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Begin a lesson by helping students connect new learning to what they already know. Quickwrites, anticipation guides, KWL charts, and short class discussions make students’ thinking visible and prepare them to add new information to existing mental frameworks.

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Leveraging Prior Knowledge to Build Understanding

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By guiding students through developing their own understanding of core concepts, teachers ensure that the whole class is starting on a strong foundation.

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Show students what successful thinking looks like. Model how to annotate a text, solve a problem, summarize a paragraph, or organize evidence. Think aloud during the process so students can hear the decisions an expert learner makes.

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Conner, J. (2004). Using Think-Alouds to Improve Reading Comprehension.

Davey, B. (1983). Think-aloud: Modeling the cognitive processes of reading comprehension. Journal of Reading, 27(1), 44-47.

Gold, J., & Gibson, A. (2001). Reading Aloud to Build Comprehension.

Olshavsky, J. E. (1977). Reading as problem-solving: An Investigation of Strategies. Reading Research Quarterly, 12(4), 654-674.

Wilhelm, J. D. (2001). Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud Strategies. New York: Scholastic Inc.

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Think-alouds have been described as "eavesdropping on someone's thinking." With this strategy, teachers verbalize aloud while reading a selection orally. Their verbalizations include describing things they're doing as they read to monitor their comprehension. The purpose of the think-aloud strategy is to model for students how skilled readers construct meaning from a text.

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Break complex information into manageable parts and organize it with headings, concept maps, anchor charts, or graphic organizers. When information is structured clearly, students are more likely to understand relationships and build durable knowledge.

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Build memory by asking students to recall learning without looking at notes. Low-stakes quizzes, exit tickets, flashcards, and oral review help strengthen recall. Retrieval practice works best when it happens regularly, not just before a test.

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Retrieval Practice Improves Learning, but Will it Help ALL of my Students? (repost) — The Learning Scientists

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Late January, 2025 marks the Learning Scientists 9th birthday! If I’m remembering correctly, we started our little group on January 21, 2016 (but it was a long time ago and, as you all know, memory is not perfect!), and our first blog came out on February 5, 2016. Since then, we have produced a LOT

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Plan for students to revisit important ideas days or weeks later. Short review bursts, spiral warm-ups, and cumulative checks help students hold on to learning longer than one-time practice sessions.

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Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning

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Spaced Practice

Many of our students are still developing and refining their study habits as they transition from high school to college or as they enter new disciplines. Students may not be accustomed to the amount of content and the speed at which it is covered in college courses. Instructors in all courses and at all levels can structure their courses to help students learn course material over time and steer students away from cramming for an exam the night before. Strategies to help students space their learning include low-stakes assessments for practice, scaffolded assignments with intermediate due dates for drafts, and in-class activities that require students to learn and recall key course concepts and terms.

Evidence

Spaced (or distributed) practice refers to learning that takes place over time with rest periods between practice sessions. Students using spaced practice might break down study time to do work on several different courses consecutively or do other activities in between study periods. Massed (or blocked) practice refers to learning that happens in a single session with no rest period. When studying, students using massed practice would study the same material over and over, redo the same quiz repeatedly, or reread the same piece of text several times (Shea & Morgan, 1979; Soderstrom & Bjork, 2015). We often refer to this as cramming. Cramming is a less effective way to acquire and retain information in the long term because our brains need time to move information from short-term (or working) memory to long-term memory, thereby allowing us to retain that information. When students have time to spread out their learning, they return to key concepts and terms and can shift that new information from working memory to long-term memory. In studies, researchers have found drastic declines in the performance of students who used massed practice as compared to those who spaced their practice when they first learned the materials (Rohrer & Pashler, 2007). The reason is that distributed practice requires students to encode and then retrieve the information over time. The act of retrieval facilitates our long-term learning and performance (Kim & Webb, 2022; Soderstrom & Bjork, 2015).

Implementation

If your course requires students to learn new vocabulary and concepts, give students practice quizzes, multiple attempts on graded quizzes, and other opportunities to practice learning vocabulary and applying concepts over time.

Use question banks to draw random questions from repository of questions so that students are not retaking the same quiz every time they practice.

Return to earlier concepts throughout the semester by returning to earlier quiz questions. This is especially important if you have cumulative exams.

Key terms: spaced or distributed practice; massed or blocked practice

Who is doing this at IU?

In her L104 Biology of the Senses course, Laura Mojonnier (Biology) uses spaced practice to help her students gradually develop the skills and confidence to interpret scientific data. This large, introductory course is taken by non-majors, so they need practice with their data interpretation skills throughout the semester. Laura uses a set of related graphs through the semester and students learn how to interpret these and gradually build the familiarity and skills needed for more complex applications.

In her course, AFRI-L232 Contemporary Africa, Emily Stratton uses spaced practice to help her students learn the names and locations of the 54 African countries, 5 geographical and 6 geopolitical regions, and 30 selected major cities. Her students are mostly non-majors taking this course as part of their GenEd requirements. They often doubt that they will be able to learn all this content, but with Emily's support through the use of spaced practice, they are surprised that they can do so by the end of the course and often report feeling a strong sense of accomplishment. Emily helps students gradually learn all the content by first focusing upon the countries within one geographical region of the continent at a time. Then, they add geopolitical regions, and lastly cities. Emily helps her students pace their learning by quizzing them multiple times in the semester. Each quiz reviews older content alongside new content, so that students practice knowledge retention. At each step of the way, students begin to make more sense of the rest of the course content, understanding it within its geographical context.

Citations

Kim, S. K., & Webb, S. (2022). The effects of spaced practice on second language learning: A meta‐analysis. Language Learning, 72(1), 269-319. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12479

Rohrer, D., & Pashler, H. (2007). Increasing retention without increasing study time. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(4), 183-186. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00500.x

Shea, J. B., & Morgan, R. L. (1979). Contextual interference effects on the acquisition, retention, and transfer of a motor skill. Journal of Experimental psychology: Human Learning and memory, 5(2), 179. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.5.2.179

Soderstrom, N. C., & Bjork, R. A. (2015). Learning versus performance: An integrative review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 176-199. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615569000

Teo, W. Z. W., Dong, X., Yusoff, S. K. B. M., Das De, S., & Chong, A. K. S. (2021). Randomized controlled trial comparing the effectiveness of mass and spaced learning in microsurgical procedures using computer aided assessment. Scientific reports, 11(1), 2810. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82419-6

Wahlheim, C. N., Dunlosky, J., & Jacoby, L. L. (2011). Spacing enhances the learning of natural concepts: An investigation of mechanisms, metacognition, and aging. Memory & cognition, 39, 750-763. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-010-0063-y

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Spaced Practice: Evidence-based Teaching: Teaching Resources: Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning: Indiana University Bloomington

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Pair words with visuals such as diagrams, timelines, symbols, or sketches. Combining verbal and visual representations can help students remember information more effectively and explain concepts with greater clarity.

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Ask students to use knowledge in ways that resemble real-world thinking. They might write for a real audience, solve a community problem, explain a scientific phenomenon, or create a product that demonstrates understanding beyond recall.

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What is Authentic Project Based Learning (PBL)? - New Tech Network

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Dive into authentic project-based learning (PBL) to engage and challenge learners with meaningful, real-world learning experiences. Authenticity is a key element for teachers to enhance projects.

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Students deepen understanding when they explain their thinking to others. Use structured partner talk, academic discussion stems, debate, and peer teaching so learners must justify ideas, compare perspectives, and apply concepts verbally.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase "We will discuss."
We will discuss the video. We will discuss the story. We will discuss our results.
Every time I saw it in a lesson plan, I would add a note: "What format will you use? What questions will you ask? How will you ensure that all students participate?" I was pretty sure that We will discuss actually meant the teacher would do most of the talking; He would throw out a couple of questions like "So what did you think about the video?" or "What was the theme of the story?" and a few students would respond, resulting in something that looked like a discussion, but was ultimately just a conversation between the teacher and a handful of extroverted students; a classic case of Fisheye Teaching.

The problem wasn't them; in most of the classrooms where they'd sat as students, that's exactly what a class discussion looked like. They didn't know any other "formats." I have only ever been familiar with a few myself. But when teachers began contacting me recently asking for a more comprehensive list, I knew it was time to do some serious research.

So here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging. If you've struggled to find effective ways to develop students' speaking and listening skills, this is your lucky day.

I've separated the strategies into three groups. The first batch contains the higher-prep strategies, formats that require teachers to do some planning or gathering of materials ahead of time. Next come the low-prep strategies, which can be used on the fly when you have a few extra minutes or just want your students to get more active. Note that these are not strict categories; it's certainly possible to simplify or add more meat to any of these structures and still make them work. The last group is the ongoing strategies. These are smaller techniques that can be integrated with other instructional strategies and don't really stand alone. For each strategy, you'll find a list of other names it sometimes goes by, a description of its basic structure, and an explanation of variations that exist, if any. To watch each strategy in action, click on its name and a new window will open with a video that demonstrates it.

Enjoy!
a.k.a. Chat Stations
Basic Structure: Stations or posters are set up around the classroom, on the walls or on tables. Small groups of students travel from station to station together, performing some kind of task or responding to a prompt, either of which will result in a conversation.

Variations: Some Gallery Walks stay true to the term gallery, where groups of students create informative posters, then act as tour guides or docents, giving other students a short presentation about their poster and conducting a Q&A about it. In Starr Sackstein's high school classroom, her stations consisted of video tutorials created by the students themselves. Before I knew the term Gallery Walk, I shared a strategy similar to it called Chat Stations, where the teacher prepares discussion prompts or content-related tasks and sets them up around the room for students to visit in small groups.
a.k.a. Values Continuum, Forced Debate, Physical Barometer, This or That
Basic Structure: A statement that has two possible responses-agree or disagree-is read out loud. Depending on whether they agree or disagree with this statement, students move to one side of the room or the other. From that spot, students take turns defending their positions.

