Classroom Instruction That Works

Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement

Mar 16, 2009

In this informative book, Robert Marzano describes nine categories for instructional planning that research shows to improve student achievement.

Teachers are always looking for the most effective teaching strategies to engage students and improve performance. Through many meta-analyses of action research around various instructional strategies, Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock have identified the methods that result in the most gains in student achievement.

Nine Categories for Student Achievement

The nine categories found to be the most effective are strategies teachers everywhere use. What makes them more effective are the manners in which they are presented and monitored. Each category is reviewed in depth in a chapter in the book devoted to its practice in the classroom, in order of its effectiveness.

Identifying Similarities and Differences

This chapter defines the best ways to use analogies, Venn diagrams, and compare and contrast strategies. By modeling and using references to defend the point of view, students develop critical thinking skills. Marzano’s research shows this to have the highest percentile gain of all the strategies.

Summarizing and Note Taking

Teaching students the most effective way to take notes and summarize learning allows them to transfer and retain knowledge, resulting in the second highest gains for the students.

Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition

Marzano asserts that simply rewarding students for excellent work is good, but recognizing effort is even more effective. Students are motivated when effort is rewarded, and they strive to achieve higher goals. Marzano gives the example of rewarding students for making progress toward a goal in the classroom.

Homework and Practice

Homework that is directly related to classroom activities and acts as reinforcement and practice that students can complete independently is best. Immediate, daily feedback on the homework and practice proves to provide students with the support they need to correct mistakes early, and to reinforce proper procedures.

Nonlinguistic Representations

These include all types of graphic organizers, pictures, and representations of concepts studied in class. This chapter offers a few examples of graphic organizers, however, it is in the teacher's best professional practice to find the organizers that fit the learning needs of the students and subject.

Cooperative Learning

Purposeful cooperative learning, where each student has a defined role to play, can be very effective in developing student understanding. However, as with any strategy, Marzano asserts that cooperative learning can be overused, or used ineffectively. He states that using it sparingly, and having each student participate with a purpose, makes it effective.

Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback

Setting learning goals and objectives at the beginning of a unit of study helps students to focus on the material important to their learning, and to disregard inessential information. Marzano gives an example of a class that disregarded extraneous information in a unit that was not specified in the learning objectives. This helped the students focus on the core concepts.

Generating and Testing Hypotheses

When students must predict and infer, creating hypotheses about causes and effects, they develop a deeper understanding of content matter. Marzano shows how this can be applied in social studies, language arts, and sciences.

Questions, Cues, and Advance Organizers

Also commonly referred to as activating prior knowledge, using these strategies allow teachers to set a baseline for their students and address the needs of each student as they work through lessons.

Throughout the book and again in the last chapter, Marzano and his colleagues give practical suggestions for implementation of these strategies in the classroom. These examples are broad and should be adapted to the classroom by individual teachers. Using these strategies to guide and improve instructional practice, educators can reach all students and see remarkable gains in their learning. That is the goal of effective teaching.

Classroom Instruction That Works, by Robert Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock, published by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2001.

The copyright of the article Classroom Instruction That Works in Teaching Strategies/Mentorship is owned by Suzanne Pitner. Permission to republish Classroom Instruction That Works in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.