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explanations. Teachers may need to explain and model strategy use repeatedly. Students with learning
disabilities may need more extensive hints and more extended use of scaffolds before teachers begin to fade
the scaffolds. And students with learning disabilities may need more practice than typical students, with
much explicit feedback to help them master and retain the strategies.
Strategy Instruction for Students at Different Grade Levels
The techniques of effective strategy instruction that we have discussed in this chapter are generally
applicable to students from early elementary through high school. We have already noted that SRSD has
been used successfully to promote growth in writing among students ranging in age from early elementary
through high school and that Reciprocal Teaching has been used with students of differing ages. Other
programs use these techniques to promote reasoning in students from kindergarten through high school
(Bell, Blair, Crawford, & Lederman, 2003; Chinn, Duschl, Duncan, Pluta, Buckland et al., 2008; Chinn et
al., 2000; Cobb, McClain, & Gravemeijer, 2003; Ergazaki et al., 2005; Etkina, Matilsky, & Lawrence,
2003; Ford, 2005; Metz, 2004; Samarapungavan, Mantzicopoulos, & Patrick, 2008). The eight techniques
of effective instruction discussed in this chapter are broadly applicable across ages, but there is a need to
aWe discuss several of these adaptations below:
Ɣ Implementing varied practice across subjects. It is easy for most elementary school teachers to
implement varied practice by integrating strategy instruction into many subjects. Most elementary
school teachers teach most or all subjects to a single group of students and can design their own lessons
that encourage students to use target strategies in reading class, math class, social studies class, and
science class. In contrast, most secondary teachers teach a single subject to many different groups of
students. If secondary teachers want to integrate instruction in common strategies across multiple
subjects, teachers of different subjects (math, English, science, etc.) will need to work jointly to decide
on target strategies and to develop plans for coordinating strategy instruction across different classes.
This requires time to work and plan together.
Ɣ Teacher explanations and modeling. As students grow older, teacher explanations and modeling
should become more and more complex. When elementary-school teachers introduce strategies such as
summarization to their students, they will explain it in a simpler way than when middle-school teachers
introduce these strategies to their students.
Ɣ Students making their thinking visible. Teachers of students of all ages should encourage students to
make their thinking visible. However, as students grow older, teachers can expect more sophisticated
metacognitive talk. As students grow older and gain more experience with strategy use, they should
know more strategies, understand their own thinking in more detail, and understand more about how
and when to use different strategies in a flexible manner.
Ɣ Scaffolding strategy use and fading scaffolding over time. As students grow older, scaffolds for
strategy use become more complex. For a third grader learning to think about other people’s alternative
ideas, a simple scaffold such as the one in Figure 14.8a is appropriate. Simply generating three
alternative ideas that other people might have is an important achievement at this age. In addition,
scaffolds for children are often decorative in a way that older students might find too childish. As
students grow older, scaffolds will address more advanced aspects of strategies. For instance, the
scaffold in Figure 14.8b helps seventh graders learn to build better arguments by anticipating possible
counterarguments to their arguments. When using this scaffold, students first generate a particular kind
of alternative idea—counterarguments that other people might make to their own arguments. Then they
construct stronger arguments that can anticipate the counterarguments that they have generated.