Instructional Strategy Summaries
Recommendations from What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guides
Behavior
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Modify the classroom learning environment to decrease problem behavior.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Teach and reinforce new skills to increase appropriate behavior and preserve a positive classroom climate.
Cross-Content
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Interleave worked example solutions and independent problem-solving exercises.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Combine graphics and descriptions.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Connect and integrate abstract and concrete representations of concepts.
- Summary of Recommendation 5: Use questions to introduce new content and to provide additional exposure.
- Summary of Recommendation 6a: Teach students how to use delayed judgment of learning techniques to identify concepts that need further study.
- Summary of Recommendation 6b: Use tests and quizzes to identify content that needs to be learned.
- Summary of Recommendation 7: Help students build explanations by asking and answering deep questions.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Teach students academic language skills, including the use of inferential and narrative language, and vocabulary knowledge.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Develop awareness of the segments of sound in speech and how they link to letters.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Teach students to decode words, analyze word parts, and write and recognize words.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Ensure that each student reads connected text every day to support reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Provide explicit vocabulary instruction.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Provide direct and explicit comprehension strategy instruction.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Provide opportunities for extended discussion of text meaning and interpretation.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Increase student motivation and engagement in literacy learning.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Teach students how to use reading comprehension strategies.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Teach students to identify and use the text’s organizational structure to comprehend, learn, and remember content.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Guide students through focused, high-quality discussion on the meaning of the text.
- Summary of Recommendation 5: Establish an engaging and motivating context in which to teach reading comprehension.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Build students’ decoding skills so they can read complex multisyllabic words.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Provide purposeful fluency-building activities to help students read effortlessly.
- Summary of Recommendation 3a: Build students’ world and word knowledge so they can make sense of the text.
- Summary of Recommendation 3b: Consistently provide students with opportunities to ask and answer questions to better understand the text they read.
- Summary of Recommendation 3c: Teach students a routine for determining the gist of a short section of text.
- Summary of Recommendation 3d: Teach students to monitor their comprehension as they read.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Provide students with opportunities to practice making sense of a stretch text (i.e., challenging text) that will expose them to complex ideas and information.
- Summary of Recommendation 2a: Teach students the writing process.
- Summary of Recommendation 2b: Teach students to write for a variety of purposes.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Teach students to become fluent in handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, typing, and word processing.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Create an engaged community of writers.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Explicitly teach appropriate writing strategies using a Model-Practice- Reflect instructional cycle.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Integrate writing and reading to emphasize key writing features.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Use assessments of student writing to inform instruction and feedback.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Prepare problems and use them in whole-class instruction.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Assist students in monitoring and reflecting on the problem-solving process.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Teach students how to use visual representations.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Expose students to multiple problem-solving strategies.
- Summary of Recommendation 5: Help students recognize and articulate mathematical concepts and notation.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Use solved problems to engage students in analyzing algebraic reasoning and strategies.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Teach students to utilize the structure of algebraic representations.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Teach students to intentionally choose from alternative algebraic strategies when solving problems.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Build on students’ informal understanding of sharing and proportionality to develop initial fraction concepts.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Help students recognize that fractions are numbers and that they expand the number system beyond whole numbers. Use number lines as a central representational tool in teaching this and other fraction concepts from the early grades onward.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Help students understand why procedures for computations with fractions make sense.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Develop students’ conceptual understanding of strategies for solving ratio, rate, and proportion problems before exposing them to cross-multiplication as a procedure to use to solve such problems.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Interventions should include instruction on solving word problems that are based on common underlying structures.
- Summary of Recommendation 5: Intervention materials should include opportunities for students to work with visual representations of mathematical ideas and interventionists should be proficient in the use of visual representations of mathematical ideas.
- Summary of Recommendation 6: Interventions at all grade levels should devote about 10 minutes in each session to building fluent retrieval of basic arithmetic facts.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Teach numbers and operations using a developmental progression.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Teach geometry, patterns, measurement, and data analysis using a developmental progression.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Use progress monitoring to ensure that math instruction builds on what each child knows.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Teach children to view and describe their world mathematically.
- Summary of Recommendation 5: Dedicate time each day to teaching math, and integrate math instruction throughout the school day.
School and Leader Strategy Summaries
Preventing Dropout in Secondary Schools
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Monitor the progress of all students, and proactively intervene when students show early signs of attendance, behavior, or academic problems.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Provide intensive, individualized support to students who have fallen off track and face significant challenges to success.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Engage students by offering curricula and programs that connect schoolwork with college and career success and that improve students’ capacity to manage challenges in and out of school.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: For schools with many at-risk students, create small, personalized communities to facilitate monitoring and support.
Turning Around Chronically Low-Performing Schools
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Signal the need for dramatic change with strong leadership.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Maintain a consistent focus on improving instruction.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Make visible improvements early in the school turnaround process (quick wins).
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Build a committed staff.
Using Student Data to Support Instructional Decision-Making
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Make data part of an ongoing cycle of instructional improvement.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Teach students to examine their own data and set learning goals.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Establish a clear vision for schoolwide data use.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Provide supports that foster a data-driven culture within the school.
- Summary of Recommendation 5: Develop and maintain a districtwide data system.