Variations: Often a Philosophical Chairs debate will be based around a text or group of texts students have read ahead of time; students are required to cite textual evidence to support their claims and usually hold the texts in their hands during the discussion. Some teachers set up one hot seat to represent each side, and students must take turns in the seat. In less formal variations (which require less prep), a teacher may simply read provocative statements students are likely to disagree on, and a debate can occur spontaneously without a text to refer to (I call this variation This or That in my classroom icebreakers post). Teachers may also opt to offer a continuum of choices, ranging from "Strongly Agree" on one side of the room, all the way to "Strongly Disagree" on the other, and have students place themselves along that continuum based on the strength of their convictions.

Basic Structure: Students are divided into 4 groups. Three of these groups are assigned to represent specific points of view. Members of the fourth group are designated as "provocateurs," tasked with making sure the discussion keeps going and stays challenging. One person from each group (the "speaker") sits in a desk facing speakers from the other groups, so they form a square in the center of the room. Behind each speaker, the remaining group members are seated: two right behind the speaker, then three behind them, and so on, forming a kind of triangle. From above, this would look like a pinwheel. The four speakers introduce and discuss questions they prepared ahead of time (this preparation is done with their groups). After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and continue the conversation.

Variations: When high school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling introduced this strategy in the featured video (click Pinwheel Discussion above), she used it as a device for talking about literature, where each group represented a different author, plus one provocateur group. But in the comments that follow the video, Wessling adds that she also uses the strategy with non-fiction, where students represent authors of different non-fiction texts or are assigned to take on different perspectives about an issue.
a.k.a. Socratic Circles
Basic Structure: Students prepare by reading a text or group of texts and writing some higher-order discussion questions about the text. On seminar day, students sit in a circle and an introductory, open-ended question is posed by the teacher or student discussion leader. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with textual evidence. There is no particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with others. Discussion is meant to happen naturally and students do not need to raise their hands to speak. This overview of Socratic Seminar from the website Facing History and Ourselves provides a list of appropriate questions, plus more information about how to prepare for a seminar.

Variations: If students are beginners, the teacher may write the discussion questions, or the question creation can be a joint effort. For larger classes, teachers may need to set up seminars in more of a fishbowl-like arrangement, dividing students into one inner circle that will participate in the discussion, and one outer circle that silently observes, takes notes, and may eventually trade places with those in the inner circle, sometimes all at once, and sometimes by "tapping in" as the urge strikes them.
a.k.a. Affinity Diagramming
Basic Structure: Give students a broad question or problem that is likely to result in lots of different ideas, such as "What were the impacts of the Great Depression?" or "What literary works should every person read?" Have students generate responses by writing ideas on post-it notes (one idea per note) and placing them in no particular arrangement on a wall, whiteboard, or chart paper. Once lots of ideas have been generated, have students begin grouping them into similar categories, then label the categories and discuss why the ideas fit within them, how the categories relate to one another, and so on.

Variations: Some teachers have students do much of this exercise-recording their ideas and arranging them into categories- without talking at first. In other variations, participants are asked to re-combine the ideas into new, different categories after the first round of organization occurs. Often, this activity serves as a good pre-writing exercise, after which students will write some kind of analysis or position paper.
a.k.a. Speed Dating
Basic Structure: Students form two circles, one inside circle and one outside circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student on the outside; they face each other. The teacher poses a question to the whole group and pairs discuss their responses with each other. Then the teacher signals students to rotate: Students on the outside circle move one space to the right so they are standing in front of a new person (or sitting, as they are in the video). Now the teacher poses a new question, and the process is repeated.

Variations: Instead of two circles, students could also form two straight lines facing one another. Instead of "rotating" to switch partners, one line just slides over one spot, and the leftover person on the end comes around to the beginning of the line. Some teachers use this strategy to have students teach one piece of content to their fellow students, making it less of a discussion strategy and more of a peer teaching format. In fact, many of these protocols could be used for peer teaching as well.

Basic Structure: Another great idea from Sarah Brown Wessling, this is a small-group discussion strategy that gives students exposure to more of their peers' ideas and prevents the stagnation that can happen when a group doesn't happen to have the right chemistry. Students are placed into a few groups of 4-6 students each and are given a discussion question to talk about. After sufficient time has passed for the discussion to develop, one or two students from each group rotate to a different group, while the other group members remain where they are. Once in their new group, they will discuss a different, but related question, and they may also share some of the key points from their last group's conversation. For the next rotation, students who have not rotated before may be chosen to move, resulting in groups that are continually evolving.

Basic Structure: Two students sit facing each other in the center of the room; the remaining students sit in a circle around them. The two central students have a conversation based on a pre-determined topic and often using specific skills the class is practicing (such as asking follow-up questions, paraphrasing, or elaborating on another person's point). Students on the outside observe, take notes, or perform some other discussion-related task assigned by the teacher.

Variations: One variation of this strategy allows students in the outer circle to trade places with those in the fishbowl, doing kind of a relay-style discussion, or they may periodically "coach" the fishbowl talkers from the sidelines. Teachers may also opt to have students in the outside circle grade the participants' conversation with a rubric, then give feedback on what they saw in a debriefing afterward, as mentioned in the featured video.

Basic Structure: One student assumes the role of a book character, significant figure in history, or concept (such as a tornado, an animal, or the Titanic). Sitting in front of the rest of the class, the student responds to classmates' questions while staying in character in that role.

Variations: Give more students the opportunity to be in the hot seat while increasing everyone's participation by having students do hot seat discussions in small groups, where one person per group acts as the "character" and three or four others ask them questions. In another variation, several students could form a panel of different characters, taking questions from the class all together and interacting with one another like guests on a TV talk show.
a.k.a. Pyramid Discussion
Basic Structure: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question only with a single partner. After each person has had a chance to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they just joined. Next, groups of four join together to form groups of eight, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one large discussion.

Variations: This structure could simply be used to share ideas on a topic, or students could be required to reach consensus every time they join up with a new group.

Whereas the other formats in this list have a distinct shape-specific activities you do with students-the strategies in this section are more like plug-ins, working discussion into other instructional activities and improving the quality and reach of existing conversations.

One of the limitations of discussion is that rich, face-to-face conversations can only happen when all parties are available, so we're limited to the time we have in class. With a tool like Voxer, those limitations disappear. Like a private voice mailbox that you set up with just one person or a group (but SOOOO much easier), Voxer allows users to have conversations at whatever time is most convenient for each participant. So a group of four students can "discuss" a topic from 3pm until bedtime-asynchronously-each member contributing whenever they have a moment, and if the teacher makes herself part of the group, she can listen in, offer feedback, or contribute her own discussion points. Voxer is also invaluable for collaborating on projects and for having one-on-one discussions with students, parents, and your own colleagues. Like many other educators, Peter DeWitt took a while to really understand the potential of Voxer, but in this EdWeek piece, he explains what turned him around.

A backchannel is a conversation that happens right alongside another activity. The first time I saw a backchannel in action was at my first unconference: While those of us in the audience listened to presenters and watched a few short video clips, a separate screen was up beside the main screen, projecting something called TodaysMeet (update: TodaysMeet has shut down. Use YoTeach! instead.) It looked a lot like those chat rooms from back in the day, basically a blank screen where people would contribute a few lines of text, the lines stacking up one after the other, no other bells or whistles. Anyone in the room could participate in this conversation on their phone, laptop, or tablet, asking questions, offering commentary, and sharing links to related resources without ever interrupting the flow of the presentations. This kind of tool allows for a completely silent discussion, one that doesn't have to move at a super-fast pace, and it gives students who may be reluctant to speak up or who process their thoughts more slowly a chance to fully contribute. For a deeper discussion of how this kind of tool can be used, read this thoughtful overview of using backchannel discussions in the classroom by Edutopia's Beth Holland.
a.k.a. Accountable Talk
Talk moves are sentence frames we supply to our students that help them express ideas and interact with one another in respectful, academically appropriate ways. From kindergarten all the way through college, students can benefit from explicit instruction in the skills of summarizing another person's argument before presenting an alternate view, asking clarifying questions, and expressing agreement or partial agreement with the stance of another participant. Talk moves can be incorporated into any of the other discussion formats listed here.

Whole Brain Teaching is a set of teaching and classroom management methods that has grown in popularity over the past 10 years. One of WBT's foundational techniques is Teach-OK, a peer teaching strategy that begins with the teacher spending a few minutes introducing a concept to the class. Next, the teacher says Teach!, the class responds with Okay!, and pairs of students take turns re-teaching the concept to each other. It's a bit like think-pair-share, but it's faster-paced, it focuses more on re-teaching than general sharing, and students are encouraged to use gestures to animate their discussion. Although WBT is most popular in elementary schools, this featured video shows the creator of WBT, Chris Biffle, using it quite successfully with college students. I have also used Teach-OK with college students, and most of my students said they were happy for a change from the sit-and-listen they were used to in college classrooms.

An oldie but a goodie, think-pair-share can be used any time you want to plug interactivity into a lesson: Simply have students think about their response to a question, form a pair with another person, discuss their response, then share it with the larger group. Because I feel this strategy has so many uses and can be way more powerful than we give it credit for, I devoted a whole post to think-pair-share; everything you need to know about it is right there.

TWO MORE YOU'LL LOVE

Since writing this post, I have learned about two more discussion strategies that teachers are finding to be incredibly effective and powerful for getting students to talk, especially about books and other texts:

This protocol has students come up with their own Thoughts, lingering Questions, and Epiphanies from an assigned reading. Teachers who have used this method say it has generated some of the richest conversations they have ever heard from students!

