Top 5!

Debbie Cargill
Oct 26, 2009

David Letterman has his Top 10 list every evening, Learning-Focused has a Top 5 list! Actually, this Top 5 is a compilation of research from Marzano (2001) and the US Department of Education (2002) that identified 33 instructional strategies that significantly impact student achievement. The Top 5 strategies are Extending Thinking, Summarizing, Vocabulary in context, Advance Organizers, and Non-Verbal Representations. The goal is that Learning Units will incorporate each of these strategies and that Acquisition Lessons will include Summarizing, Vocabulary in context, Advance Organizers, and Non-Verbal Representations.

Extending Thinking (#1 strategy) is the second level of learning. It is at this level that knowledge, skills, and concepts previously acquired (acquisition level) is taken to a deeper level of understanding. Students are given opportunities to create connections and think on a higher level. The Learning-Focused Model includes eight research-based thinking strategies to be used in designing Extending Thinking lessons and/or activities: abstracting, classifying/categorizing, constructing support, analyzing perspectives, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, error analysis, and comparing/contrasting. Teachers choose an Extending Thinking strategy based on the content to be extended. Students should be taught the strategies and given multiple opportunities to use them.

At #2 on the Top 5 list is Summarizing. The key to using Summarizing effectively is to recognize that it is a learning strategy, not a teaching strategy. Summarizing can also be a tool for teachers to assess student knowledge and check for understanding throughout the lesson. Distributed throughout the lesson, Summarizing becomes a formative assessment tool which provides teachers with immediate information about student needs and students with immediate feedback. At the end of the lesson, the Summarizing strategy provides students with the opportunity to perform, produce, and/or answer the Essential Question. At #2, Summarizing is one of the easiest strategies to implement immediately.

Rounding out the Top 5 list is Vocabulary in context, Advance Organizers, and Non-Verbal Representations. Embedding vocabulary instruction into the content helps students to gain a greater understanding of the content. Advance Organizers provide students with an organizational structure for new information. Word maps, pictures, or graphic organizers can be Non-Verbal Representations.

Individually, each of the Top 5 strategies has been shown to have a significant impact on student achievement. When CONNECTED and used deliberately and purposefully in learning units and acquisition lessons, they are powerful tools for increasing student learning.

Click here to view resources for implementing the Top 5!