Episode 28: R.O.P.E. Strategy for Analogy Instruction
A few years ago, I went to a professional development workshop on using Analogies for teaching gifted learners. The presenter provided a strategy entitled R.O.P.E. which stands for Relationships, Order of words, Part of speech, and Exactness. I was fascinated by this strategy and I started using it with my students.
Analogies have not always been easy for me to teach. I first attempted to teach my students analogies back in 1998. I had a Grade Four classroom, and I wanted to challenge my students in ways that my teachers have not challenged me. For me, analogies were a form of chaos because I did not know how to think about them and I didn’t understand how the words represented relationships. I can remember taking the Miller’s Analogies Test and performing like an intellectually challenged person on the test. It was experiences like these in my life that reinforced my inferiority complex. Nonetheless, going to the professional development workshop on analogies helped me to turn my chaos with analogies into order.
When I first attempted to teach analogies, I purchased a workbook of analogies, and proceeded to make a class set of analogy practice packets. After reading the instructional directions, I attempted one lesson from the packet with my students. The lesson BOMBED! Needless to say, as a result of that experience, it took me years to get comfortable again with solving analogies, much less teaching them. Thanks to the ROPE Strategy, the students that I am teaching now are more willing to engage with analogies while gaining confidence in solving them.
To help my students understand how to use the ROPE Strategy, I created a supplementary handout that I used in conjunction with the ROPE handout in my analogy workshops. By using the ROPE strategy, my students are getting stronger with analogies, and in this week’s podcast episode you will hear my introductory lesson on the ROPE Strategy. As the school year proceeds, you will be able to continue experiencing this strategy with my students as we are closely exploring relationships, word order, and parts of speech.
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