Meet Me in the Middle Chapter 3

Chapter 3 of Meet Me in the Middle is all about strategies on how to get students to remember important information and to develop reasoning skills. The two strategies that stood out to me about memory were chunking and emotions. Chunking a tool that I have used before with student that has proven very successful. I think this is a tool that many of us use without thinking about it, so to apply it in a school setting works well for students. I idea about emotions also stood out to me because I have never thought of that as way to help students retain information. However, it is clear that it could be a very powerful tool in the classroom. There were also some strategies regarding reasoning skills that I found very interesting and would consider using in my own classroom one day. I really liked the idea of giving students three different articles on the same current event and asking them to pull out differences. A big theme in studying social studies is understanding bias in certain texts, so this is a tool I will definitely be using in my classroom. The other strategy that I liked was posing a conflict that is relevant to your students’ lives and asking them to look at both sides of the argument. I like this idea because it involves topics that are important them and as a result they will be more engaged in the task. Lastly, I really liked the idea of having lateral-thinking problems for students to think about as a part of class or during their free time. I think it’s a great way to get students practicing their critical thinking skills.