This strategy places students into one-on-one conversations, getting them to learn each others' names better and create a track record of what they talked about. Excellent for classes where you want to assess for discussion and help students get more comfortable with each other.

So what else do you have? I would like to think this is a pretty complete list, but I'm sure more strategies are out there. If you use a discussion strategy that's not mentioned here, please share it below.

Come back for more.
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The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies

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Here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging.

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Give students chances to apply the same concept in new settings, subjects, or problem types. For example, students might use cause-and-effect reasoning in science, history, and literature. Transfer grows when teachers point out the underlying pattern explicitly.

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5 Ways to Help Students Transfer Their Learning to New Situations

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As students gain content knowledge, their next step should be applying it to new problems and across academic disciplines.

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Invite students to find percentages, ratios, fractions, or statistics in everyday life. They might analyze sports scores, sale prices while shopping, nutrition labels, game data, or statistics from social media. A simple extension is to ask students to explain which numbers matter most to them and why.

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For example, if the forecasters think that there is a 50% chance of rain hitting Glasgow in the next hour and they also think that only 80% of the area of Glasgow will be rained on, then the Probability of Precipitation is 0.5 x 0.8 = 40%.

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Ask students to relate science concepts to what they notice at home or in their neighborhoods. Energy transfer can be connected to cooking, heating, or electronics. Ecosystems can be connected to local parks, gardens, pets, insects, or weather patterns in the community.

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Lessons for Cycles of Matter & Energy Transfer in Ecosystems-K-8 grade

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Cycles of Matter and Energy Transfer in Ecosystems Disciplinary Core Ideas

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Encourage students to connect historical events to current issues, local community changes, or family stories. Students can compare past and present, notice recurring themes, and discuss how history shapes the world they live in today. This helps history feel active and relevant rather than distant.

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The past few weeks have ushered in powerful and potentially consequential shifts in the United States' social and political landscape. Journalists, politicians, scholars, and the general public have already begun to put the current political moment in historical perspective and to observe connections or parallels to moments in the history of this country and elsewhere. All of this begs urgent questions for the classroom teacher: How and when should you make connections between what your students study and what they see happening around them today? Is there a way to responsibly offer students opportunities for such inquiry? What is the value in studying the past to understand the present? What is the value in making connections to the policy and practice of governments and societies in other places and times?

Invoking History in Today's Politics was an article written and published by Facing History staff in 2016, at a time when the history of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis was being increasingly called into the public conversation and into classrooms. As we listen to the public discourse today, we think it still offers relevant guidance about how and when we might ask questions of history to better understand ourselves and the moment we're in.

As we share in the article, some questions that students and teachers may ask as they use historical perspective to ask more in depth, probing questions about the present include:

What does it mean to suggest that democracy is at risk? How do we monitor the health of democracy and pay attention to small steps that may be changing its character? What avenues do citizens have to protect and sustain democracy? What are the consequences when citizens become bystanders?

What is the role of the information and media in maintaining a healthy democracy? At a time when we have so much access to media and information, how do we interrogate the information we receive? How do we sift through the rhetoric to get an accurate reading on the state of our democracy?

How and why does economic struggle sharpen social tensions? Is there a relationship between economic and social stratification and the health and weakness of a democracy?

What are the attitudes towards laws, government, and institutions in our society today?

At Facing History our work is rooted in the belief that the study of history can help us better understand human behavior, ourselves, and the choices we face today as individuals and as a country. When students examine historical case studies like the collapse of democracy in 1930s Germany and the steps that led to the Holocaust or the often-violent struggle for freedom and equality in the years of Reconstruction following the American Civil War, they discover that history is not inevitable and the choices of individuals matter. They also come to realize that there are no easy answers to the complex problems of racism, antisemitism, hate, and violence; no quick fixes for social injustices; and no simple solutions to moral dilemmas. Meaningful change takes patience and commitment. Still, as a Facing History student said, "The more we learn about why and how people behave the way they do, the more likely we are to become involved and find our own solutions."

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The Power of Historical Connections: Teaching the Past to Understand the Present

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Understanding the relationship between past and present is both key to a healthy democracy and crucial to the education of young people.

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Ask students to reflect on how a theme, conflict, character decision, or point of view connects to their own experiences. They can write about moments when they felt similar emotions, faced similar choices, or noticed similar relationships in real life. These connections strengthen comprehension and discussion.

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We have launched the new ReadWriteThink.org and we would love to get your feedback: Give Feedback

About this Strategy Guide

In this strategy guide, you'll learn how to model how students can make three different kinds of connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world). Students then use this knowledge to find their own personal connections to a text.

Research Basis

A majority of students in the upper elementary and middle grades are beyond decoding instruction and need more assistance with comprehension to help them become successful, independent readers. Strategic reading allows students to monitor their own thinking and make connections between texts and their own experiences. Students who make connections while reading are better able to understand the text they are reading. It is important for students to draw on their prior knowledge and experiences to connect with the text. Students are thinking when they are connecting, which makes them more engaged in the reading experience.

Students gain a deeper understanding of a text when they make authentic connections. However, teachers need to know how to show students how a text connects to their lives, another text they have read, or the world around them. In this strategy guide, you will learn how to model text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections for your students so that they may begin to make personal connections to a text on their own.

Strategy in Practice

Before practicing this strategy in the classroom, create a list of personal connections to the particular text for which you will be modeling this strategy.

Explain to students that you are going to practice the comprehension strategy of making connections to find ways that students can personally relate to a text. Ask students to think about the following questions. You may choose to write these on the board or chart paper for students to see.

Focusing on text-to-self connections:

What does this story remind you of?

Can you relate to the characters in the story?

Does anything in this story remind you of anything in your own life?

Focusing on text-to-text connections:

What does this remind you of in another book you have read?

How is this text similar to other things you have read?

How is this text different from other things you have read?

Focusing on text-to-world connections:

What does this remind you of in the real world?

How are events in this story similar to things that happen in the real world?

How are events in this story different from things that happen in the real world?

Using the Making Connections Posters (Text-to-Self Connection, Text-to-Text Connection, and Text-to-World Connection) as visual aids, introduce the three types of connections: Text-to-Self Connection, Text-to-Text Connection, and Text-to-World Connection. Explain how readers often make connections to a story to help them better understand the text.

Use the think-aloud strategy to model how to make each type of connection, using your list of personal connections to the particular text. Make sure to emphasize connections that actually help enhance your understanding of the novel and others that are merely "there." Examples to share with the students follow. Ask students to share a few quick examples of both kinds of connections, and explain why some might help their understanding of the text more than others.

Good connections that enhance understanding:
When I was in second grade, I moved to a new school like Shirley did. I remember feeling like everyone ignored me and missing my home, so I can relate to what she's going through.

Surface-level connections that are merely "there":
Shirley likes the Dodgers. So do I.

After you are certain that students have a firm understanding of making connections, allow them to begin listing their own connections to the text using the Double-Entry Journal and then expanding their connections with the Planning Web.

Finally, students can organize and write an essay about a connection to the text using the Essay Map interactive or choose a different student interactive to use to create a project based on a connection to the text.

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We have launched the new ReadWriteThink.org and we would love to get your feedback: Give Feedback About this Strategy Guide In this strategy guide, you'll learn how to model how students can make three different kinds of connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world). Students then use this knowledge to find their own personal connections to a text.

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Have students use target-language vocabulary to describe their daily routines, hobbies, favorite foods, family traditions, or community events. Familiar topics lower the barrier to participation and help students use the language for authentic communication instead of only memorization.

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Teaching World Languages: 20 Zero-or-no Prep Activities

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Teaching World Languages: 20 Zero-or-no Prep Activities One of my very favorite things about teaching world languages is that while you need to be really str

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Offer choices in examples, let students bring in personal interests, and invite them to share local or family connections when appropriate. Keep the focus on respectful participation and give students options so they can choose what feels comfortable to share.

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Use interest surveys, community observation tasks, real-life problem scenarios, short reflection prompts, or student-created examples. Even a quick warm-up like “Where might this show up outside of school?” can make a lesson feel more meaningful.

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End class with a question such as: What is one part of today’s lesson that connects to your life, interests, or goals? This gives students time to process meaning and gives the teacher useful feedback for planning future lessons.

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Ask students to turn a video or reading into a one-page visual that captures the main ideas. This can be a concept map, sketch note, flowchart, timeline, or labeled diagram. The goal is to make thinking visible before class so students arrive ready to discuss, apply, and question what they learned.

Teacher tip: Provide a simple template with boxes for big ideas, supporting details, and lingering questions.

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Alternative note-taking practices like mind-mapping and sketchnoting prompt students to organize their thoughts visually, boosting comprehension and retention.

kategisme/Twenty20; AJ_Watt/iStock; sydneyskye/Twenty20;

Unlike conventional note-taking, which can "border on the edge of transcription," allowing students to try more visual, interpretive methods of processing materials helps them "identify connections between topics and themes," writes Nimah Gobir for KQED.

One technique known as sketchnoting-simple, hand-drawn renderings of things like facts, dates, or abstract concepts-allows students to respond to complex new ideas by engaging multiple parts of the brain simultaneously to deepen learning and retention, says Gobir. Instead of passively writing down everything a speaker is saying, the practice pushes students to actively process and make sense of what they're learning.

"Sketchnoting doesn't just lead to gains in keeping students' attention, it's a useful way for learners to organize and retain information," she writes. "They're actively listening and creating a visual representation of what they're learning while continuing to stay engaged in class."

Findings from a 2018 study back that up: Students who were asked to draw what they'd learned were nearly twice as likely to remember information than students who wrote the same information down. Drawing wins out because it allows information to be processed in multiple ways, explained Edutopia's research editor Youki Terada: "When we draw, we encode the memory in a very rich way, layering together the visual memory of the image, the kinesthetic memory of our hand drawing the image, and the semantic memory that is invoked when we engage in meaning-making."

