Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock identifies 9 categories of instructional strategies that have been shown through research to be effective in the classroom. They base their conclusions on meta-analyses done by researchers at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning. It is important to realize that there is much overlap in the strategies and the good techniques in one strategy are often used to advantage to enhance the learning effectiveness of other strategies. Below we list the strategies employed in this web activity. The strategies are listed in order of effectiveness as rated by the average effect size (achievement in standard deviation units).
Identifying Similarities and Differences: The strategy of Indentifying Similarities and Differences will enter in scaling the planet's distances in Norbanian Astronomical Units. When your students compare the scaling using different home planets, they will be Indentifying Similarities and Differences. Also, they will be Indentifying Similarities and Differences when they explore and discuss different data gathering techniques.
Summarizing and Notetaking: Students should take notes as they make their observations. An effective note taking structure is to use the left side for notes in text, perhaps an outline, and the right hand sides for drawings and other graphical aids that help organize and clarify their observations. Finally, a summary can be written along the bottom as the groundwork that holds the structure together (download an MSWord version of the note taking structure). This method of notetaking would be effective in this activity if students put all their observations together on the same sheet or group of sheets. For the most effective use of this technique, have students discuss and compare their notes and summaries.
Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition: Reinforce students positively as they explore and make progress on their observations and discussions and as they later scale Norbania and acquire and plot data. Have the students present their data, plots, and table of ratios so you and the class can recognize their good work. The very best reinforcement and recognition comes from parents, teachers, and other students. Download an MSWord version of a data table for this activity.
Homework and Practice: You should assign reading about periods and positions of planets and scaling as homework. Students should plot their data on graph paper and tabulate their ratios. When they are finished with the activity, assign as homework a brief paper summarizing their method of data gathering and explaining their data plots and tables. High achieving students could be assigned challenges 3, 4, and/or 5 (see Extensions).
Nonlinguistic Representations: This activity is replete with nonlinguistic representations such as graphics and animations. Students will learn more from nonlinguistic actions as they create and explore Norbania. If the students deconstruct the Squeak project to find out how it works and construct a fourth planet using the graphical tiles, they will be working with nonlinguistic representations of ideas (programming commands) and mathematics (arithmetic). The natural integration of these representations enhances the learning experience.
Cooperative Learning: Setting up cooperative learning groups is the recommended way to maximize student learning in this activity. Five defining elements of cooperative learning are: positive interdependence, face-to-face promotive interaction, individual and group accountability, interpersonal and small group skills, and group processing. Reciprocal Teaching is a research-based strategy that can be used effectively with cooperative groups. The four phases are summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. If you assign groups to work on observing their planets and take data, it is important for each student to observe and take data. Then through discussion the team members can compare, summarize, question and clarify.
Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback: Objectives that are set shouldn't be too narrowly focused or learners tend to miss too much related material. For this activity a good objective would be to observe and describe the motion of the planets. Copernicus saw a beauty in the harmony of the planet's motion (outer planets having greater periods) with the Sun as the center of the solar system. Students could offer feedback to other students through discussions explaining their observations and descriptions of the motions. If you give your students a test on the activity, research shows that the optimal time is one day after exposure to the material. Feedback on exams or projects has been shown to enhance learning and the best form is an explanation as opposed to just being given the correct answer.
Generating and Testing Hypotheses: Both inductive (abstracting a principle from a set of specific observations) and deductive (using a principle to predict a specific result) reasoning can be used to advantage to promote learning. Deductive reasoning activities have been shown to be more effective, but it depends on the circumstance. The division into inductive and deductive is often blurred and the concepts are most valuable when considered as two extremes of reasoning. In this case your students could follow the inductive path by abstracting the principle that planets farther out have longer periods. Next students could move one of their planets and deduce the period of the moved planet depending on where it is placed. It has also been shown valuable for students to explain their hypotheses and predictions, which they could do as homework or in class or both if time permits.
Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers: These strategies all take advantage of students' prior knowledge and are good ways to start a lesson. As you give cues and ask questions, keep in mind that higher-order questions are more effective and students are more interested in things they already know something about. For example, good starting questions would be "What is the revolution of a planet and how is it related to period?" and "How is a planet's period related to its distance from the Sun?" Remember that it is important to wait after asking your questions to give the students time to collect their thoughts before they respond - you will have a much better discussion. Advance organizers are a way of giving your students a brief "heads up" before starting a topic - they aren't outlines or summaries. Research shows the most effective advanced organizers are expository. In this case a story involving creating a model of Norbania would work well.
