A summary of Content Enhancement Routines and related research

The authors: Don Deshler, Director and Janet Roth, Director of Professional Development
Center for Research on Learning

In December, KU-CRL staff prepared a series of materials for a presentation to school officials in California. Among the materials were descriptions of Content Enhancement Routines and Learning Strategies complete with a summary of research related to each routine or strategy.

Content Enhancement Routines

The teaching routines described below have been successfully field-tested in general education classrooms characterized by significant academic diversity. Each class contained students judged to be at risk for academic school failure; all of the routines were field-tested in classes that contained students judged to have learning disabilities. The research took place in public schools, primarily in middle and high school settings, and the routines were field-tested by teachers. Research has demonstrated that consistent and explicit instruction and use of each routine is a key ingredient for instructional success.

The routines were designed for use during group instruction to help a teacher provide instruction more sensitive to the learning needs of individuals in the group. A combination of instructional models involving general education teachers and special education teachers, individually and collaboratively, have been successfully tested. All of the routines are taught using a standard set of instructional procedures. These procedures define the necessary instructional conditions needed regardless of where the routine is used.

The routines described below are grouped into the following categories:

• Teaching routines for planning and leading learning
  
  
  • Course Organizer Routine
    
  • Unit Organizer Routine
    
  • Lesson Organizer Routine
  
  
• Teaching routines for explaining text, topics, and details
  
  
  • Clarifying Routine
    
  • Framing Routine
    
  • Survey Routine
  
  
• Teaching routines for teaching concepts
  
  
  • Concept Anchoring Routine
    
  • Concept Comparison Routine
    
  • Concept Mastery Routine
  
  
• Teaching routines for increasing student performance
  
  
  • Quality Assignment Routine
    
  • Question Exploration Routine
    
  • Recall Enhancement Routine
    
  • Vocabulary LINCing Routine

Planning and Leading Learning

Course Organizer Routine: The Course Organizer Routine is used to plan courses around essential learning and critical concepts. The teacher uses the routine to introduce the course and the rituals that will be used throughout the course. The teacher then uses this framework throughout the year to maintain the big ideas and rituals. Research showed that the use of the Course Organizer Routine helps teachers and students keep the big ideas in mind and focus their attention to understand important relationships. Instruction results in learning more about the big picture and less in trying to cover large amounts of information. Teachers using the routine spent more time introducing major course ideas, concepts, themes, and routines to students than did the comparison teachers who did not learn the routine. Students with LD answered an average of three "big idea" course questions correctly at the beginning of the year. The students with LD in the class that used the Course Organizer correctly answered an average of eight "big idea" questions by the end of the course, while the students with LD in the class that did not use the Course Organizer answered only an average of four of the "big idea" questions correctly.

Unit Organizer Routine: The Unit Organizer Routine is used to plan units and then introduce and maintain the big ideas in units and show how units, critical information, and concepts are related. Research results showed that when the teachers used the Unit Organizer Routine, understanding and retention of the information by low-achieving students, students with learning disabilities, and average-achieving students improved substantially over baseline as reflected in unit test scores and in scores on unit content maps and explanations of these maps. The students of teachers who used the Unit Organizer Routine regularly and consistently scored an average of 15 percentage points higher on unit tests than students of teachers who used it only irregularly.

Lesson Organizer Routine: The Lesson Organizer Routine is used to plan lessons and then introduce and connect ideas to the unit and the course. Research has shown that regular, explicit, and flexible use of the Lesson Organizer Routine by secondary classroom teachers can have a significant influence on student learning. Studies showed that use of the routine increased student learning and performance. Research results showed that the students of teachers who used the Lesson Organizer Routine regularly and consistently scored an average of 15 percentage points higher on unit tests than students of teachers who used it irregularly.

Explaining Text, Topics, and Details

Clarifying Routine: The Clarifying Routine is used to focus on a topic and then explore related details and its importance to the critical ideas and concepts. Using this routine, teachers can help students master the meaning of targeted words and phrases. Research has shown that students benefit from the use of this routine. Studies in upper-elementary and middle-school general education classes composed of highly diverse student populations, including students with learning disabilities and those for whom English is a second language, have shown that students benefit from teacher use of the routine. When the teacher used the Clarifying Routine, high socioeconomic level students improved their number of correct answers by an average of 14 percentage points, middle socioeconomic level students by an average of 30 percentage points, and low socioeconomic level students by an average of 20 percentage points.

Framing Routine: The Framing Routine is used to transform abstract main ideas and key topics into a concrete representation that helps students think and talk about the key topic and essential related information. Research results have consistently demonstrated that the routine can effectively facilitate subject-matter learning as well as the development of literacy and thinking skills. In a study focusing on written products of 35 eighth-grade students, the students who were taught with the Framing Routine wrote an average of 102 words more per product than did the students who were in the comparison group.

