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: For this project, the shapes are designed so that the parallelogram and trapezoid can be made from the triangle. When your students use and compare the triangles, parallelograms, and trapezoids as they place the robot parts, your students will be Indentifying Similarities and Differences. They further practice Indentifying Similarities and Differences when they compare their placement of robot parts to those of other groups. Lastly, the robot part functions themselves have similarities and differences that will come up when they select the parts needed to complete the mission. Your students may not agree with the solution in the project. That is fine because there are ambiguities in interpreting the function of the parts because of their similarities and differences and it can lead to valuable discussions.
Summarizing and Notetaking: Students should take notes as they design the robot to complete the mission. 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 because of the need to combine language and drawing to solve the problem. 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 solving their design problem. Have the students present their solutions to the class so other students 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 design as homework. Students should draw their solutions on paper. When they are finished with the activity, assign as homework a brief paper summarizing their design solution and placement of robot parts. High achieving students could be assigned the Super Challenge.
Nonlinguistic Representations: This activity is replete with nonlinguistic representations such as graphics. Students will learn more from nonlinguistic actions as they see the robot they design come together. If the students deconstruct the Squeak project to find out how it works by examining and 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 the design solution, the different interpretations of the mission statement will be a valuable learning experience. They will need to combine all the ideas and come to a concensus that is more likely to be correct.
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 solve one mission. Students could offer feedback to other students through discussions explaining their interpretation of the mission statement. 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. If you have your students do the Superr Challenge, they will have to learn how the Etoys in Squeak work. The references on the previous page are a good start and the Quickstart guides avaialble at Squeakland under "What is Squeak?/Getting Started" give a good overview. However, they will still have to figure out how the scripts on this project work. They can remove tiles from scripts and see how that effects the outcome. Through induction they can determine the principle behind how the scripts work. Then they can use those principles to deduce how their changes will affect the outcome and produce their new reconstructed mission. 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, a good starting question would be "What is design?" Remember that it is important to wait after asking your question 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 astronauts doing research on the International Space Station with their robotic assistnats Norbot and Zotbot would be a good starting point.
