Practical Strategies for Improving Instruction

Middle level teachers are unique not just by virtue of the level of students they teach but also by the ways in which they teach. This monograph emphasizes strategies that actively engage students of all ability levels, promote collaboration, provide for various levels of concrete and abstract thought, and foster student inquiry. The monograph presents approaches to assessing reading and writing, cooperative learning, vocabulary development, reading comprehension, and critical thinking and to other topics that are directly reflective of current research. It provides step-by-step procedures along with classroom examples in a convenient and serviceable format, and its research-based teaching strategies are applicable to all subject areas. The introduction offers an overview of the research on prevailing versus preferred instructional practices in middle schools and discusses what can be done to improve instruction in five basic areas: (1) approaches to teaching; (2) lesson planning and implementation; (3) classroom instructional resources; (4) instructional activities and arrangements; and (5) promotion of higher order thinking. The monograph emphasizes the following groups of strategies: 1 and 2 are concerned with assessing reading and writing performance; 3 through 9 center around cooperative learning as it relates to various topics; 10 through 13 show practical ways to develop students' vocabulary with example spanning curricular areas. The remaining strategies deal with improving students' comprehension and appreciation of what they read. (NKA)