Category: Instructional Strategies

How the "6 Pictures" Activity Ramps Up Student Engagement

How the “6 Pictures” Activity Ramps Up Student Engagement

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The relationships you build with students will impact their performance. The six pictures activity can help you get to know them while increasing student engagement and enhancing your instruction. This versatile strategy helps students: Consider multiple aspects of the content Organize and remember information Distinguish key information from supporting details Provide support for an answer
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3 Types of Learning Targets

3 Types of Learning Targets

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An excerpt from Creating & Using Learning Targets & Performance Scales: How Teachers Make Better Instructional Decisions, by Carla Moore, Libby H. Garst, and Robert J. Marzano To learn more about this topic, click here to join Carla Moore for a webinar on November 14. Learning targets and performance scales are tools that can help you become more
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Essential Strategy: Using Similarities and Differences to Deepen Student Learning

Essential Strategy: Using Similarities and Differences to Deepen Student Learning

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Just like a computer or office, the brain needs to organize information in a way that makes it easily accessible while enabling further growth. For example, if you can’t classify and find information related to the solar system, how are you supposed to understand astrophysics? Students need to move from rote memorization to being able
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The Game Plan for Efficient Teaching: How 2 Minutes Now Can Save 45 Minutes Later

The Game Plan for Efficient Teaching: How 2 Minutes Now Can Save 45 Minutes Later

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By Shannon Pretorius ”We don’t have enough time to teach everything!” It’s a common complaint, and I don’t think a single teacher would disagree with it. Let’s take a look at areas we may be able to adjust so we can teach more efficiently and utilize each and every minute purposefully. Teaching, like the game
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Flipped classrooms

How Can Flipped Classrooms Increase Learning?

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You know the drill: identify critical content, deliver it to students, and then give them homework to deepen their knowledge of the new material. This works, but do you ever get the urge to shake things up a little? Would your students benefit from a change to the usual routine that gives them more control
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Power and Simplicity: iObservation and Essentials for Achieving Rigor

Power and Simplicity: iObservation and Essentials for Achieving Rigor

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Originally published in CenterEd in June 2014. Having taken part in a pilot of iObservation, LSI’s observation and professional development software, and instructed the faculty to study elements of the Marzano Teacher Evaluation Model, Bonny Eagle Middle School, the largest middle school in the state of Maine, was ready to take a deeper dive in
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Dr. Ilene Winokur AlZaid

Dr. Ilene’s Journey – Promoting Reflective Teaching in Kuwait

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When Dr. Ilene Winokur was young, people often told her she’d make a great teacher. She wasn’t quite sure why they said that – perhaps it was her ability to relate to all types of people or her infinite patience – but she respected the teaching profession so deeply that she didn’t feel capable of
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Stephanie Shepherd

Creativity and Collaboration Help Students Learn Real-World Skills

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Bak Middle School of the Arts, a public magnet school in West Palm Beach, Florida, is every creative kid’s dream school. Not only can students “major” in a wide array of art concentrations, but Bak’s reputation for academic excellence further increases its standing as one of the community’s most highly sought-after middle schools. Bak is
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Cognitive or Conative? Teaching Strategies for the 21st Century

Cognitive or Conative? Teaching Strategies for the 21st Century

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Historically, education has been about developing students’ cognitive skills to improve their ability to store and process information. This is still critical, of course, but today’s rigorous college and career readiness standards also emphasize the development of students’ conative skills to prepare them for higher education and the global workplace. Put simply, students use conative
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An Easy Technique for Teaching Students to Identify Critical Content

An Easy Technique for Teaching Students to Identify Critical Content

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Today’s students need to know how to accept ownership of their own learning. An educator’s job becomes much easier when students can take control of their progress; but how, exactly, can you teach that? The Learning Sciences International Essentials for Achieving Rigor series of instructional guides helps to answer this question. The first book, Identifying
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