SIX RESEARCH BASED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

1. Cooperative Learning Groups

Cooperative learning is an instructional approach that encourages students
to work together in small groups. It emphasizes the importance of
cooperation rather than competition in solving academic problems and
completing assignments.
In Cooperative Learning Groups, students work together to complete a task
or project. Students learn to work together, leadership skills can be
developed, and speaking and presentation skills will be utilized.
2. Non-Linguistic Representation/Graphic Organizers
Non-Linguistic Representation is the use of visual, kinesthetic, and whole
body systems to acquire and store knowledge. Mental images and physical
sensation combined with linguistic modes allow students to better reflect
and recall knowledge. Students can use a variety of activities to produce
non-linguistic representations to accelerate learning. Non-linguistic
representations are expressed using images, sound, touch, and movement.
An example of Non-Linguistic Representation is a Graphic Organizer.
Graphic organizers are used to represent knowledge and to enable students
to see the relationships among important elements in an assignment.
Some uses of Graphic Organizers:
a. Describe people, places, events, ideas, or objects,
b. Compare and contrast, and
c. Classify and categorize information

3. Homework and Practice

Homework should be a focused strategy for increasing student
understanding. To increase student learning, homework should be assigned
at an instructional level that effectively matches students skills. Students
should have an opportunity to repeatedly practice their new learning.
Homework should deepen understanding by providing students time to
read further and elaborate on new ideas that expand their understanding.
Students need time to adapt and shape what they are learning as they
practice. As they practice, given time, students will incorporate new skills
into their knowledge base.
4. Advance Organizers
Advance Organizers are tools to introduce the lesson topic, illustrate the
relationship between what the students are about to learn and the
information they have already learned. An advance organizer is information
(verbal or visual) that is presented prior to learning and can be used by the
student to organize and interpret new incoming information.
Different types of Advance Organizers:
Expository - simply describes the new content,
Narrative - presents new information in a story format,
Skimming - reading the main ideas of a passage to get an overall
impression of the content, and
Graphical organizers - pictographs, descriptive and concept patterns.
5. Identifying Similarities and Differences
The ability to break a concept into its similar and dissimilar characteristics
allows students to understand and often solve complex problems by
analyzing them in a more simple way. Students benefit by direct instruction
and open-ended experiences in identifying similarities and differences.

Students should be engaged in activities that require them to compare,

classify, reclassify, and use metaphors and analogies. Students should be
asking How is this the same as what I already know? or How is this
different? If students develop the habit of identifying similarities and
differences, they will become more efficient learners.
6. Cues and Question
Teachers need to learn what students already know or dont know, and
then connect new ideas to the students existing knowledge base. Teachers
can guide students from the known to unknown and from familiar territory
to new concepts. Students should be asked questions to introduce new
content and encourage analysis and thus develop higher-order thinking
skills. Students should also be given time to think before jumping in with an
answer to the teachers question. Pausing for a few second may generate
better classroom discussion and more conversation among the students.