English Language Development

For example, during a unit on Romeo and Juliet, students may choose to read about and then
present on Elizabethan family structures, gender constructs during the English Renaissance, or
16th century ideas regarding fate and free will. During a unit on The Great Gatsby, students
may choose to read articles or texts about 1920’s fashion, politics, or economics.
As suggested earlier, teachers work collaboratively to plan curricula and select instructional
materials. Interdisciplinary teams can play a particularly valuable role in implementing the CA CCSS for
ELA/Literacy. Teams of teachers from different subject areas who instruct a common group of students
plan together to select appropriate texts, create joint projects, plan lessons, and examine student
performance. Working together these teams can identify students who need additional support and
modify instruction, scheduling, and grouping as appropriate. For teachers, teams can provide a
collaborative and supportive work group. For students, teams offer stable relationships with teachers
and peers (Jackson and Davis 2000). Interdisciplinary teams can also cultivate meaningful and regular
communication with families.

Research-Based Learning Techniques (Study Skills). Students in high school employ a
variety of strategies to learn new material. Learning to prepare efficiently for quizzes, mid-terms,
finals, and other forms of assessment is important so that students’ efforts yield the best results.
A team of cognitive and educational psychologists (Dunlosky, and others 2013) examined research
studies for 10 learning techniques and rated their effectiveness in terms of low, moderate, and high
utility. All of the techniques examined were ones that students could implement without assistance.
The results of the research review identified practice testing and distributed practice as the most
effective, and perhaps surprising to some students, highlighting and underlining as one of the least
effective. See figure 7.14 for a list and description of the techniques and their ratings.

Figure 7.14. Effectiveness of Independent Learning Techniques

Technique Description Utility

1. Elaborative
   interrogation

Generating an explanation for why an explicitly stated fact

or concept is true

Moderate

2. Self-explanation Explaining how new information is related to known
   information, or explaining steps taken during problem
   solving

Moderate

3. Summarization Writing summaries (of various lengths) of to-be-learned
   texts

Low

4.Highlighting/

underlining

Marking potentially important portions of to-be-learned

materials while reading

Low

5. Keyword
   mnemonic

Using keywords and mental imagery to associate verbal

materials

Low

6. Imagery for text Attempting to form mental images of text materials while
   reading or listening

Low

7. Rereading Restudying text material again after an initial reading Low


8. Practice testing Self-testing or taking practice tests over to-be-learned
   material

High

Grades 9 to 12 Chapter 7 | 709