What I Learned

In English courses, students learn lots and lots of new information in each class. We know we must take notes and do homework, but we can also use different strategies to remember the most important new skills learned in each class.

One great way to do this and also practice writing and speaking is to do "What I Learned" paragraphs after each English class.

This activity does not take much time each day, but it can be extremely helpful to remember some of the most important contents in each English course students take.

At the end of each class, students can take three minutes in a special section of their notebooks to write down the one most important thing they learned in class that day.

For example, maybe one student learned that tag questions always use the samehelping verb as the main sentence, and the tag should be negative if the sentence is positive, and positive if the sentence is negative. 

When she writes down this short and specific explanation of what she learned, the student is doing something very valuable! She is restating the new skill in her own words.

Often, when we have to explain something to someone else, we get a much clearer idea of it! Of course, you must understand an idea very will if you want to explain it in a simple and clear way to someone else.

At the end of class, students can share their paragraphs out loud. This is good speaking practice, and the teacher can also check understanding to be sure that all of the new skills make sense to the students.

Finally, students can review this special section of their notebooks at the end of the course. Maybe there are some important skills from each class that they did not remember! This is an easy and clear way for students to organize the information that is most important to them, and to review it whenever they want.

So, what did you learn today?