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 basis of this activity is comparing similarities and differences in various properties for the Earth and other planets. Some of the properties available for comparison aren't relevant to the existence of Northern Lights and it is a valuable lesson for students to discover for themselves which properties to focus on - that is more the way it is in scientific investigation. You can give your students more or less guidance towards which properties to investigate depending on the level of challenge appropriate for your class. The observations and analysis help students understand Northern Lights better by using the effective strategy of Indentifying Similarities and Differences. Download a table in MSWord to help the students organize their comparisons.
Summarizing and Notetaking: Students are asked to summarize the essential conditions necessary for the existence of Northern Lights on Earth from the video portion of the show. Students are also asked to take notes (download a useful note taking scheme in MSWord) throughout the activity as they work on the challenge. At the end of the activity the class should get together and have the collaborative groups give a summary report based on their notes. 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. For the most effective use of this technique, have your students discuss and compare their notes and summaries.
Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition: Teachers and parents should reinforce student efforts when they are on the right track and provide recognition for meeting the challenge to enhance student learning.
Homework and Practice: You could assign parts of the activity as homework, but this activity mostly provides valuable practice in collaborating, observing, recording, and problem solving. Since the practice occurs naturally in meeting the challenge, the students should be more motivated to practice and their learning should be more valuable. Further, students are challenged to practice mathematics problems involving ratios, fractions, decimals, percents, and proportions on several of the pages in the active book at the center of the activity.
Nonlinguistic Representations: This activity is replete with nonlinguistic representations such as attractive graphics and interactive experimental probes. The natural integration of these representations enhances the learning experience.
Cooperative Learning: Setting up cooperative learning groups is crucial to the success of this activity, where the groups work together to summarize what they have learned about Northern Lights on Earth from the video and go on together to meet the challenge question: What other planets might have Northern Lights? Five defining elements of cooperativew 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. All these phases play a role in meeting the challenge. Group members should all contribute, including the leader, because many viewpoints always lead to a better understanding and a more complete solution. The group members should take notes (see note taking above) to help them arrive at a solution. Once they have a solution, the leader should get them to ask questions where they are confused and they can all take part in the clarifying phase helping each other learn. Finally, the student groups should present their results and this will provide a further opportunity to enhance the learning by discussing the inevitable differences in the conclusions of the groups. As a teacher or parent, you should certainly guide your students and give them feedback when they are off-track, but keep the process under their control.
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 the process of creating Northern Lights. In several places student group members should be asked to offer feedback to the other members through discussions the explain what they observed. 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. It is important that the groups are told to explain how they arrived at their conclusions when making their presentations. If you give your students a test on the activity, research shows that the optimal time is one day after exposure to the material.
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. After deducing which planets might have Northern Lights from the principles they summarized from the information on Earth's Northern Lights in the video, encourage your students to refine their explanations, make further observations and discuss the refinements with their group members. It has also been shown valuable for students to explain their hypotheses and predictions, which should be part of the activity. Of the five methods identified in the above reference where Generating and Testing Hypotheses is used, two are featured in the activity (problem solving and experimentation).
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 question to ask after the groups have spent some time on the challenge could be What is one necessary condition to have Northern Lights on Earth? Then let the students continue to find the other conditions after the discussion generated by the question ends. 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. The table discussed above would be a valuable advanced organizer for the student groups.
