Revitalizing Strategy Instruction

Abstract

The national focus on teacher accountability and the resulting emphasis on raising the bar for teacher evaluations challenge teachers of students with learning disabilities (LD) to rethink instructional design and delivery. In response to these challenges, this article introduces a two-part protocol for planning and teaching strategy instruction to elementary education students with LD being educated in classrooms alongside their grade-level peers. The rationale, research background, detailed implementation information, and concrete examples of how the protocol was integrated into lesson planning are provided. The protocol is offered as a framework for teachers and schools looking to increase the effectiveness of instruction through the use of evidence-based methods.

Keywords

strategy instruction elementary students with LD effective instruction general and special education

Mrs. Gabriel, a fourth-grade teacher at Bear Path Elementary School, had just finished scoring her students’ research reports (see Note 1). She noticed at the top of Chester’s paper, and several others, was written “Did not use COPS strategy.” She asked herself if this was just a coincidence or a pattern of errors for her students with learning disabilities. The next day Mrs. Gabriel had a conversation with Chester to explore her hunch.

Mrs. Gabriel:

Tell me what the COPS strategy is.

Chester:

Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation, Spelling.

Mrs. Gabriel:

So why didn’t you use it?

Chester:

Because I don’t know what it is.

Presumably COPS had been taught because Chester easily articulated what the acronym stood for (i.e., capitalization, organization, punctuation, spelling) and Mrs. Gabriel expected its use within the research paper. Yet, there was an obvious disconnect between the intended instruction and what Chester had learned, or in this case, hadn’t learned. Mrs. Gabriel knew that she had to reteach the COPS strategy but was unsure of how to do so.

Background

For more than 30 years research has suggested that the use of learning strategies can improve student performance in inclusive settings on modified or grade-appropriate tasks (Boudah, 2013; Deschler & Schumaker, 1986; Scruggs, Mastropieri, & McDuffie, 2007). Learning strategies are techniques, principles, or rules that enable a student to learn, solve problems, and complete tasks independently (Deshler & Schumaker, 1986) through direct, explicit instruction that is designed to teach students how to learn rather than to teach students specific curriculum content (Schumaker, Deshler, & Ellis, 1986). Learning strategies have been validated for students with learning disabilities in the areas of writing interventions (Gillespie & Graham, 2014), improving expository text comprehension (Jitendra, Burgess, & Gajria, 2011), math problem solving (Krawec & Montague, 2014), reading comprehension (Mahdavi & Tensfeldt, 2013), and teaching content area subjects (Tejero Hughes & Parker-Katz, 2013).

Likewise, instructional procedures for teaching learning strategies have been validated, resulting in a well-articulated model for teaching students across grade levels and content to use learning strategies (Conderman & Hedin, 2014; Sousa, 2001). This model of instructional procedures was identified herewith for several key reasons.

First, it provided an accessible framework to address different content areas (de Boer, Donker, & van der Werf, 2014; Perry, Albeg, & Tung, 2012), individualize instruction (Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2003), promote independence in learning (Hughes, 2011), and increase academic performance (de Boer et al., 2014; Perry et al., 2012).

Second, strategy instruction can be designed to contain fundamental assessment components (Lenz, 2006) to document student progress over time.

Third, strategy instruction can generate tangible evidence of planning and instruction as well as student progress.

Fourth, research has documented the positive impact strategy instruction has on the performance of students with disabilities in the general education classroom as well as on state accountability assessments (Schumaker & Deshler, 2003).

By all appearances, teacher familiarity with the practice of teaching learning strategies is a perfect match for today’s classrooms within the current age of accountability. Accountability is based on producing evidence: (a) evidence of planning and preparation, (b) evidence of research-based interventions, (c) evidence of effective instruction, and (d) evidence of student growth. There is, however, a caveat. Several research studies indicated that higher outcomes were noted for interventions implemented by researchers rather than teachers (Berkeley, Scruggs, & Mastropieri, 2010; de Boer et al., 2014) and “observational studies suggest that very little specialized strategy instruction is presently taking place, particularly in general education settings, even when special education teachers are present” (Berkeley et al., 2010, pp. 433–434). However, the literature does not suggests than an overall conceptualization of strategy instruction necessarily translates into effective practice. In actuality, teachers may not know what constitutes good strategy instruction. Research has indicated that “unless instructional conditions are created in which students with learning disabilities receive the kind of explicit and intensive instruction that they need to learn strategies, they are unlikely to benefit to the extent that they can perform at comparable levels to their peers without disabilities” (Schumaker & Deshler, 2009, p. 90). This seems to have been the case with Mrs. Gabriel. She had taught COPS to her class, but the evidence that all students were independently using the strategy was missing. Since Mrs. Gabriel was willing to improve her current practice, the validated instructional design of strategy instruction was used as a model to create a planning tool that was easy to use, facilitated teacher buy-in to actually use it, and would produce student outcomes similar to those reported in the literature.