Here are some ways to introduce visual note-taking to your students:

Rethink Your Paper: Note-taking doesn't need to happen between the lines and within the margins of a sheet of notebook paper. The "more rigid structure of lines and lines of text" can bind the minds of some students, while the freedom to reimagine the space can free them, writes Gobir. Encourage students to play with spacing, vary text sizes, and add symbols anywhere on the page "to create a hierarchy of information that might be harder to capture in linear text."

Start With a Little Practice: Not all students will welcome the idea of sketchnoting and other visual note-taking methods at first, so encourage them to start off just scribbling. Artist and educator Todd Berman has students "scribble for the duration of a song," Gobir explains, which gets the creative juices flowing and creates a comfortable setting for the introduction of the concept. Berman then invites students to share what they've created with the class.

Develop a Symbolic Language: Educator Wendi Pillars has students "identify 10 key words or concepts" from the current learning materials and begin developing a visual library of shorthand-like an icon or character-to represent them, shares Gobir. Get students' input for the library too, recommends Pillars, so "you have a co-created visual vocabulary that everybody can refer to when they take their own notes." In time, students will develop their own vocabularies and visual note-taking styles independently.

Keep It Low-Fidelity: Communicate to your students that they don't have to be accomplished artists to use visual note-taking techniques: The process isn't about ensuring that the sketches and drawings look good, but that students find a way to tease out the relationships between topics and concepts. "It's giving them permission to say, 'You know what? Here's the key concept. Here's the key information," explains Pillars, who says she emphasizes to students that there is no right or wrong way to take visual notes.

Skip the Grading: Sketchnoting, diagrams, freehand drawing, mind-mapping, and similar techniques are vehicles to get student thoughts down on paper-not practices meant to demonstrate their mastery of subject material. Educator Sarah Schroeder suggests focusing on grading what is "construct relevant," or "avoiding measuring what is irrelevant or can't be measured," like creativity. Attaching a grade to visual note-taking might inhibit the student as they struggle to make sense of complex material, make them feel self-conscious, or simply be so subjective as to be meaningless-so provide feedback rather than a grade.

Join In: Modeling visual note-taking techniques for your students can be a great way to inspire them to try something new. Pillars uses her whiteboard and paper to show students how she visualizes her thoughts. "As we take the notes together, I will ask students, 'How would you represent it?'" she shared with Gobir. "And they'll shout out ideas like, 'You could draw this or this!' And sometimes I tell them 'I can't draw that! You want to come on up here and show [the class]?'"

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How-and Why-to Introduce Visual Note-Taking to Your Students

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Visual note-taking allows information to be processed by the brain in three different ways.

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Generate Questions About Confusing Concepts

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Generate Questions About Confusing Concepts

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Have students write 2–4 questions while they watch or read. Encourage them to focus on what feels unclear, surprising, or incomplete. These questions become strong entry points for discussion, small-group review, and targeted mini-lessons.

Teacher tip: Model the difference between a factual question, a clarifying question, and a deeper analytical question.

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QFT Teaching and Learning Resources - Right Question Institute

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Everything you need to use the QFT in your classroom: A step by step guide, lesson planner, and downloadable classroom handouts and classroom examples.

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Invite students to pause and paraphrase the most important concepts using everyday language. This helps them process meaning instead of repeating definitions. Short written summaries, audio reflections, or partner explanations can all work well.

Teacher tip: Use sentence starters such as “The main idea is…,” “This matters because…,” or “In simpler words…”.

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Ideas for scaffolding paraphrasing so that students correctly learn this valuable but difficult-to-master skill.

When discussing text in the classroom, it's tough for students to shift from utilizing an author's words (copying) to accepting the challenge to express that author's idea in their own words (paraphrasing).

But teaching effective paraphrasing is necessary because the use of paraphrasing facilitates important literacy skills: It encourages repeated reading, develops note-taking habits as students track quotes and outline text details, and expands vocabulary as they consider appropriate ways to describe the original text. The skill may seem daunting to students because it takes time to find the appropriate words to reshape a sentence, but that is time well spent.

Student Tools

One way to support students is to make them aware of tools that may help when they're paraphrasing. Think of these as training wheels-students won't use them forever.

Academic Phrasebank: Ready-made phrases help students organize their sentences when they paraphrase. The site provides sentence starters for defining ideas, comparing and contrasting ideas, describing cause and effect, and explaining evidence to support statements.

For instance, if a student were paraphrasing vocabulary word X, they would be able to find sentence starters such as "The word X encompasses...," "The word X is challenging to define because...," and "The word X is intended to...."

When examining non-examples, students are shown how replacing or rearranging words is akin to copying and pasting on a computer. Students see examples of effective paraphrasing, including a change of sentence structure or personal elaboration combined with limited quoted information.

Tone Analyzer: This tool allows students to enter a brief sample from a text and receive an analysis of the tone. When using this tool, students can request an assessment of whether the text illustrates anger, joy, sadness, etc. In addition to these emotions, the website includes language descriptors such as confident (used to describe texts that use active voice and/or words such as will, must, etc.) or tentative (texts with words such as seems, appears, might, etc.). This tool is useful in helping students successfully align the tone of their paraphrased material with the tone of the original text.

Student Self-Check Prompts

Can I identify elements of the text that are most significant (and thus appropriate to preserve) when I put it in my own words?

Can I recite elements of the text from memory in order to prepare to put it into my own words?

How can I adjust the sentence structure to preserve the meaning of the text?

Students should outgrow the tools above, and teachers can encourage that growth by showing them how to monitor their own progress with paraphrasing. Students can self-check to determine how on track with paraphrasing they are by asking themselves these questions:

Student Cautions

Attempt to describe the text in their own words gradually, one component at a time (thanks to Doug Lemov and Maggie Johnson for this close reading strategy). For instance, they might first use their own words to describe significant phrases in the reading, and then make an effort to explain one or two key sentences, and finally attempt to paraphrase an entire paragraph.

Monitor the similarities between the text and the paraphrase. For instance, after describing specific sentences or paragraphs, they should note how many words are shared. Instead of using the same words as the author, focus on mirroring the same main idea. The Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning at Yale offers easy-to-follow models for how to achieve this.

Ensure that there is a sufficient number of word substitutions in the paraphrased material. (Substituting only a couple of words could constitute plagiarism.) Students should focus on changing the structure of the sentence. This may involve converting a simple sentence to a compound sentence or adding a prepositional phrase.

Avoid adjusting special language (acronyms, figurative language, jargon, etc.). These kinds of terms are considered common knowledge, so using them in a paraphrase doesn't constitute plagiarism. Resources such as the Purdue Online Writing Lab can help students figure out whether a particular term is common knowledge.

Because the journey to paraphrasing may involve a few hiccups, it's a good idea to identify potential student challenges. When paraphrasing, remind students that they should:

Teachers can push students to move beyond copying by encouraging them to see paraphrasing as the go-to reading response. When we equip students with needed resources, we make student voice the rule instead of the exception.

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Ideas for scaffolding paraphrasing so that students correctly learn this valuable but difficult-to-master skill. When discussing text in the classroom, it's tough for students to shift from utilizing an author's words (copying) to accepting the challenge to express that author's idea in their own words (paraphrasing).

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Students understand new material more deeply when they compare it to what they already know. Prompt them to identify similarities, differences, patterns, or past experiences that connect to the new content. This activates background knowledge and improves retention.

Teacher tip: Use quick prompts like “This reminds me of…,” “This is different from…,” or “I have seen this idea before in…”.

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Advance organizers are visual organizational tools to aid your students' understanding of information. They provide a structure to the lecture or lesson, allowing students to connect prior knowledge to new knowledge. There are many different types of advance organizers. A K-W-L is one type of advance organizer that specifically asks about students' background knowledge.

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Predict How the Concept Will Be Used in Class

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Predict How the Concept Will Be Used in Class

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Before class, ask students to make a prediction: How might this idea show up in discussion, problem-solving, labs, writing, or projects? Prediction helps students read or watch with purpose and prepares them to transfer learning into action.

Teacher tip: End the assignment with “Tomorrow I think we will use this idea to…” and revisit predictions at the start of class.

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Center for Teaching & Learning Innovation

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Center for Teaching & Learning Innovation

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Make a Prediction - Center for Teaching & Learning Innovation

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Incorporating opportunities for students to “make a prediction” into your teaching toolkit is a simple way to increase student engagement and learning. When students are asked to predict, both cognitive… Read More »Make a Prediction

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After watching a short lesson on ecosystems, students can draw a food web, list two confusing interactions, and predict how the class might test environmental changes in a lab. This approach turns pre-class content into a foundation for investigation and evidence-based discussion.

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Concept Maps and Graphic Organizers: Two Tools for Success in the Science Classroom.

What is a sure-fire way to make our students hate taking a science class? Completely overwhelm them with facts, figures, data, definitions, comparisons, diagrams, charts, tables, memorizing the textbook ... Well, I think you get the point.

There is no getting away from the fact that a science class has a lot of information! We definitely should be teaching our students the big ideas and concepts, but these big ideas don't mean a lot if the underlying supporting information is not there. Our science students are going to have to learn a lot of new vocabulary and definitions. But we can make the job of learning big chunks of information a bit more manageable. Successful students are happy students!

The idea of concept mapping is not new or innovative. It is, however, often neglected as a tool to help our students. Students do not naturally know how to take information and organize it into a logical fashion. We, the teachers, have to teach them this skill.

We are driven (unfortunately) by the end of course standardized tests that we face each spring. When school starts, we are eager to jump right in and start teaching as hard and as fast as possible to get in all the standards we know will be on the dreaded test.

