This Study Guide is designed to enhance your understanding of Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement, an ASCD book published in January 2001. Written by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock, this book describes and exemplifies instructional strategies that research suggests can have a major positive impact on student achievement. The reflective questions included for each chapter are designed to enhance your understanding of the book and to help you make connections between the text and your personal experiences.

You might use this guide as you read each chapter and begin to reflect on the information. You might also want to use the questions to stimulate conversations with colleagues in a study group format. Whether you use it alone or with colleagues, the questions should be seen as a starting point. The research and recommendations will surely stimulate many additional issues and questions unique to your own schools and districts.

In addition to the questions, this guide offers some suggestions for extending your learning. You are encouraged to try some of these activities, individually or with others, and to modify any of the suggestions as you customize your own personal professional development course of study.

Chapter 1. Applying the Research on Instruction: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

1. In this chapter, the authors suggest that schools can have a significant positive influence on student achievement and that the key variable is the individual classroom teachers. How do you react to this message?
2. Make sure that you understand the process of conducting a meta-analysis and drawing conclusions about general trends. To what extent do you believe that it is important for teachers to be familiar with the results of a meta-analysis like the one reported in this book?
3. Test yourself to see if you could explain to colleagues the relationship between an effect size and a percentile gain.

Chapter 2. Identifying Similarities and Differences

1. After reading the "Research and Theory" section of this chapter, think about your own personal experiences with identifying similarities and differences, both in school settings and in real life. Using these experiences as examples, explain why you think that the act of identifying similarities and differences can have such a positive influence on learning.
2. Now think about times you have asked students to identify similarities and differences. Would you conclude that your students' learning was significantly positively influenced, as the research suggests that it should be when these strategies are used? Why or why not?
3. The chapter explains that both teacher-directed and student-directed assignments can have a potential positive effect on student achievement. Consider how you would decide whether to use a more teacher-directed instead of a student-directed assignment.
4. There are four approaches to identifying similarities and differences described in this chapter. To what extent have you used each? To what extent do you provide students with explicit instruction in the use of these strategies? What effect does this instruction, or would this instruction, have on your students' work?
5. The "Classroom Practice" activities for classifying ask students to reclassify certain items. Why do you think many teachers consider this to be one of the most important steps of the process?
6. Think about a time when you used a metaphor to explain something that was otherwise difficult to explain. Describe how metaphors help us understand new information.
7. Complete this analogy: Instructional Strategies are to teachers as __________are to _____________.
8. How would you describe to colleagues the strengths and challenges of using the identification of similarities and differences in the classroom?

Chapter 3. Summarizing and Note Taking

1. This chapter emphasizes the potential positive effect of summarizing and note taking. As you consider this information, think back on your own learning experiences from elementary school through your present learning situations and evaluate your ability to summarize and take notes. Identify your strengths and weaknesses and try to conclude what effect your ability to engage in these processes has had on your learning.
2. To what extent were you taught how to summarize and take notes? If you had no instruction, consider how explicit instruction might have influenced your learning.
3. This chapter describes "summarizing" as a process of deleting, substituting, and keeping information. Although these three aspects of the process are easy to understand and model, students often find it difficult to summarize effectively. Describe some reasons you think that summarizing is such a challenge for students.
4. The summary frames provided in this chapter are often new to teachers, and they react with concern with the time it might take to teach students to use these frames. Try to explain why you think it might be worth taking class time to help students become proficient at using these frames or any frames that provide students with general organizational structures.
5. Many teachers have successfully used "Reciprocal Teaching" to help students analyze information as they summarize. Why do you think students often say that they like this particular approach to summarizing?
6. This chapter combines note taking with the process of summarizing, suggesting that they are closely related. How do you think these two processes are similar and different?
7. Think about how you take notes. To what extent are your own note-taking habits consistent with the generalizations about note taking listed in this chapter?
8. How would you discuss summarizing and note taking with colleagues? What issues would you raise, and what recommendations would you make?

Chapter 4. Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition

1. This chapter discusses the potential influence of reinforcing students' effort and providing recognition for their accomplishments. Think back to your own personal experiences and try to identify situations in which your learning was positively influenced when someone reinforced your effort or recognized your accomplishments in some significant way. You might also remember situations that would have been improved if someone had reinforced your effort or had given you recognition.
2. Now try to remember examples of situations that you positively influenced because you did reinforce students' effort or provide recognition.
3. Explain some of the reasons that, despite teachers' attempts to emphasize effort, many students still hold on to the belief that their successes and failures are due to their ability, or lack thereof, or to other outside forces.
4. This chapter recommends the use of rubrics to help students see the relationship between their effort and their achievement. Try to identify a specific long-term, challenging assignment that might be enhanced by using these rubrics.
5. Although verbal recognition seems to be most effective, providing concrete tokens (e.g., stickers, candy, toys) can also be effective. What advice would you give to a new teacher about using tokens as rewards?