The redesign of Mrs. Gabriel’s approach to strategy instruction began with focusing on the overall goal of integrating cognitive learning strategies with content to help students with learning disabilities respond successfully to curriculum demands. Two objectives were identified to support students in reaching this goal: (a) to build up students’ knowledge bases thereby enabling them to learn new content as well as demonstrate what they had learned and (b) to help students become strategic learners. Using the following two-part protocol, Mrs. Gabriel implemented a set of instructional procedures and learning activities to reteach COPS.

Two-Part Protocol for Planning and Teaching

The eight-stage sequence for teaching learning strategies proposed by Ellis, Deshler, Lenz, Schumaker, and Clark (1991) served as the framework to develop a protocol for teachers in designing and delivering learning-strategy instruction to ensure that interventions adhere to fundamental design principles. The protocol is composed of two key components intended to maintain teacher focus on strategic instruction: (a) the checklist for teaching a learning strategy and (b) an interactive trifold presentation board. The first four stages focus on the process for teaching the strategy itself without applying content. The subsequent four stages concentrate on using the strategy with specific content.

Checklist for Teaching a Learning Strategy

The Checklist for Teaching a Learning Strategy (see Figure 1) provides explicit prompts within each stage of strategy instruction to be used during lesson planning thereby focusing teacher thinking on the essential components. Specifically, the checklist is designed to help teachers sequence instruction in a way that will advance student learning through the set stages of strategy instruction. It requires the thoughtful construction of lessons that contain cognitively engaging learning activities to promote student understanding and independent use of the strategy.

Figure 1.

Teacher checklist for teaching a learning strategy.

Trifold Board

The interactive trifold serves as an instructional tool during the first four stages of strategy instruction and can then be utilized by students implementing the learning strategy during the second four stages. The trifold must present the strategy steps in a logical and sequential fashion while being interactive and visually accessible. Because students are supposed to be able to interact with the materials on the trifold board, it is essential for teachers to match the content of the trifold to the learning needs of students. Likewise, the visually engaging, hands-on nature of the trifold should invite students to practice and learn independently and promote autonomous use of the strategy. The teacher checklist for designing an interactive trifold for strategy instruction (see Figure 2) is provided as a guide.

Figure 2.

Teacher checklist for designing an interactive trifold presentation board of a learning strategy.

Supporting Effective Instruction

Since instructional strategies can be content-specific in reading, writing, comprehension, and mathematics or can be applied across content such as note taking, concept mapping, and using a mnemonic device, it is important for teachers to keep in mind that the structure of instructional design and the quality indicators of instructional delivery remain constant even though the content may change. Therefore, both checklists can be used to teach any learning strategy. To bridge the theory to practice gap when explaining the proper use of the checklist, excerpts from Mrs. Gabriel’s lesson plans are shared.

Selecting the Strategy

To begin, teachers must select a strategy that is clearly linked to the tasks students need to perform. In the fourth grade at Bear Path students not only generated written text in English/language arts but also wrote narratives of different lengths to demonstrate their content knowledge in social studies, science, and math. Furthermore, the schoolwide focus on writing across the curriculum required that lesson plans include language objectives related to reading, writing, speaking, and thinking to boost children’s critical thinking skills. As such, Mrs. Gabriel chose the COPS editing strategy, which is based on an error-monitoring strategy (Schumaker, Nolan, & Deshler, 1985) that was designed to enable students to detect and correct errors in their own writing (Schumaker & Deshler, 2009) and has been used successfully with students who have learning disabilities (Baker, Gersten, & Graham, 2003; Schumaker & Deshler, 2003, 2009). Mrs. Gabriel’s revitalized plan for teaching the COPS strategy was designed using the Checklist for Teaching a Learning Strategy.

Stage 1: Pretest and Make Commitments

After designing the pretest for her students, Mrs. Gabriel created a learning contract to formalize the teaching and learning commitment. She then designed an engaging learning activity to give meaning to learning the strategy and motivate students. Obtaining baseline data via a pretest was necessary to (a) establish student knowledge of the academic content that would be addressed through the use of this strategy, (b) measure the prerequisite knowledge and skills necessary for using the strategy, and (c) determine how much students already knew about using the strategy.