Let me suggest a different approach as you begin the new school year. Teach your students skills that will make them successful learners. Help them incorporate concept mapping into their daily study routine. Make concept mapping a regular homework assignment throughout the school year. You will find that students show less fear and trepidation when new information is presented, and that their retention of science information is vastly increased.

What are the cons to this? It takes time to teach students how to develop concept maps and graphic organizers. You will have to spend some of your valuable time at the beginning of the school year to teach the skill. You then have to follow up. It does no good to teach the skill unless you have students continue to use it all year long. The information we teach in a science class can easily be organized into flow charts, concept maps, cycles and chains.

How do you teach it? I teach my students how to construct three different types of concept mapsThey are:Concept maps or flow charts, event chains, and cycle maps.These three types of graphic organizers can be used for any type of science concept or reading passage.

I have developed a PowerPoint and student worksheets to aid my teaching of this skill. In both the PowerPoint and the practice problem worksheets, students are given passages of scientific information to read. The student must first decide what type of graphic organizer would be best for the passage. Then, the student must organize and draw the appropriate graphic organizer.

At the end of each day, and at the end of the year, our classes should contain students who are comfortable learning and who are not afraid to tackle new science concepts. Providing the tools to establish this comfort in learning should be our goal from the first day of school.

Looking for ideas on using science graphic organizers in your classroom? Read my blog post about science graphic organizers for reading, writing, and analyzing scientific information.

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Concept Mapping in the Science Classroom: What Are You Waiting For?

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Amy Brown Science provides biology and chemistry teaching resources for middle and high school teachers, including labs and PowerPoint lessons.

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Before class, students can summarize a worked example, explain the steps in their own words, and note where they got stuck. They can also predict which type of problem they may solve in class. This gives the teacher clear information about misconceptions before practice begins.

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Browse math homework reflection resources on Teachers Pay Teachers, a marketplace trusted by millions of teachers for original educational resources.

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Students can read a short primary or secondary source, identify key ideas, connect the content to earlier historical periods, and generate questions about perspective or cause and effect. In class, those notes can lead directly into discussion, document analysis, or debate.

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Browse primary source analysis resources on Teachers Pay Teachers, a marketplace trusted by millions of teachers for original educational resources.

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Students can annotate a text or video with a short visual summary, a personal paraphrase of the central idea, and questions about tone, argument, or character motivation. Those pre-class moves make discussion and writing more thoughtful and text-based.

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Listen to the interview with Andrea Castellano and Irene Yannascoli:
Sponsored by Listenwise and Studyo

"Make your paper dirty."

I get some funny looks when I say it at first, but it gets the point across. What I mean is I'm looking for annotations. I teach third grade, when young readers typically transition from developing readers to fluent ones, and it's at this stage that they're ready to begin to analyze texts on a deeper level. For that reason, this is the perfect time to introduce them to annotation.

Annotation - marking up and making notes on a text - can be an extremely effective tool for improving comprehension and increasing levels of criticality and engagement. By making these metacognitive markings, students are able to process a variety of texts in unique and meaningful ways. The thing is, it can vary in effectiveness, depending on which classroom you look into, if it's being taught at all. You may have personally found that you aren't getting the results you want from your approach.

After some trial and error, I have developed my own method for teaching annotation, which I'll share here, along with the process my colleague Irene Yannascoli uses at the high school level. Whether you teach ELA or another content area, chances are your students read in your class. And if they read, there's a chance they might need to annotate. Hopefully this post can offer some strategies to help your students establish annotation as part of their regular reading practice.
[skip to high school process]
Elementary Process

Prescriptive vs. Responsive Annotation

One major hurdle students face is deciding what to annotate. Some students are hesitant to mark anything at all while others underline or highlight nearly every sentence in the text. Some teachers have attempted to remedy this by taking a prescriptive approach to annotation. They direct students to locate specific details and what to do when they've found them, saying things like, "find and underline the sentence that proves the character is sad," or "box two words you don't know in paragraph 2." It's like a scavenger hunt: Find three things, answer three questions.

I've used this approach in the past, and it certainly is a great way to get students to notice and name things, but what I kept noticing is that whenever I stopped prompting students to make their annotations, they stopped making them. They were so dependent on my guidance that they never took ownership of the process.

Eventually I realized I needed to teach my students to develop their own systems for annotating. The responsive approach I'm advocating here centers the reader on the basis that we all bring our own perspectives, experiences, and ideas to the text. As much as our interpretations are varied and nuanced, so are our annotations. Teaching students to navigate text as active readers helps them make sense of what they read. Artful annotation is what happens when they're inspired to respond in their own unique way.

Getting Started

One thing teaching has taught me is that straightforward visuals reduce cognitive load and allow students to concentrate on what's important. To simplify annotation for my students, I designed a template (below) with space on the left for me to paste the text and cells on the right and bottom for note-taking.

At the point in the year that we start this process, I've already taught all the literacy concepts they'll need for this activity, such as theme, figurative language, text structures, and more. What this template does is sort each concept into one of two lenses: key words & ideas, and craft & structure. We then comb through the text with these two in mind, asking and answering over and over, What is the author saying? and How are they saying it? To remind them of what to look for, I provide the following graphic on the template. This is a list of look-fors that encompass most of what they'll encounter as they read.

Modeling Responsive Annotation

To introduce responsive annotation, I use a direct approach to make my thinking as transparent as possible. In addition to modeling the use of metacognitive markers, I talk through each step of the process. Here's a sample breakdown of what that would look like in the early stages.

Introducing Each Lens

1. Choose the lens through which you will be approaching the text. In the introductory stage, it is recommended to read the same text twice - one session for key words and ideas, another for craft and structure. Provide the annotation look-fors as an anchor chart or include it on the template itself.

2. Give students a copy of the text and display your copy of the text for all to see. As students watch, read a section of text aloud, stopping to underline, box, and make notations.

3. Think aloud as you annotate. Read, stop, jot, explain. You are responding to the text as you encounter each element rather than searching the text for specific items. Students should either be watching or copying the teacher's moves at this stage.

Guided Annotation (Whole Class)

To help students learn to prioritize information, the teacher will pose questions that reinforce the points made in the explicit model. This will happen in lockstep as a whole class - independent practice comes later. This stage works best directly following the teacher model so students get to immediately put things into practice.

Guide students through the next section of the text, first by reading it together and then by asking open-ended questions related to the chosen lens. For example:

For Key Words and Ideas:
What is the author saying here?
What words seem important?
What part made you stop and think?

For Craft and Structure:
How does the author show you what the character is feeling in paragraph 5?
Who can find and annotate a connection between paragraph 3 and paragraph 4?
What does the author mean by _____?

Students take a turn with another section of the text. Prompt students to share their thinking and show what they did. This is a great opportunity to validate or course-correct as needed.

Guided Annotation (Individual)

When they're ready for the next stage, provide each student with a new text. Give several minutes to read and annotate, one section at a time. Circulate the room, monitoring and offering feedback. As students make their way through each section, give the green light to move on.
Giving feedback in real time adds encouragement and reinforces desired reading behaviors. This type of gradual release model works best when the teacher is responsive to the needs of the class, moving on only when they're ready.
Once they have the hang of it, students continue to read and annotate on their own. Those who need support can now be pulled into a small group. This is also a good time to implement partner annotation for students who may not be ready to read the text independently.

Continue to use the template to support students as they annotate for either key words and ideas or craft and structure. It can be modified to merge the lenses once they can do both with confidence. After several guided annotation lessons, students should be ready to annotate on their own without needing the scaffolding of this stage every time.

Discussion and Feedback
Now that students have a sense of what to look for when they read, what they need at this juncture is a chance to see what other readers are doing and compare it to their own work. This not only deepens their understanding of the text through discussion, it strengthens their grasp on what they should be noticing.

1. Gather the class and project student work (in my class, students volunteer to share). Prompt students to compare annotations, note their peers' insights, and offer feedback.

2. Allow students to "borrow" snippets of each others' annotations if they wish. This is intentionally a collaborative process that promotes the sharing of insights and ideas.

3. Students can use the template as long as it's needed. The cycle of discussion and feedback can continue indefinitely. At any point, the annotation look-fors can be edited for specific genres, content areas, or other purposes for reading.

Click here to make a copy of the elementary process for your Google Drive.

High School Process: Collaborative Annotation

Whether at the secondary or elementary level ( click here to jump up to elementary), the art of annotation is in making it meaningful. Responsive annotation does just this. Because students often believe there's a "right answer" when annotating, asking them what they notice trains them to use their own funds of knowledge as they read. Like my approach to teaching annotation in elementary, Irene Yannascoli gives her 10th graders the freedom to interact with texts on their own terms, deciding for themselves what is meaningful enough to annotate. She also wants them to use peer insight to practice concepts already reviewed in class, so she makes this annotation process collaborative.

Similar to the elementary approach in the previous section, this process has students consider the text through a given lens; in this case, four core concepts that have already been taught in class: identify (notice and name), analyze (explain and connect), evaluate (judge and discuss impact), and synthesize (put it all together). The purpose of the group annotation is to practice these skills collaboratively.

Introducing Each Lens

In order to set this up:

Choose 4 teaching points from your recent curriculum that you would like students to discuss and practice

Choose a passage that reflects the 4 teaching points.

For each of the teaching points, create guiding questions for students to reference while they annotate. It's not necessary for students to answer all of these guiding questions, and as they get used to the protocol they may use them less and less.

Irene's guiding questions are pictured below.

Note that these concepts and questions are specific to language arts study; they can be modified according to any subject or genre.

Independent Annotation

Start by reviewing the "Group Annotation Practice Protocol" slide (below) with the class.

