The Alternatives Unlimited program focuses on instruction in math and reading, built around purposeful, focused, and content standard aligned curriculum. Our tutors are trained to use the following instructional practices associated with higher levels of student achievement: |
Category |
Definition |
Identifying similarities & differences |
Helping students compare, classify, and create metaphors and analogies |
Summarizing & note taking |
Helping students analyze, sift through, and synthesize information in order to decide which new information is most important to record and remember |
Reinforcing effort & providing recognition |
Teaching students about the role that effort can play in enhancing achievement and recognizing students for working toward an identified level of performance |
Homework & practice |
Providing students with opportunities to learn new information and skills and to practice skills they have recently learned |
Nonlinguistic representations |
Helping students generate nonlinguistic representations of information, including graphic organizers, pictures and pictographs, mental pictures, concrete representations, and kinesthetic activity |
Cooperative learning |
Creating opportunities for students to develop positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, individual and group accountability, interpersonal and small group skills and group processing |
Setting goals & providing feedback |
Helping students set their own learning goals in order to establish direction and providing students with timely feedback about their progress |
Generating & testing hypotheses |
Helping students generate and test hypotheses through a variety of tasks, through systems-analysis, problem-solving, historical investigation, invention, experimental inquiry, and decision-making |
Activating prior knowledge |
Helping students retrieve what they already know about a topic
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