Backed by Evidence.
Designed for Impact.
Welcome to Marzano Research’s Teacher as Researcher library
of research-based instructional, school, and leader strategy summaries.
These strategies and recommendations are curated from
trusted sources with rigorous evidence thresholds like the Institute
of Education Sciences’ What Works Clearinghouse, and
can be usedto enhance teaching, learning, systems, and leadership.
Instructional Strategy Summaries
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.
English Language Arts
- 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 4: 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.
Math
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Establish and sustain an integrated school leadership team.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Use integrated data to drive instruction and intervention across tiers.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Build staff capacity for integrated practices through professional learning and coaching.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Embed integrated practices into Tier 1 instruction and progress monitoring.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Build trusting, inclusive partnerships with families.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Engage families in data conversations and MTSS-R decision-making.
- Summary of Recommendation 3: Equip families to support literacy at home.
- Summary of Recommendation 4: Strengthen literacy partnerships with strategic communication systems.
- Summary of Recommendation 1: Screen all students for potential reading problems at the beginning of the year and again in the middle of the year.
- Summary of Recommendation 2: Provide time for differentiated reading instruction for all students based on assessments of students’ current reading level.