The Secret Behind Increasing Learning and Achievement
Cindy Riedl
Apr 04, 2011
What is the Secret Behind Increasing Learning and Achievement?
Raising the standards for students means raising the standards for teachers. Raising the standards for teachers in turn means raising the standards for principals. To accomplish either of these, schools must focus on learning and have the goal of continuous improvement. The question now is – continuous improvement of what?
Although there are many factors influencing achievement, such as the fact that too many students are coming to school already behind, educators must deal with increasing student achievement and accountability to match increasing state and national standards. So what’s the secret? We know many schools are having success under some of the most challenging situations and we know there is no ‘silver bullet’ or canned program that works. It truly takes much more than that! It takes every educator in a school. The best place to begin is to examine and replicate the most effective instructional strategies that exemplary schools hold in common with a major focus on learning these strategies and applying them in a connected framework. Also, educators need to be more knowledgeable about and use the “Levels of Learning” as a guide to plan daily instruction.
Most educators are aware of the five basic strategies that most impact achievement as identified by the research accomplished by Robert Marzano in 2001 and the US Department of Education in 2002. But many don’t realize that success relies on how you plan and implement these strategies in a connected approach across lessons and units in an appropriate sequence. Instead of simply focusing on these top 5, let’s take a look at the top eleven!
TOP ELEVEN STRATEGIES:
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Extending Thinking Strategies (with an emphasis on similarities/differences and causes/effects) such as:
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Abstracting where student find, identify and explain patterns in specific information or situations.
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Compare and Contrasting where students identify and articulate similarities and differences among items.
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Classifying and Categorizing where students group items into definable categories on the basis of their attributes.
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Constructing Support where students provide support or proof of statements and can differentiate between fact and opinion.
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Analyzing Perspectives where students describe reasons for our viewpoint as well as the viewpoint of others.
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Inductive Reasoning where students infer unknown generalizations from information or observations.
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Deductive Reasoning where students identify specific examples to support a general statement, rule or principle.
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Error Analysis where students find and describe errors in their own thinking or performance or in those of others.
Note that to be effective with the above Extending Thinking Strategies, you need to be specifically trained on the strategy to obtain a depth of knowledge of the steps in each process, the signal words and how to implement them in the lesson. Each strategy must be taught with intensive modeling and guided practice before students can apply the steps in a learning activity that deepens their understanding of the content.
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- Summarizing Strategies - both distributed summarizing, which occurs throughout the lesson to check for understanding, and final summarizing at the end of the lesson. Keep in mind that every student is involved whether they discuss what they have learned with a partner or have written to a prompt to show their depth of understanding. Regardless of how it is done – it is done by the students.
- Vocabulary Taught in Context - Key vocabulary and concepts identified in the content being taught require explicit instruction. Do not give 12 words in isolation at the beginning of the week and expect students to learn them by the end of the week for a test. Research has proven that there is NO BENEFIT to this practice.
- Acceleration with Scaffolding Grade Level learning and Advance Organizers - background knowledge is built and key vocabulary is previewed before the lesson, thus setting up initial successful learning and prerequisites that ensure success.
- Non-Verbal Representations - graphic organizers that are explicitly taught and used while students identify and organize essential information. The end product of a completed graphic organizer is some form of written response, whether a summary or responses to prompts.
- Product-Based and Effort-Based Feedback - feedback is connected to effort and product, not just product. An exchange of feedback between you and the student helps deepen their understanding and corrects misconceptions. Teacher/student conferences are powerful but do not occur with enough frequency. Therefore, plan for distributed summarizing at strategic points in the lesson to modify and adjust instruction to meet the needs of students.
- Distributed Guided Practice - during the lessons in school and homework.
- Socially Active Learning - collaborative pairs are used during brainstorming and discussion of key points in the lesson. Numbered-Heads, Think-Ink-Pair-Share and Think-Pair-Share are three techniques that allow students to work cooperatively during learning, especially when evaluating what they think they know.
- Setting Focus and Objectives for Learning - using Essential Questions with students at the beginning of the lesson and referring to them to guide instruction and learning. Students are expected to respond to the essential question at the end of the lesson to demonstrate their depth of understanding of the content.
- Questioning Strategies - move beyond recall to higher level responses such as:
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Application Questions that ask students to apply essential knowledge, facts, techniques and rules to new settings and contexts in a different way. For example: How could you demonstrate the use of this concept? How could you illustrate this process in action? What can we generalize from these facts?
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Analytical Questions that ask students to examine and break key information into parts by identifying motives or causes and to analyze essential concepts, themes and processes. Then they can make inferences and find evidence to support generalizations. For example: What is an analogy that might represent this situation? How would you classify these literary works? What are the major elements that comprise this sequence of events?
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Synthesis Questions require students to formulate a holistic summary of key ideas, make inferences, or create new scenarios. They must compile information together in a different way by combining elements in a new pattern or proposing an alternative solution. For example: What would you hypothesize about these unusual events? What do you estimate will be the costs for the project? How might you invent a solution to this ecological problem?
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Interpretive and Evaluative Questions are open-ended questions that require students to formulate opinions in response to ideas presented in a print or non-print (i.e. art work, audio-visual) medium. Students must support their opinions with direct textual evidence. For example: What did Frost mean when he said, “I have miles to go before I sleep?” Why does the photographer emphasize only his subject’s eyes? How would you defend the character’s actions?
Keep in mind that any of the above types of questions are powerful tools to utilize as Assessment Prompts to determine the level of student understanding and to challenge higher-level thinking throughout the lesson. Be prepared to deal with the challenge presented by responses to your questions!
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- Differentiated Assignments - across multiple levels, not just making them easy or hard.
There are many other teaching strategies, but after these, the achievement effects are substantially less. These eleven have the strongest research base and evidence base. Layered above all these strategies is how and when you apply them in lessons, along with how the strategies are sequenced and connected. The focus of planning should not be simply choosing which strategy to use in a particular lesson, but how to connect and sequence strategies across lessons in order to generate achievement gains well above teachers who randomly choose strategies or teachers who tend to use only 2 or 3 strategies.
For more information about instructional practices critical to achievement and reducing the Achievement Gap visit the Learning-Focused Strategies Model.
