Researchers at Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) identified nine instructional strategies that are most likely to improve student achievement across all content areas and across all grade levels. These strategies are explained in the book, Classroom Instruction That Works, by Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock.
These nine strategies have been developed based on review of hundreds of studies in education and teaching and these strategies were most prominent in all of the data that reflected increased learning. Not all of the techniques will work for every student all the time, but an awareness of them will help to refocus our classroom language learning and enrichment activities. These ideas will help guide teachers as they plan speaking, writing, listening and reading activities. These language skills are inherent in many of the techniques, which make this list very valuable for the foreign language instructor.
Here are the nine strategies along with the increase in student achievement as a result of implementation. These percentages are based on standardized tests.
1. Identifying similarities and differences (45%)
2. Summarizing and note taking (34%)
3. Reinforcing effort and providing recognition (29%)
4. Homework and practice (28%)
5. Nonlinguistic representations (27%)
6. Cooperative learning (27%)
7. Setting objectives and providing feedback (23%)
8. Generating and testing hypotheses (23%)
9. Cues, questions, and advance organizers (22%)
strategies that are most likely to improve student achievement across all content areas and across all grade
levels.