Chapter 5. Homework and Practice

1. Think back on your years of experience—as a student—as the recipient of homework assignments. Try to describe the types of assignments that enhanced your own learning and those that had little, or even a negative, effect on your learning.
2. The research described in this chapter suggests that, especially for older students, homework seems to be positively correlated with student achievement. Even when some parents who are opposed to homework become aware of this research, they express strong negative feelings about homework. What do you think are some of the reasons for these feelings?
3. Reviewing the research on homework emphasizes the importance of commenting on students' homework assignments. What strategies would your recommend to a teacher who wants to assign homework but claims that it is logistically impossible to comment on students' work?
4. The authors say, "It is during the shaping phases that learners attend to their conceptual understanding of a skill," and "When students lack conceptual understanding of skills, they are liable to use the procedures in shallow ways." Think of some examples from your own experiences, either as a learner or as a teacher, that illustrate this learning principle.
5. How might you respond when a student complains that she does not want to do multiple problems as homework because, after all, she has shown that she knows how to do them?
6. Think about the descriptions of the studies on homework and practice and then draft a letter to students, and their parents, explaining the purposes of homework and the kind of parental involvement that you expect.
7. If you were discussing homework and practice with colleagues, what issues would you raise and what recommendations would you make?

Chapter 6. Nonlinguistic Representations

1. Nonlinguistic representations help us to recall and use information every day. Think of a topic that you understand very well and notice how many images related to this topic you can generate in your head. Now identify a topic with which you are familiar but that you do not understand well. Try to generate images and notice how difficult it is.
2. Study the research results for the various studies on nonlinguistic representations. Although the overall average effect is very positive, there is considerable disparity among the studies. Consider your own experiences, along with the generalizations and the classroom practice recommendations in this chapter, and hypothesize what aspects of classroom practice are probably critical to realizing the positive effects of using nonlinguistic representations.
3. This chapter explains that nonlinguistic representations are powerful ways to learn and recall information but that many classrooms are very linguistically oriented. Think of classroom experiences that are often effective but that are inherently linguistic (e.g., reading the textbook, engaging in a discussion, listening to an explanation). Suggest several specific ways that these linguistic experiences could be even more effective by guiding students to generate and use nonlinguistic representations, such as graphic organizers, multimedia, and role-plays.
4. If you were discussing the use of nonlinguistic representations with you colleagues, what issues would you raise and what recommendations would you make?

Chapter 7. Cooperative Learning

1. This chapter discusses one of the most popular and one of the most effective classroom instructional strategies: cooperative learning. Like all strategies in this book, it is not always used successfully. Using your own experience and the research and recommendations from this chapter, describe the type of cooperative group work that is likely to lead to enhanced learning for all students. Then describe some reasons that cooperative learning breaks down and actually interferes with students' learning.
2. We recommend that teachers use cooperative learning frequently, but not too frequently. What do you think would be signals to teachers that it is being used too frequently?
3. "I don't like cooperative learning because my child ends up doing all the work." How would you respond to this parent concern?
4. What issues and recommendations from this chapter on cooperative learning do you think you and your colleagues should probably discuss? Why?

Chapter 8. Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback

1. Try to recall personal experiences that exemplify working toward clear objectives and being provided with regular, valuable feedback. How would you describe the type of feedback that you received and its influence on you? What type of feedback was not valuable or had a negative effect on your work?
2. This chapter explains that setting objectives can have a positive effect on students' learning of targeted knowledge, and a negative effect on learning that was not targeted. Some educators would argue that students often learn valuable things that were not in the plan, or that were even unintended. If setting objectives inhibits such learning, what should you keep in mind when setting objectives?
3. The generalizations related to setting objectives explain that goals should be clear and specific, but also flexible enough for students to personalize the goals. Consider the objectives you are expected to use, that is, those provided by your school, district, or state. To what extent do you feel they meet the criteria of clarity, specificity, and flexibility?
4. How does the information in Figure 8.3 about "Corrective Feedback" shed light on your own experiences with giving and receiving feedback? For example, does it surprise you that research indicates that simply telling students whether an answer is right or wrong can have a negative effect on their achievement?
5. Identify ways that assignments could be constructed to take advantage of the potential positive effect of student-led feedback techniques. What are some reasons that it sometimes does not work to use student-led techniques?
6. If you were discussing setting objectives and providing feedback, what issues would you raise and what recommendations would you make?