1. Conduct a read-aloud of the passage. Ask students if they have any questions before they begin. To assess understanding, you may ask them to identify key terms in the passage or answer questions related to the who, what, when, where and why of the passage

2. Students re-read the passage independently and jot down their first thoughts.

This is a preliminary step before they annotate to capture a first impression of the passage, and makes space for any clarifying questions that might arise.

Group Annotation
After students have reread the text on their own, it is time to begin their annotations.

1. Students get in groups and each person claims a focus skill: Identify, Analyze, Evaluate or Synthesize. Now, each group member is following one of the 4 sets of guiding questions using the same passage.

2. After taping a copy of the text to chart paper, each student grabs a marker and for 15 minutes, uses the guiding questions to "make their posters dirty." Each student should be huddled around their chart paper, underlining, drawing arrows, and making notes next to the passage.

3. Circulate and observe each group, helping students deepen their thinking by asking questions and making connections between the annotations.

Discussion and Feedback

1. Students wrap up and review their annotations. Each person shares their thoughts and epiphanies from the annotation process.

2. While the group shares out, the "Synthesizers" answer their last two questions about the commonalities between peers and overall meaning of the passage. They write this on their posters.

3. Students then post their chart paper on the wall and conduct a gallery walk, during which they examine peer charts and make notes on post-its expanding, deepening or challenging the original annotations based on their own reading of the text.

Some sentence starters to move students beyond agree/disagree:
This makes me think about...
I can connect this to...
Additionally, this could mean...
I wonder why...

Students return to their original posters and read what other group members commented. They now have an opportunity to add any final notes, ideas or understandings. If time allows, conduct a whole group share-out: What was something that surprised you, inspired you, or made you rethink?

Assessment

At this point, it's up to you how to assess students for this activity. You might just treat it as a practice for building independent annotation skills and assess students individually on their own annotations on a future passage. You might choose to develop a rubric for this activity and give all group members a score on their poster. Or you might have students write a reflection about their strengths and weaknesses in the process and set goals for the future.
Click here to make a copy of the high school process for your Google Drive.[back to elementary process]
A Few Caveats

Although I explicitly model responsive annotation, I don't expect my students to copy my exact style. Yes, I do tell them to mark up the text as well as make notes in the margins, but I want my students to use metacognitive markers in ways that make sense to them. Some like to underline sentences, others highlight. I circle vocabulary words, others box them. Some enjoy creating their own symbols and methods of organizing their notes in the margins. Recently I've noticed a few students creating systems for highlighting in different colors complete with a key.

It must also be said that not every student needs to or should annotate when they read. Some process text better internally and find the annotation system slows them down or distracts them; others can't handle the multitasking element and just need to focus on reading. The supports provided for accessing the text are just a temporary scaffold anyway. As long as they can demonstrate that they understand what they're reading in other ways, (e.g., through discussion or answering questions) I really don't insist that they do it. But for the majority of students who find themselves glossing over key moments or struggling with comprehension, this process is extremely useful. Ultimately, the decision depends on you knowing your students and what works for them as learners.

So, Is This Really Worth It?

Since we've been teaching annotation this way, Irene and I have both observed a correlation between the quality of annotations on the page and the ability to comprehend text. Incorporating the look-fors into the annotation practice reinforces the concepts skills taught across the year. And the confidence our students have in themselves as readers has also grown. My students say things like, "Annotation has helped me become a better reader" and "Annotation helps me understand the text or the things I'm reading a bit more."

This process is about more than preparing students for standardized tests or giving them a strategy to boost their grades. Our students will be reading and comprehending texts for a very long time - hopefully, for the rest of their lives. While they won't always grab a pen when they sit down with a book, there will be many times they can put these skills to work. If the goal is to process what they're reading, annotation provides them with one way to do so.

Annotating, or "making your paper dirty" as we like to call it, is definitely an acquired skill. It takes time to learn, but more than likely, it's worth the effort.
References
Duke, Nell & Pearson, P.. (2002). Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension. What research has to say about reading instruction. 3. 10.1598/0872071774.10.

Landmark College. (n.d.-a). Active reading (see also critical reading). Active Reading | Landmark College. https://www.landmark.edu/academics/writing-matters/wac-glossary/wac-active-reading

Lloyd, Z.T., Kim, D., Cox, J.T., Doepker, G.M. and Downey, S.E. (2022), "Using the annotating strategy to improve students' academic achievement in social studies," Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 218-231.

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The Art of Annotation: Teaching Readers To Process Texts

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Annotation can be a powerful way to improve comprehension and increase engagement, but its effectiveness can vary depending on how it's taught.

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In art, music, health, business, world languages, and career-focused classes, students can create a visual organizer, identify unfamiliar vocabulary or techniques, connect ideas to prior projects, and predict what they will create or perform in class. The strategy works well beyond core academic subjects.

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Think-Pair-Share/Write-Pair-Share

Present students with a question, problem, or item for reflection. Have students reflect or write on their own for 1-2 minutes then discuss with a peer for another 2 minutes. Call on several pairs to share their thoughts. Gauge student progress and provide further guidance if needed.
This technique can also be used with software.

Minute paper

At a natural breaking point or the end of class, ask students to reflect on and write down 2 or 3 key points made in class. Another option is to ask them what they still do not understand (often called the "muddiest point") or if they have questions.

Collect papers and review (in large classes, review a sample). Discuss student misconceptions or questions at the beginning of the next class. As an alternative, ask students to talk with their classmate(s) for feedback.
Student responses can also be collected electronically, for example with a Google form or PollEverywhere

Catch up

Pause your lecture at a natural breaking point and give students a chance to catch up on their note taking. Ask them to talk with a classmate about any points that are still unclear. Make time for 2 or 3 questions after students discuss.

Brainstorming

Ask students to talk in pairs or groups to develop a list of ideas in response to a question. Groups can volunteer their ideas as you compile a list to discuss.

Problem solving/Case study

Present your students with a problem to solve or case study reflecting a current issue in your field. Students work in groups or pairs to solve using paper, a worksheet, a shared whiteboard (in-person or online), or collaborative documents such as Google docs. Many disciplines have case studies ready for teaching, which you can find online.
This type of activity generally requires a longer time frame (e.g., 10+ minutes).

Making predictions

Before giving a demonstration or presenting the results of research, ask your students to predict the outcome. Have them discuss as in a "think-pair-share," then run your demonstration or present the finding and follow up with the whys and hows.

Concept mapping

Ask your students to draw a concept map showing how the ideas you have been discussing relate to one another. Allow students time to think on their own (or even prepare their maps prior to class) before asking them to discuss with others and modify. Students may need coaching on concept mapping before they begin.
Shared online whiteboards such as Jamboard or Miro work well for this kind of activity. Post-it notes also allow students to organize concepts. Expect to spend 10+ minutes on a mapping activity.

Drawing/Diagramming

Idea 1

Ask your students to draw and label from memory something they have been studying (e.g., an object, process etc.). Then ask them to work in pairs or groups to compare their drawings and discuss details they may have missed. Debrief by presenting and discussing an accurate representation. Give students time to add elements they have missed.

Idea 2

Ask your students to draw a simplified design, plan, or process, then explain the reasoning behind their choices to a peer. Students discuss and give feedback. To debrief, present your own or a student-created version and explain the critical elements. Allow time for questions.
Depending on the complexity of the task, this activity may take more than 3 minutes. Idea 2 in particular may take 7-10+ minutes.

Worksheet

Design a worksheet with clear instructions and provide a copy to each student. Students work in groups or pairs to complete. Worksheets might involve mathematical or technical problem solving, case studies, or real-world scenarios with challenges for which students propose solutions or approaches. They can also be used for close reading of texts (See " Close reading & visual analysis" below). Explain and discuss with class after activity.
This type of activity generally requires a wider time frame (e.g., 10+ minutes).

Close reading & visual analysis

Ask your students to read and explicate a passage of text, poetry, or music, or to closely examine an image. Then ask them to answer a question(s) based on the material. Have students discuss their thoughts with a peer(s) or discuss and debrief as a class.
This activity lends itself well to a worksheet, think-pair-share, polling, or minute paper and may take longer than 3 minutes depending on the complexity.

Writing prompts

Develop a prompt that asks your students to reflect on a topic or concept they have been studying in class. Prompts often ask students to apply their learning to their own interests, a current event, or a real-world situation. You might ask your students to put themselves in the position of an expert who is giving advice to a lay person on an issue or need (for example in their hometown). What advice would they give as the expert?

Give your students time to think and write, then ask them to turn in their writing. Review and check for understanding.
Depending on your prompt, this activity could take 3-10+ minutes of class time. It may be graded for participation or used as a way for you to check your students' understanding.

Peer review

Have your students review each other's work - either an activity they have worked on in class, an assignment, or an ongoing project. Peer review lends itself well to longer term projects that are broken into parts/phases. An initial peer review (with guidance on best practices) will help students identify areas that need work prior to meeting with you or their TA.
Peer review can also be used with write-pair-share, close reading & visual thinking, drawing/diagramming, and concept mapping. This activity will generally take more than 3 minutes.

Polling

Ask your students a question, allow them to think, then respond simultaneously. When responses indicate a split in class opinion, have students discuss then re-poll. Afterwards, explain both correct and incorrect answers.

Polling can be conducted with or without technology.

Without technology: ask your students to raise their hands or colored cards (see paper clickers video) or place a hand with a number of fingers flat against their chests to indicate their responses.

With technology: Cornell supports two software options for classroom polling: Poll Everywhere and iClicker. Poll Everywhere supports multiple choice, text response, and clickable image type questions and requires that students use a mobile device. iClickers are separate devices for multiple choice-style questions that students purchase and use across classes. iClicker has a mobile app version which supports multiple choice, text response, and clickable image style questions.

