This section focuses on instructional practices that are based on rigorous intervention research conducted primarily over the last decade in reading, writing, mathematics, and cognitive science and reasoning. Many of these research- based instructional strategies apply across various content areas and are designed to enhance students’ content area learning, increase engagement, and maximize students’ ability to recall, apply, and synthesize information. For example, summarization strategies can be implemented in social studies, science, or language arts; class-wide discussion practices can be used in mathematics to explore problem-solving methods and enhance reasoning ability.
When these strategies are implemented school wide, students experience consistency (for example, one strategy for identifying main idea rather than seven) and have the opportunity to apply and practice strategies in various contexts. These repeated exposures help students generalize the use of these strategies to other areas—in and outside of school and beyond the middle grades.
The content dimensions included in this section on research-based instruction are
• Reading and Reading Interventions
• Writing and Writing Interventions
• Mathematics and Mathematics Interventions
• Cognitive Science and Advanced Reasoning
Practical tools for implementing these practices can be found on the following web page:
http://www.middleschoolinstitute.org/toolkits.