Student considerations

Chester’s pretest indicated that he was able to circle the words that need to be capitalized, identify correct and incorrect punctuation, and state what COPS stood for. He was unable to put sentences in the proper order or identify words that were spelled incorrectly. He also made a few grammatical errors in rewriting sentences. These data alerted Mrs. Gabriel to the fact that for Chester to apply the COPS strategy effectively he needed to possess the necessary prerequisite skills (e.g., proper spelling and grammar, sequencing) and that she needed to integrate grammar instruction with editing instruction so Chester could in fact benefit from using the strategy.

Stage 2: Describe the Strategy

Mrs. Gabriel decided to use cue cards to help support student learning and engagement as she described the strategy to her students. Students cut out their own set of cue cards and Mrs. Gabriel reviewed each cue card while explaining the overall strategy and each of its steps. The cue cards were displayed on the interactive whiteboard throughout this process. Mrs. Gabriel wrote a script ahead of time for going over how to use each cue card making sure the strategy was clearly described, the benefits of learning the strategy identified, and an explanation of how and when the strategy could be used were included. In addition, new terms of the strategy were introduced, the physical behaviors associated with each step (i.e., what the student has to do) were clarified, and the mental cues associated with each step (i.e., what we think about at each step) discussed. The trifold presentation board could have been introduced during this stage to support student learning, however Mrs. Gabriel chose to wait to present it so as not to overwhelm her students.

Student considerations

All students were successful in cutting out the cue cards, although cards could have been cut by the teacher beforehand to save time during the lesson. Mrs. Gabriel had students highlight the title of each cue card in the proper color to represent each step of the strategy and help students organize information.

Stage 3: Model the Strategy

Mrs. Gabriel wrote a brief story titled The Surprise Snowstorm that comprised approximately 10 sentences. The story was projected on the interactive whiteboard so students could see how to edit and revise the text using COPS. Students received a copy of the story to edit along with Mrs. Gabriel and were prompted to use their cue cards throughout the process. The following is an excerpt from the script Mrs. Gabriel prepared to guide her teaching as she modeled the strategy.

I have written a short story that now needs to be edited and revised. I am going to use the COPS strategy to edit and revise my story. Before I begin, I am going to take out Cue Card #1 to remind myself of the steps in COPS. First, I will check for capitalization. Next, I will check for organization. Then, I will check for punctuation. Last, I will check for spelling.

Now I will take out Cue Card #2 and my red colored pencil to check for capitalization. First, I will make sure that all sentences start with a capital letter. Next, I will highlight all of these letters with my red pencil. Then, I will make sure to capitalize nouns that name specific people, places and things—also known as proper nouns. I will highlight all of these nouns with my red pencil. Last, I will go back and make sure that all of the highlighted words highlighted with red pencil are capitalized.

Mrs. Gabriel noted that writing the script for this stage of instruction was time-consuming and not typically part of her lesson planning process. However, after the lesson had been taught, Mrs. Gabriel remarked writing the script was time well spent because the lesson ran smoothly, she was confident that all important aspects of instruction were addressed during the lesson, students were doing rather than listening, and students really seemed to make a connection to what they were learning due to the hands-on nature of the guided practice. As a consequence of these positive results, Mrs. Gabriel recommended teachers engage in this process at least once to experience the benefits, then decide for themselves how to apply scripting.

Each individual step in the learning strategy was modeled and narrated so students could observe strategy use in action and understand what was expected of them. Thinking out loud was an easy way to highlight strategic learning and demonstrated the language students could use to guide their actions. The script likewise ensured proper exemplars. Developing a guided practice activity so students could practice the strategy was an integral component of this step. When developing guided practice opportunities it was important to make sure that practice only involved one skill that addressed one step. Student failure and confusion could have occurred if several skills and multiple steps were addressed during a given guided practice opportunity. Mastery of each step before advancing was critical in strategy acquisition.

Student considerations

An interesting use of the script occurred when Mrs. Gabriel made a digital video recording that captured her reading the script and holding up the different highlighting pens for each step. Students who needed or wanted an additional guided practice session were able to view the video on the computer and practice again with the same story. The video was one way Mrs. Gabriel addressed strategy instruction when students were progressing at different rates. She collected students’ stories after the group guided practice to check student performance.