Polling is often used with think-pair-shares, problem solving, making predictions, and worksheets. Depending on the complexity of the question and length of discussion, polling will generally take 1-3+ minutes.

Social annotation

Social annotation tools allow groups of students to read, reflect on, mark up, and share ideas about assigned texts (including websites), videos, and podcasts. This collaborative process helps students to develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the material.

Cornell supports two social annotation tools: Perusall and Hypothesis. Perusall (for text, video, and podcasts) is incorporated into Canvas and can be used in conjunction with Canvas Groups. While Hypothesis (text only) is considered an outside tool, it is often preferable in small classes for analyses of text.

Discussions (online)

Discussions are a great way to help your students engage with course material and develop a sense of community. Instructors tend to use discussion boards in several ways: for developing their students' critical thinking around course-related concepts, for quick feedback, and/or for course Q&A.

To have your students to reflect on and discuss a concept related to your course, ask them an open-ended question that does not have an easy answer. Show them that you are involved by commenting on posts. Your presence in the conversation will model and encourage quality posts over quantity.

You can also use the board more informally as a way of gauging student understanding of or questions about the day's lecture, their feelings about a new activity you tried, the difficulty of the last homework assignment, or their thoughts on a current event.

When using a discussion board for Q&A, students will often respond to others' posts. While this is a good thing, it is important that your (or your TAs) regularly review the accuracy of their responses. Your visible presence shows that you care and value the space.

Cornell supports Ed Discussion, which extends the basic functionality of Canvas Discussions.
See our comparison of Ed Discussion and Canvas Discussions.

Other collaboration tools

FeedbackFruits is an online tool that uses peer assessment and interactive content to engage students in a collaborative online environment. Students give and receive individual or group feedback on their (uploaded) work with the help of a built-in rubric. Instructors can add quizzes and discussion questions to video and audio content for students to annotate in threads.
FeedbackFruits can be added to your Canvas course through the course navigation tab.

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Getting started with active learning techniques

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Present students with a question, problem, or item for reflection. Have students reflect or write on their own for 1-2 minutes then discuss with a peer for another 2 minutes. Call on several pairs to share their thoughts. Gauge student progress and provide further guidance if needed.

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Model one example first. Think aloud about how you choose important information, group ideas, and decide what relationships need to be shown. Then provide students with a focused prompt, a success checklist, and a sample layout so they understand that the goal is clear thinking, not just decoration.

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Support students with sentence starters, partially completed templates, word banks, and planning questions such as: What are the main ideas? What belongs together? What comes first? What causes what? You can also require a rough draft before the final visual so students revise their organization and accuracy.

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Scaffolded Learning with Concept Mapping – TCEA TechNotes Blog

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Unlock the power of concept mapping to scaffold student learning and enhance retention in your classroom, school, or district! Explore this and more at TCEA TechNotes Blog, your go-to source for educational technology and teaching innovation.

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Assess both content understanding and visual communication. Look for accuracy, clarity, organization, appropriate use of labels, evidence of relationships between ideas, and whether the chosen format matches the task. A simple rubric with categories like content, organization, visual design, and explanation keeps grading consistent.

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Browse infographic rubric resources on Teachers Pay Teachers, a marketplace trusted by millions of teachers for original educational resources.

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Science Example: Flowchart of a Scientific Process

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Science Example: Flowchart of a Scientific Process

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Ask students to build a flowchart that explains a process such as the water cycle, photosynthesis, cell division, or the scientific method. Encourage them to use arrows, brief captions, and labeled stages. A strong science visual should make the sequence easy to follow and show how one step leads to the next.

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History Example: Timeline With Cause and Effect

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History Example: Timeline With Cause and Effect

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Have students create a timeline infographic that shows not only when events happened, but also how one event influenced another. For example, they might connect major events in the American Revolution, Civil Rights Movement, or World War II. Ask them to include dates, short explanations, and arrows or icons to highlight cause-and-effect relationships.

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Find and save ideas about cause and effect timeline on Pinterest.

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Math Example: Visualizing a Problem-Solving Process

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Math Example: Visualizing a Problem-Solving Process

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Students can turn a multistep math problem into a visual explanation that shows how they solved it. They might use boxes, arrows, symbols, and annotations to explain each step, justify operations, and show where they checked their work. This makes mathematical thinking visible and helps classmates compare strategies.

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Health Example: Healthy Lifestyle Infographic

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Health Example: Healthy Lifestyle Infographic

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Invite students to design an infographic on healthy choices such as sleep, exercise, nutrition, hydration, and stress management. They should organize the information into categories, use visuals to support the message, and include concise evidence-based tips. This works well as a media literacy and health communication task.

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A picture is worth a thousand words, so our infographics will tell you everything you need to know about being Healthy for Good.

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Teachers can offer paper-based organizers or digital options for creating diagrams, timelines, and infographics. Useful choices often include slide tools, drawing tools, and design platforms with templates. Keep the technology simple so students spend most of their energy on organizing ideas and explaining relationships.

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Remind students to keep text brief, use headings, group related ideas, and make arrows or labels meaningful. Encourage them to revise cluttered layouts and check whether someone else can understand the visual without extra explanation. The best student-created visuals are accurate, readable, and purposeful.

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Students remember more when ideas feel connected and purposeful. Use examples from everyday life, ask students to explain relationships, invite comparison across topics, and encourage summarizing in their own words. Elaboration and connection-building turn isolated facts into usable knowledge.

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Elaboration Strategies That Benefit Learning

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These elaboration strategies provide ways to connect new learning to prior knowledge in order to make learning meaningful.

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Interleaving means mixing related skills or concepts instead of practicing just one type at a time. For example, students might solve different kinds of math problems in one session or compare multiple historical causes in a discussion. This helps students learn to choose the right strategy rather than simply repeat a pattern.

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Used strategically, interleaving challenges students to learn in smart, adaptive ways instead of relying on too much rote learning and muscle memory.

Michael Morgenstern / The iSpot

A tennis player might practice her forehand before building up to a backhand-mastering skills in isolation makes sense, and sequencing them from easiest to more difficult is a tried-and-true strategy. Eventually, though, alternating forehands with backhands and volleys makes for a more adaptable, flexible player.

Similarly, when we give students opportunities to work through combinations of related ideas and concepts-a technique called interleaving-instead of limiting them to a one-skill-at-a-time approach, it allows them to store information more deeply, challenging them to tease out patterns and form connections. It's a practice that's gaining attention among educators, writes teacher Larry Ferlazzo, who recently asked several educators to write about interleaving for his "Classroom Q&A" blog on Education Week.

"Many of us were taught that dogged, singularly focused practice is the way to mastery, and our belief in this runs deep," writes Meg Riordan, chief learning officer for the after-school program The Possible Project, in the blog. "But research indicates that gains during interleaving promote longer-term skill development and retention, plus more seamless transfer to other contexts."

With interleaving, students learn by tackling a mix of related concepts, forcing the brain to work hard to recall prior learning and determine which strategies or skills to use to solve them. It's demanding work that helps make "long-term memory solid, problem solving easier, and mastery improve," notes education consultant Margaret Searle. However, it's not a replacement for traditional blocked practice work, Searle cautions. Massed practice remains an important component of initial learning, but interleaving can be especially valuable when used at strategic intervals to solidify deeper learning.

Here are a few strategies for teachers to consider when using interleaving in the classroom.

When Interleaving, Assign Fewer Practice Problems

Because massed practice tends to be associated with learning in sequential chunks-first addition, then subtraction, multiplication, and division, for example-students are typically able to tackle a large number of problems at one time, relying on muscle memory and rote practice.

A student studying multiplication, for instance, might work through a 30-question multiplication worksheet at a relatively quick pace. But when teachers mix up different combinations of concepts, the learning tasks become more intellectually taxing and time-consuming, requiring kids to slow down and mentally toggle through lots of information, making connections in their thinking before arriving at the appropriate strategies to solve a problem.

In order for interleaving to appropriately challenge students but not overwhelm them, Riordan says it's important to select fewer interleaved practice problems for students to tackle at one time-providing opportunities for them to work deeply rather than quickly. "Interleaving doesn't mean dismissing the fundamentals or never employing blocked practice," she clarifies. "Instead, it means avoiding the kind of massed practice that creates thoughtless repetition."

Interleave Via Station Rotations

A station rotation model can provide an engaging framework for trying out interleaving, allowing students to rotate quickly through different related concepts in small groups-scaffolded with a mix of teacher-led instruction, online learning, and collaborative activities.

Try introducing "several related concepts at an introductory level and then engage learners in practicing these various concepts," at different stations, Riordan suggests. When students are studying volumetric problems related to cones, pyramids, cubes, and spheres, for example, set up a station rotation so they can practice working through a rich mix of varied problems. It's a creative way to get kids recalling previous knowledge and applying it in unexpected ways, Riordan adds, ultimately " improving learning and increasing long-term proficiency."

Schedule Integrated Projects

In a volleyball game, players don't just face a constant stream of spikes; they face spikes, sets, blocks, passes, serves, and digs, writes Riordan. Similarly, in an engaging project, students often practice a myriad of skills, including design thinking, prototyping ideas, and problem-solving.

With interleaving, "subjects, topics, disciplines, even levels of mastery can all be stirred together to create an end project that's pretty awesome," writes Jen Schwanke, a former elementary and middle school teacher and administrator. "This is why I love project-based learning. It's why I love units with multiple, varying, dynamic opportunities for students. It's why I love choice and giving students the opportunity to showcase their learning in unique ways."

When planning units, try incorporating activities that integrate a variety of concepts-both old and new-to help students refresh their memories, understand the materials in the context of related ideas, and extend their learning. "Students experience the world in an interleaving manner, so it follows that they learn best in a similar way," writes Riordan.