Survey Routine: The Survey Routine provides an overview of a reading assignment when students are having difficulty reading and sorting out information from inconsiderate text. Research showed that students with LD and other low-achieving students as well as average and high achieving students correctly answered an average of 10 percent to 15 percent more of their test questions when the Survey Routine was used than when the Survey Routine was not used.

Teaching Concepts

Concept Anchoring Routine: The Concept Anchoring Routine is used to introduce and anchor a new concept to a concept that is already familiar to students. In research studies with students in secondary science and social studies classes, high-achieving, average-achieving, and low-achieving students (including those with learning disabilities) who had been taught with the Anchoring Routine correctly answered more test questions than students who had not received the routine instruction. Students with LD taught with the Anchoring Routine scored an average of 25 percentage points higher than those who were not taught with the routine. Low-achieving, average-achieving, and high-achieving students taught with the Anchoring Routine scored averages of 27, 19, and 7 percentage points higher than their respective groups that were not taught with the routine.

Concept Comparison Routine: The Concept Comparison Routine is used to help students compare and contrast key concepts. Research with students enrolled in general secondary science and social studies classes showed that students correctly answered substantially more test questions related to information that had been presented through the use of the routine than test questions related to information presented using traditional teaching methods. Students with LD and other low-achieving students correctly answered an average of 71.2 percent (LD) and 86.4 percent (NLD) respectively of the test questions associated with information presented through the use of the routine, compared to 56.7 percent (LD) and 62.6 percent (NLD) of the questions associated with information presented through traditional means. The experimental study involved 107 students.

Concept Mastery Routine: The Concept Mastery Routine is used to define, summarize, and explain a major concept and where it fits within a larger body of knowledge. Research showed that secondary teacher use of the routine caused the student to benefit in several ways. First, students scored significantly better on tests designed to assess concept acquisition. Second, students scored significantly better on regularly scheduled, teacher-made or commercial unit tests during the enhancement condition than during baseline. Gains by students with LD (from a mean score of 60 percent to 71 percent) were comparable to those of their NLD peers (from a mean score of 72 percent to 87 percent) on these regular tests. The percentage of students with LD who passed increased from 57 percent to 75 percent; the percentage of NLD students who passed increased from 68 percent to 97 percent. Third, students took better notes during the enhancement condition than before using the routine.

Increasing Performance

Quality Assignment Routine: The Quality Assignment Routine is used to plan, present, and engage students in quality assignments and then evaluate assignments with students. From the research study, characteristics of good assignments and the important elements for the routine were learned through surveys completed by teachers and students and from focus groups with teachers and students. All of the characteristics and elements were deemed important through the survey results. Research study results showed the following: Before the study, teachers were observed to include an average of 50.5 percent of the planning behaviors based on the validated assignment characteristics, 32.8 percent of the presentation behaviors based on the validated explanation factors, and 8.2 percent of the evaluation procedures. After the intervention, participants used an average of 96.1 percent of the planning behaviors, 89.3 percent of the presentation behaviors, and 93.8 percent of the evaluation procedures. In contrast, a group of comparison teachers used an average of 45 percent of the planning behaviors, 26 percent of the assignment presentation behaviors, and 10 percent of the evaluation procedures at the end of the study. Teachers who received training in the use of the routine and their students were significantly more satisfied with assignments.

Question Exploration Routine: The Question Exploration Routine is a package of instructional methods that teachers can use to help a diverse student population understand a body of content information by carefully answering a "critical question" to arrive at a main idea answer. Research results showed students who were taught a lesson using the Question Exploration Routine earned an average test score of 70 percent, while students who were taught the lesson with traditional methods scored an average of 48 percent.

Recall Enhancement Routine: The Recall Enhancement Routine focuses on procedures teachers can use to help students remember information. Performance of the students in a post-test only comparison group study indicated that the performance of students was related to the teacher's use of the routine. Students with or without disabilities in the classes of teachers who used the routine performed significantly better on test items that could best be addressed through the creation of the types of Recall Devices that their teachers had presented than did the students in the comparison classes. The recall performance of both the LD and the NLD students in the experimental group was higher by 29.10 and 20.5 points, respectively than the performance of similar students in the control group on reviewed facts.

Vocabulary LINCing Routine: The Vocabulary LINCing Routine is designed to facilitate student use of two powerful tools, an auditory memory device and a visual memory device, that will help them learn and remember the meanings of complex terms. Research results showed that students, including those with LD, improved their performance by an average of 19 percentage points on vocabulary tests.