Stage 4: Verbal Practice

During a rapid-fire oral quiz (Schumaker et al., 2006), Mrs. Gabriel used popsicle sticks with each student’s name written on one stick to provide her students with multiple opportunities for verbal rehearsal of the strategy so they could name and explain the strategy steps. After posing a question to the class, Mrs. Gabriel drew a name stick out of a cup and asked that student to quickly answer the question displayed on the interactive whiteboard. Mrs. Gabriel designed specific questions ahead of time that addressed all aspects of the COPS editing strategy to promote meaningful learning. Questions ranged from asking students to retrieve factual information such as “What does the C stand for?” (answer: capitalization) to asking students to provide conceptual knowledge such as “What types of organization are we talking about?” (answers: good sentence structure, no run-on sentences, sequence of events in the proper order, like thoughts together, use of transition words, and use of adjectives and adverbs). Mrs. Gabriel repeated questions until she was satisfied that the students had mastered the answers. When a question had multiple answers, Mrs. Gabriel decided to continue calling on students until all correct answers had been given.

The explicit and repeated practice was intended to ensure that students could name the strategy steps and articulate what happened in each step. Mrs. Gabriel used factual questions to promote recall (Wrag & Brown, 2001) and presented them in rapid succession to facilitate automaticity. Remember that Chester was able to name the strategy steps but lacked an understanding of what to do in each step. For Chester, the repeated verbal practice increased his familiarity with the information because questions addressed the procedures of each individual step of the strategy.

Student considerations

Since the nature of recitation questions used during the oral quiz inherently targeted discrete pieces of information, such questions allowed students with learning disabilities to process limited amounts of information at a time and served to reduce the cognitive load of constructing knowledge. This condition made it easier for Chester to utilize working memory (Low & Sweller, 2005) and focus on the answers. As a way to encourage verbal rehearsal outside of formalized strategy instruction for students who needed more practice, Mrs. Gabriel challenged small groups of students, who were intentionally clustered, to answer the quick-fire questions. These challenges occurred when there were a few minutes of down time and during transitions.

Stage 5: Controlled Practice/Feedback

Since Mrs. Gabriel’s students had previously written a short narrative about identifying character traits and using text evidence to support their thinking, she decided to use that writing sample during the first controlled practice session. Students were prompted to use the cue cards when applying the COPS strategy to edit their narratives. With the trifold board prominently displayed in the writing center, students were also able to use this visual support. Mrs. Gabriel gave students the option to either sit at the table in the writing center and use the trifold board or work independently at their desks and use the cue cards to guide their editing. Another controlled practice session was implemented later on in the week wherein students had the opportunity to edit and revise a piece of writing generated during science. Mrs. Gabriel provided individualized, specific, and timely feedback to students by identifying areas where students were right on target with regard to using the learning strategy and made suggestions for improving areas that needed correcting. As students approached mastery, a reduced level of teacher support and mediation was achieved. Once students could name and explain the steps of the strategy with relative ease, Mrs. Gabriel added content so students could apply what they had learned. During controlled practice with simplified materials, the trifold presentation board served as an anchor chart that students could access independently as the skills for applying the strategy in context developed.

Student considerations

By collecting student work Mrs. Gabriel was able to monitor student progress and provide additional feedback to students. It was at this point that Mrs. Gabriel noticed that Chester and a few of his classmates were still struggling with correcting spelling and ordering sentences. To address spelling, she created a cheat sheet of commonly misspelled words for all students to add into their writer’s notebook. She continued to focus student attention on key vocabulary words across content areas to support spelling. With regard to ordering sentences, Mrs. Gabriel worked with a small group of students during one guided reading period and delivered a mini lesson focused on sequencing by using the language first, next, then, and last to order thoughts. In addition, Mrs. Gabriel affixed sticky notes into students’ writer’s notebook with specific comments regarding editing strategies to provide extra feedback to students.

Stage 6: Advanced Practice/Feedback

To move her students toward independent use of the strategy, Mrs. Gabriel converted the cue cards into a single-page checklist that was color-coded. In addition, the trifold presentation board remained displayed in the writing center. Mrs. Gabriel continued to provide specific performance feedback as needed however she was really focused on shifting the responsibility for strategy use to her students. When Mrs. Gabriel was confident that her students were capable of applying the strategy with content, she switched her attention to providing multiple opportunities throughout the school day for them to practice with authentic work generated across content areas. Students were verbally reminded to use COPS to check written responses to open-ended questions and writing prompts in social studies, math, and science. Focus during this stage switched from using the strategy in a prescribed fashion within lessons to independently applying the learning strategy to demonstrate mastery of the content.

