick, 1989).

Evaluative data collected on the use of this formal instructional approach to teaching outlining---collected using a sample of high school students 15 to 17 ye

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improving students readability skill as well as in improving their vocabulary and comprehension of selected texts (Nemeth, 1996). Memory Devices Memory devices refer to those mnemonic strategies which students' utilize to better recall information presented to them in class (Klausmeier, 1991). There are a wide variety of memory devices which teachers can teach students. These include: outlining as a memory device, flash cards, the use of imagery or visualization, phonetic or semantic clustering, and so forth. Most teachers utilize instruction in outlining as a memory device (Annis & Davis, 1976). By having students outline course material, teachers state that the technique not only helps them to better remember the material, but it also improves their writing ability and makes the memory device personally relevant because it is their own words they are using to generate the outline. These claims have been supported by research (Annis & Davis, 1976). One type of memory device used with very young children involves an approach to reading and spelling that pairs intrinsically interesting images with letters of the alphabet and their combinations. For example, the sentence "Arthur Ar has a get-away car" illustrates this
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Approximate Word count = 2037
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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