And when wrapping up a unit, "do not let students completely move on from previous learning," writes Rishi Sriram, an associate professor at Baylor University's School of Education. To help students strengthen their long-term memory, Sriram suggests setting aside a few moments each day to review previous concepts and including some questions from past lessons on current tests, weaving a web of knowledge and connections. When teachers offer students challenging tasks like mixed practice, it encourages the type of productive struggle that results in better learning. "Students will make more mistakes, but these mistakes are productive because they build better roads in their brains."

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How to Use Interleaving to Foster Deeper Learning

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Used strategically, interleaving challenges students to learn in smart, adaptive ways instead of relying on too much rote learning and muscle memory.

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Students retain knowledge better when they revisit ideas over time, connect new learning to prior knowledge, explain concepts in their own words, and practice using information in different ways. Retention is strongest when learning is active, spaced out, and checked regularly rather than taught once and forgotten.

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So, how should you go about practicing retrieval? There are many different ways to implement the general process, and you may be doing so already.

If your teacher provides practice tests, or there are practice questions in your textbook, make sure to do them - but without looking at your book or notes!

If you don't have practice questions (or you've already answered all of your practice questions a few times), you can make your own questions. This process takes a lot of time, but if you create a study group you can each create a few questions and trade. Here's a blog post that takes you through the process of creating questions from a textbook and practicing retrieval: Be Your Own Teacher: How to Study a Textbook.

You can also create flashcards, but make sure that you really use them to practice retrieval (bring to mind what you think is on the other side!) rather than peeking. There are also many apps for this if you prefer to use technology. Do make sure to practice retrieving more than just the simple concept definitions you write on your flashcards, though - try linking concepts, or trying to remember how two concepts are similar/different. Here's a great blog post on more advanced flashcard techniques: Be Your Own Teacher: How to Study with Flashcards.

Even simpler than practice questions and flashcards, you can just grab a piece of paper and write down everything you know on a topic. All you need is pen and paper - so no excuses!!

If you like sketching, you can try to draw everything you know on a topic from memory! It doesn't have to be pretty - it just needs to make sense to you. Here's a step-by-step guide for how to use pictures to help you remember: Be Your Own Teacher: How to Study with Pictures.

While sketching, you can also try to organize your ideas into a concept map, like the one below that summarizes how retrieval practice works. In a concept map, you take the main ideas and link them together with phrases that explain the relationship between the concepts. But, always try to make the concept map from memory first!

What should you do after you practice retrieval?
After practicing retrieval, it is best to then check your book and notes from class to make sure you correctly and completely retrieved the information. This process corrects any misunderstandings, and gives you feedback about what you know and what you don't know. Then, a bit later on, practice retrieving the same information again, and watch it get easier!

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The purpose of today's post is to give students a resource to help them take charge of their own learning. We're going to do a series of these over the next few weeks; today's post is about retrieval practice - a useful method for studying any material ...

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Students often forget when instruction moves too quickly, practice happens only once, or learning stays passive. Long lectures, cramming, and limited feedback make it harder for ideas to stick. Teachers can improve retention by planning for review, reflection, and repeated use of important concepts.

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Ebbinghaus Curve: How Science Fights Forgetting

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German Scientist Ebbinghaus formed a graph that explains how forgetting works. But what can we actually do to minimize it?

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Create a weekly review routine that brings back earlier content in small chunks. A five-minute Monday review, cumulative bell ringers, or mixed problem sets can help keep old learning active while new learning is introduced.

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MIDDLE SCHOOL ELA TEACHERS 6-8th GRADE | How do you use spiral review in your classroom | Facebook

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How do you use spiral review in your classroom?

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Retention matters because students need time and practice to truly understand what they learn. When students stay engaged and keep moving forward in school, they build skills step by step instead of missing important foundations. Strong retention in school can lead to better grades, deeper understanding, and more confidence in class.

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Editor's note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched "The Acceleration Imperative," an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders' efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year. It comprises four chapters split into nineteen individual topics. Over the coming weeks, we will publish each of these as a standalone blog post. This is the second. Read the first here. Recommendations
Student outcomes are strongly linked to adult mindsets, and teachers and leaders at high-performing schools tend to share a common set of high expectations for success. That's always been true, but it may be more important than ever given the challenges created by the pandemic. Many students are contending with massive learning losses and emotional trauma, and caring adults may be inclined, even in subtle ways, to lower the bar and shield students from challenging work.
Rationale
Educators should certainly demonstrate empathy, but it's essential that adult expectations for student progress remain high-among educators and parents alike. Instructional materials, teaching methods, teacher-student interactions, grading practices, and professional learning experiences should express high expectations for student achievement. School culture should push back against the soft bigotry of low expectations-including biases related to race and class-and help students set and achieve ambitious goals.

Articulate shared high expectations for student engagement, work, and mastery across the school, district, or network. Use Professional Learning Community time to address current mindsets, assumptions, beliefs, biases, and prejudices that may influence staff's ability to set and hold students to high expectations as the school focuses on recovery.

Select rigorous high-quality instructional materials.

Use effective whole-group instruction instead of ability grouping as much as possible, so that lower-performing students are exposed to rigorous, grade-level content.

Implement a schoolwide approach to grading student work with high standards, including rubrics, grading scales, and common policies for accepting late assignments.

Implement a schoolwide approach to managing student behavior.

Survey students on whether they believe that teachers hold high academic expectations for them. Survey instruments to consider include those from Tripod or Panorama Education.

When hiring for teacher vacancies, look for candidates with a record of high expectations for children, and especially children of color.

Teachers often hold unspoken beliefs about what their students can achieve, and research shows that those mindsets matter. Several studies have found that students recognize when teachers hold high expectations for them and perform better academically when educators do so. Conversely, when teachers hold lower expectations for some students, these are correlated with lower academic achievement. Tragically, some studies have found that teachers tend to have lower expectations for students of color. Helping teachers see their own implicit racial biases and working to counteract them is therefore essential.

One of the best ways to create a culture of high expectations is to adopt and faithfully implement high-quality instructional materials. The best are designed to give all students access to the same challenging content, including through robust scaffolds that support student learning for students who do not possess the prerequisite concepts or skills.
Reading List
Connecting mindsets and materials to classroom practice is the next step. High-performing charter networks call this " intellectual prep aration." They use teachers' common planning time to review curricula and evidence of student progress, establish common expectations and grading norms, and ensure lessons leave the heavy lifting to students, through "productive struggle" with rigorous, grade-level content.

Finally, many of the highest-performing, high-poverty schools embrace specific pedagogical practices that convey high expectations, such as those identified by Doug Lemov in his highly influential book, Teach Like A Champion. These include four major techniques.

Andrews, D., and Gutwein, M. (2017). " 'Maybe that concept is still with us': Adolescents' racialized and classed perceptions of teachers' expectations." Multicultural Perspectives, 19(1), 5-15.

Demonstrates the baseline principle that teachers' expectations for students have a significant effect on academic achievement.

Davis-Kean, P. E. (2005). The influence of parent education and family income on child achievement: the indirect role of parental expectations and the home environment. Journal of Family Psychology, 19(2), 294.

De Boer, H., Timmermans, A., and Van Der Werf, M. (2018). The effects of teacher expectation interventions on teachers' expectations and student achievement: narrative review and meta-analysis. Educational Research and Evaluation, 24(3-5), 180-200.

Clarifies the concept of high expectations, specifically that students recognize when teachers have high expectations for them, which relates to stronger performance.

Lemov, Doug. (2014). Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College.

Papageorge, N., Gershenson, S., and Kang, K. (2020). Teacher Expectations Matter. Review of Economics and Statistics. 102(2). 234-251

Same, M., Guarino, N., Pardo, M., Benson, D., Fagan, K., and Lindsay, J. (2018). " Evidence-supported interventions associated with Black students' education outcomes: Findings from a systematic review of research. " U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest: Washington, D.C.

There is promising evidence for the role that high expectations play in all students' academic outcomes, and particularly so for African-American students.

Timmermans, A., and Rubie-Davies, C. (2018). Do teachers differ in the level of expectations or in the extent to which they differentiate in expectations? Relations between teacher-level expectations, teacher background and beliefs, and subsequent student performance. Educational Research and Evaluation, 24(3-5), 241-263.

When teachers hold differentiated expectations for students in their classrooms, this can be related to lower academic achievement. This speaks to the need to norm all teachers on a culture of high expectations before the school year even starts.

TNTP. (2018). The Opportunity Myth. New York, NY.

Finds a larger effect size for adult expectations than other major factors, with the most pronounced impacts on students of color or from low-income families.

Trinidad, J. E. (2019). Collective expectations protecting and preventing academic achievement. Education & Urban Society, 51(9), 1147-1171.

All adults in a school holding high expectations for students is correlated with positive academic outcomes.

Uchida, A., Michael, R., and Mori, K. (2018). An Induced Successful Performance Enhances Student Self-Efficacy and Boosts Academic Achievement. AERA Open, 4(4), 1-9.

If students believe that they can do something, they experience more academic success.

Zhan, M. (2006). Assets, parental expectations and involvement, and children's educational performance. Children and Youth Services Review, 28(8), 961-975.

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Editor's note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched "The Acceleration Imperative," an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders' efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year. It comprises four chapters split into nineteen individual topics.

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School Success Affects Future Opportunities

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School Success Affects Future Opportunities

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What happens in high school can shape a student's future. Retention matters because students who persist in school are better prepared for college applications, scholarships, training programs, and employment. The skills students develop by staying engaged—such as responsibility, organization, and perseverance—continue to matter long after graduation.

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Our resource library offers a growing collection of reports, policy briefs, and toolkits to inform the field about promising practices and offer recommendations for improving the success of K-12, higher education and workforce sectors. We believe in building practical resources to catalyze action. Contact us to learn more about areas of focus and see how…