Student considerations

Each student was given a plastic sheet protector for the checklist. Doing so enabled students to use a dry erase marker when employing the checklist to edit work. At this point in time, all students, including Chester, were able to edit their work independently.

Stage 7: Posttest/Commitment

Mrs. Gabriel designed an easy-to-use COPS scoring guide and used it across content areas each time she graded written work to determine if students were in fact using the strategy. In creating the scoring guide, Mrs. Gabriel made a simple grid with student names listed in the first column and the COPS performance criteria listed horizontally across the top of the grid, one criterion in each column. Simple error counts were collected for the following criteria: number of capitalization errors, number of punctuation errors, number of spelling errors, and number of incomplete sentences. A mark of “Y” for yes and “N” for no was used to evaluate organization and included (a) sequential organization of text, (b) like thoughts grouped together, and (c) paragraphs indented, properly spaced and neat. She presumed that lower numbers of capitalization, punctuation, and spelling errors as well as more yes ratings indicated that students were indeed using the COPS strategy. Along with the COPS scoring guide, Mrs. Gabriel graded student work based on mastery of the content so grading was not just about strategy use. She then decided whether to provide more practice opportunities for the strategy via a screencast or to celebrate student success. In Mrs. Gabriel’s classroom, students who successfully and independently applied the COPS editing strategy received a free homework pass, one per student. Once the entire class achieved mastery, a simple commitment contract was signed by both the students and Mrs. Gabriel wherein Mrs. Gabriel guaranteed enduring support for students to use the strategy and students vowed to continue using the strategy.

Stage 8: Generalize the Strategy

To promote generalization of the strategy, Mrs. Gabriel began with a class discussion wherein she and her students talked about the purposes for using the strategy, identified settings and situations where they could use the strategy, and verbalized why generalizing the strategy was important. Key responses were documented on chart paper and posted on the wall in the writing center. Mrs. Gabriel created frequent opportunities across content areas throughout the day and during homework for students to use the strategy. Mrs. Gabriel made sure to cue students, either verbally or by writing on the board, to use the strategy at the appropriate time. The presence of the trifold board in the classroom and easy access to the self-check served as constant supports in helping students move toward self-generalization of the strategy. As a way to further support activation of the strategy, Mrs. Gabriel created a class tally chart, which she titled “Report Your COPS,” so students could place a tally mark after their names each time they used the strategy. Because the COPS strategy was so straight forward, the class agreed they would not need to modify the strategy to meet writing expectations across assignments. To complete her plan for making sure students knew the strategy and were using it, Mrs. Gabriel asked each student to write a personal goal for using the strategy in their writer’s notebooks. To this end, Mrs. Gabriel could monitor each student’s use of the strategy on homework assignments and in the notebook and, when needed, post sticky notes in the notebooks with feedback regarding strategy use. Mrs. Gabriel proudly reported that her students are now masters of the COPS editing strategy.

Conclusion

In the current educational climate, students must develop core content knowledge and learn essential skills for success in today’s world, such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication, and collaboration (P21 Partnership for 21st Century Learning, n.d.). Acquiring the necessary knowledge, skills, and strategies for functioning independently in our society is as important to students with learning disabilities as it is to their peers without disabilities. Perhaps one of the most fundamental skills for everyone to possess is how to learn. Students can become effective, lifelong learners when they master certain techniques and strategies to assist learning and when they know which techniques are useful in different kinds of learning situations (Schumaker & Deshler, 2009). Students with learning disabilities need to learn how to become strategic learners and not haphazardly use whatever strategies or techniques they have developed on their own. Teachers can facilitate this outcome by utilizing the two-part protocol for planning and teaching learning strategies, the checklist for teaching a learning strategy, and an interactive trifold presentation board. The utility of this protocol is that systematic strategy instruction helps students with learning disabilities learn how to learn (Schumaker et al., 1986) and become more effective in the successful performance of academic tasks (Perry et al., 2012). When teachers help students to use learning strategies and generalize strategic knowledge they are promoting autonomy in learning thus fostering essential student outcomes.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge Dr. Bernard C. Jones who field tested previous versions of the Learning Strategy Worksheet and a scoring rubric for the interactive trifold board with undergraduate and graduate teacher candidates in special education and offered feedback. Dr. Jones also provided samples of candidates’ work that informed the development of the current protocols described herewith.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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