SIM Content Enhancement FAQ Responses 1. How will SIM Content Enhancement address this concern? In the August 2000 edition of Strategram, Dr. Deshler addresses how Content Enhancement helps address the Instructional Time/Content Explosion Dilemma. He describes this dilemma as the struggles to “shoehorn an ever-increasing mountain of content into the same limited instructional time year after year.” The reality of the situation is that teachers just can’t teach it all. They must be deliberate and strategic in how they identify critical content and focus student interaction on those critical features. All routines promote direct, explicit instruction. Several help teachers organize the content and present it to students in a way that students can understand. “Other routines help teach complex concepts so students gain a deep understanding and develop a shared vocabulary for talking about important information.” Another group of routines help students create quality work products. When implemented effectively, Content Enhancement can provide a strong framework for meeting state and national standards without compromising content or creativity. 2. How does SIM Content Enhancement promote student understanding of texts? Many students have difficulty comprehending classroom texts. The Survey Routine is one strategy designed to support student comprehension of complex text. It allows students to see the main ideas first so that they can better remember the facts related to those ideas. The Survey Routine acts as a lens or filter to focus students on what should be learned or understood from a passage. As students become proficient with the device, construction can be turned over to the student, supporting them in becoming skilled independent readers. (Strategram, November 1996) 5. How will Content Enhancement work with my really low students? In any general education class there will be a diverse population with varied levels of content background. Content Enhancement helps teachers attack the performance gap of students by “developing interventions that focus on how information is selected and presented to academically diverse classes” to make it more understandable and compensate for the gap as well as developing interventions that equip students to navigate the curriculum independently. U-CRL research has broken interventions into five tiers. Tier 1 and Tier 2 interventions focus on things that would happen in a general education classroom with the support of the classroom teacher. Tiers 3-5 focus on supports that would be provided by support personnel such as a special education teacher, paraprofessional, or specialist. Tier 1 routines help teachers organize and present critical content in a way that students can understand, organize and recall information. Tier 2 focuses on explicitly teaching students strategies to give them skills in processing and mastering the content. Both tiers create an apprenticeship environment where the teacher is the content expert, explaining and modeling for a novice to imitate. “The outcome of the apprenticeship is students who not only know and understand information, but who also can learn information on their own.” This experience and new found skills allows students to not only compensate and access their content, but generalize their learning strategies across content areas.
