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 several places. When your students compare position, velocity and acceleration, they will be Indentifying Similarities and Differences because acceleration is defined in terms of velocity just as velocity is defined in terms of position even thought they aren't the same thing. They further practice Indentifying Similarities and Differences when they take data for rocket launches on the Moon and other planets. Lastly, 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 for exploring the effect of launching rockets on the Moon and other planets 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 organizing, recording and plotting their data. Have the students present their data and plots so you and the class can recognize their good work. The very best reinforcement and recognition comes from parents, teachers, and other students.

Homework and Practice: You should assign reading about position, velocity, acceleration and gravity as homework. Students should plot their data on graph paper. When they are finished with the activity, assign as homework a brief paper summarizing their method of data gathering and explaining their data plots. High achieving students could be assigned the task of creating a two-stage rocket (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 see the numbers they pick turn into a simulation of a rocket launch. If the students deconstruct the Squeak project to find out how it works and construct a two-stage rocket 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 gathering rocket launch data, it is a valuable experience for each student to take data for different launch conditions. 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 understand motion (position, velocity and acceleration) and gravity. Students could offer feedback to other students through discussions explaining their concepts of position, velocity, acceleration and gravity. 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 deriving principles of motion. For example, they will see that velocity as a function of time is always a straight line in freefall, no matter what the launch conditions. The same holds for the initial period of constant acceleration. They could make a hypotheses about the effect of launching rockets on the Moon or other planets. If you chose to do the extension where the motion is represented by formulas, students could use the formulas to deduce the effects of changes in the launch conditions. 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 an position and how do we define it?", "What is velocity and give an example?", "What is acceleration and how is it related to velocity?", or "What is gravity and how does it change on the Moon or other planets?" 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, followed closely by skimming. In this case a story involving going to Mars in a rocket would be in order. How would the position change during the trip? How would the velocity change during the trip? How would the acceleration change during the trip?