Adding a new strategy to that bag of tricks

As I continue to fill that bag I decided to try a new instructional strategy. This strategy, "Air Drawing," is one that I guess I've done in some form or another over the past few years just not as deliberate or refined. It consists of students drawing or motioning in the air to demonstrate how they will carry out a procedure before they actually do so. I chose to use this with a flapbook test-taking review activity we did. My group has struggled with making these flap-books in the past (not understanding how to fold, where to cut, etc.) so I figured this was the perfect activity to try this with. First I modeled how to "air draw" this procedure. It felt sort of mime-like but when I asked a few model students to try it out they did wonderfully! I then had the whole class act out each of the steps. When it came time for them to complete the task on their own I had 100% understanding!! I feel this was a very effective strategy as it tapped into Marzano's Nonlinguistic Representation and the physical movement seemed to help them store the steps in their "muscle memory." This is definitely a strategy I'll use again!