We Remember What We Teach

Being a reading teacher, I am completely for the idea that social learning is the primary way people construct meaning. However, too few classrooms in my building use this teaching style. The areas in my school that I see this most used is in our social studies classrooms. In the guided reading classroom, each week we learn a new strategy to become better readers. For example this week we are looking at text to text, text to self and text to world connections in reading. By the end of the school year my students have pockets full of strategies and know when to pull them out to use them. Often I will pair up my students, sometimes one lower and one higher reader or sometimes both will be low or high and they read out loud to each other. When one struggles with a word or passage the other student’s job is to suggest a strategy that might be helpful. When they have to ‘teach’ the strategies to each other, they usually understand them and how to use them.


Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski stated “the instructional strategy of cooperative learning focuses on having student interact with each other in groups in ways that enhance their learning” (pp 139). When students interact with each other and teach each other key strategies for success, learning is remembered and students know how to apply what they have learned.