Chapter 9. Generating and Testing Hypotheses

1. Think about personal experiences, either academic or in real life, that are examples of your generating and testing hypotheses. This might include trying something new in your classroom and predicting what will happen, experimenting with a recipe, or even attempting to communicate differently with a friend or relative. Identify the knowledge that you used to hypothesize what might happen and then think about what you learned as a result of your experiment.
2. The research indicates that deductive approaches—directly teaching the principles—to guiding students through generating and testing hypotheses are more effective than inductive approaches—helping students discover the principles. This surprises some educators. What are some possible reasons that deductive approaches were more effective?
3. In this chapter, there are a variety of reasoning processes that can be used to guide students through generating and testing hypotheses. Identify some specific content knowledge that you teach, or have seen taught, that would be appropriate for an assignment using one of these reasoning processes. Ideally, this knowledge should be a principle or generalization that could be applied to multiple specific situations. Try to think through two different assignments, using two of the reasoning processes, which students might be asked to complete. As you create these assignments, identify what students would have to understand, or what they would understand better, if they were given these assignments.
4. One recommendation in this chapter is to make sure that students can explain their hypotheses. If they complete the experiments successfully, why do you think it is also so important they be asked to explain their hypotheses?
5. If you were discussing with colleagues the information in this chapter about generating and testing hypotheses, what issues would you raise and what recommendations would you make?

Chapter 10. Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers

1. Study the research results in Figure 10.1 for "Cues and Questions." In your experience, what makes some experiences with cues and questions better than others?
2. Many teachers who are aware of the research on the use of "wait time" will confess that they do not use it often enough. What do you think are some of the reasons that might explain why teachers do not use this strategy systematically and effectively?
3. After reading the section on "Classroom Practice," think about how you might use these categories to improve the questions that you ask in the classroom?
4. The suggestions for analytic questions will take more of the students' time than recall questions. How would you respond to a teacher who explains that there just is not enough time to use these questions regularly in the classroom?
5. Research confirms that advance organizers are powerful when they help students focus on what is important, not on what might be unusual. All the different types of advance organizers described in this chapter, however, require up-front planning on the part of the teacher. How would you respond to a teacher who complains that there just isn't time to prepare the organizers?
6. If you were discussing with colleagues the information in this chapter about using cues, questions, and advance organizers, what issues would you raise and what recommendations would you make?

Chapter 11. Teaching Specific Types of Knowledge

1. This chapter explains the importance of systematic instruction for vocabulary learning at every grade level. Further, there are recommendations for using a process very different from simply asking students to write and memorize definitions. How would you present these ideas to colleagues in your school? What might the reaction be? How might you persuade skeptics?
2. Think through the guidelines for teaching vocabulary. Select several words and plan exactly how you would guide students through this process for each word. What do you notice? What is difficult? What do you predict will happen in the classroom?
3. Given that students need multiple exposures to information if they are to be able to recall and use the information, brainstorm a variety a ways that you might present information so that students have the advantage of multiple exposures. Think about how you would decide what information is important enough to plan multiple exposures.
4. Students must be given many opportunities to apply generalizations in multiple, novel contexts. What are the implications for the curriculum if this recommendation is to be followed?
5. The research indicates that "discovery" learning doesn't work well when students are learning a skill. Consider some possible reasons for these findings.
6. Read the descriptions of massed and distributed practice. Some would argue that distributed practice is often neglected in the classroom. Why might this happen? What could faculty teams do to ensure that students have the advantage of distributed practice?
7. Identify a process that students are expected to learn and use across a number of grade levels. Design a plan teachers could use to make sure students have the opportunity for focused practice of all of the important components of the process. In addition, suggest ways of keeping track of students' performance across the grade levels.

Chapter 12. Using the Nine Categories in Instructional Planning

1. This chapter includes a planning process for using the nine categories of instructional strategies. What might you add to the process? What would you do differently?
2. Spend some time reviewing one of your completed curriculum units (e.g., four-week integrated unit on Change, three-week unit on Hamlet, or a four-day unit on nutrition). To what extent do you plan for and use instructional strategies included in these chapters? What changes would you make? What might you add? Discuss your thoughts and revisions with a colleague and hypothesize possible changes in students' performance that you would anticipate.
3. How might you share the research information from this book with teachers in your school? What would be the main barriers you would face? Generate several ways of overcoming these barriers and set up opportunities to share with your colleagues.
4. Action research is a tool that practitioners use to study and act on problems and issues they face in their classrooms. Conduct an action research project to examine one of the strategies from this book. For example, you might try to teach the summary frames directly in one class and then compare students' performance to a class that receives no instruction in summarizing. After your study is complete, reflect on the implications of your findings and decide if further study is warranted. This activity can be done on your own, but it might be worthwhile to investigate collaborating with colleagues. (Richard Sagor's How to Conduct Collaborative Action Research, is available from ASCD.)

Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement was written by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock. This 178-page, 8" x 10" book (Stock #101010; ISBN 0-87120-504-1) is available from ASCD for $20.95 (ASCD member) and $24.95 (nonmember). Copyright 2001 by McREL. To order a copy, call ASCD at 1-800-933-2723 (in Virginia 1-703-578-9600) and press 2 for the Service Center. Or buy the book from ASCD's Online Store.