CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN EDUCATION

Contemporary American Education

Contemporary American Education

Part 1

Marzano's Nine Essential Instructional Strategies

Students learning and achievement are important aspects in the academic areas of education. While much emphasis is placed on an effective strategy to maximize student learning capabilities, it is also essential to enhance their capabilities and skills to receive education effectively. It is only through engagement and participation that students learn different concepts and their applications. Many researchers have focused their research works on this subject, showing various learning strategies and outcomes that can influence students' academic achievement significantly. However, very few of them have contributed a big deal. Marzano, Pickering and Pollock have examined decades of research to determine which teaching strategies have positive effects on student learning. They have introduced Nine Essential Instructional strategies that underlie learning strategies that underlie learning practices within educational settings (Murray, 1991).

The Nine Essential Instructional Strategies are enlisted below followed by their explanation and examples to provide an easy understanding of these strategies. Their usefulness within the educational set ups especially kindergartens and schools cannot be undermined. It finds its applicability in all academic areas and serves an important role in students' learning and achievements.

Identifying similarities and differences

This instructional strategy focuses on the development of an ability to break down complex concepts into simpler, similar or dissimilar characteristics that allow the student to analyze and understand complex problems. Students are able to comprehend complex concepts in this way. This can prove effective especially for students who are struggling and are unable to cope up with the study material (Clinard, 1998). This strategy can be utilized in the following ways:

Comparing

Classifying

Metaphors

Analogies

Comparisons include a distinction between similarities and dissimilarities of complex concepts and relate to each one of them. Classification is an activity that groups similar academic concepts together. Classification enables students to break down each complex concept and distinguish between the alike and dissimilar ones. Metaphors are used for rhetoric figures of speech and include a comparison between two unlike things. An analogy is the identification of a relationship between pairs of concepts. Analogies are for determining the student's ability to identify the relationship between two terms to one another and find bases or keys in the group alternatives that have the same relationship proposal (Clinard, 1998). Before we look into specific examples for this strategy, we should develop an understanding of the measures that teachers can undertake to implement this concept. Teachers should give students a model for the process. This helps them to practice things as they progress at school. It is also important to teach students the steps involved in metaphors and analogies and how they are deduced from the given text. Teachers can also make use of graphic organizers. The main idea is that the instructor should guide the students as much a possible. An example of metaphors could be the sentence “His daughter is the sunshine of her life”. Students should be encouraged to compare things and form similar ...