Instructional Strategy - Peer Coaching Fluency Building

Peer coaching fluency building actively involves students in the process of bettering their reading skills and relates specifically to reading and comprehension skills. Peer coaching pairs strong readers, or coaches, with poor readers. The classroom is divided into two groups: coaches, or strong readers, and struggling readers. Each student in the classroom receives a reading passage that is suitable to his or her skill level. After being allowed to read the passage silently, the teacher then instructs students to read their passages, with the coach and partner alternating sentences. This allows the coach to provide a model of fluency for the struggling reader.

A third reading then takes place, in which the struggling reader reads the entire passage aloud, with the coach assisting the reader with any words that he or she may need help pronouncing. By this time, the struggling reader has read through the passage three times, first silently familiarizing himself or herself with the text; then reading the passage with a partner and being providing with his or her example of fluency; and finally reading the passage primarily independently, with help from the coach as needed. This concludes the guided practice. The instructor then starts a one-minute timer, during which time the struggling readers read the passage aloud, marking the words they read during the minute.

Reading fluency for second grade students is considered to be 90 words per minute. Students that reach this level are promoted to a slightly more difficult passage; students that do not reach the level of 90 words per minute will use the current passage for up to three sessions. Peer coaching fluency building occurs up to three days a week in the classroom.

Peer coaching fluency building in the general education classroom is an effective means of reaching students that need reading assistance while simultaneously preserving their confidence. Peer coaching fluency building avoids having a child make mistakes the first time he or she approaches a passage by allowing the child to read the passage silently. Any mistakes the reader may make, when alternating reading sentences aloud with his or her “coach,” are audible only to the reader, the coach and the teacher, if he or she happens to be nearby. In theory, only students mature enough to be reliable coaches are selected to coach their peers; otherwise, peer coaching fluency building could quickly become an opportunity for more academically successful students to tease less successful ones. For students with mild or moderate learning disabilities, peer coaching fluency building allows time for the passage to be processed the first time it is introduced to a child. The student is not confronted with an unfamiliar passage and asked to read it aloud immediately; he or she is given time to read through the passage and then to pass it back and forth orally with a more experienced reader. In a classroom with students with mild or moderate disabilities, there may not be a supply of reading “coaches” readily available. This would provide an opportunity to involve general education peers with their mild or moderately disabled peers. Additionally, peer coaching fluency building could address the problem of mild or moderate disabilities in relation to reading within the general education classroom.

Peer coaching fluency building could be very beneficial to M.W. She is apprehensive of making mistakes and, after having made them, likely to withdraw from her peers, teacher and the task at hand. Peer coaching fluency building would provide a small audience for M.W. and a structurally unthreatening framework in which to build her reading skills. Peer coaching fluency building also makes it possible for teachers to address students’ individual needs because peer coaching fluency building isolates and enhances reading difficulties. Teachers are more likely to be able to identify specific reading deficits and address them if these deficits are brought to light; they can often go overlooked in the overall scheme of the classroom. Peer coaching fluency building also provides and opportunity for students to build relationships with their peers. Confidence is essential in entreating students to pursue seemingly difficult tasks, as reading may appear to students who have long struggled with reading.

References

Marr, M. B., Algozzine, B., Kavel, R. L., and Dugan, K. K. (2010). Implementing peer coaching fluency building to improve early literacy skills. Reading Improvement 47(2), 74-91.

Instructional Strategy: Solution-Focused Brief Counseling

Solution-Focused Brief Counseling (SFBC) refers to a method of addressing students’ emotional and behavioral disorders and learning disabilities and at-risk students. According to Fearrington and Skinner (2011), SFBC was not developed to target students’ academic or learning deficits, but rather to focus on “the desired characteristics of procedures designed to address academic performance problems” (62). SFBC, as its name suggests, entails several short sessions during which an instructor meets with a student to coach him or her through problem-solving strategies. Additionally, these sessions are used to foster a sense of self-efficacy and confidence in students that did not exhibit these skills prior to intervention. SFBC sessions are intended to help students develop a sense of responsibility for and pride in their work, which will hopefully lead to increased academic achievement. In this specific experiment, the dependent variable was work completion; students’ work was checked for accuracy, but SFBC sessions focused more exclusively on work completion.

There are several stages of SFBC. In the initial stage, students are asked to identify and rate the severity of a given problem. They are also asked to describe what they would need to do to perform upon their own prior performances on the given task or similar tasks. Next, students are asked a “miracle question.” They are told to imagine that the problem was solved by a miracle and then to envision how the problem was resolved. This teaches the student to develop and envision concrete solutions to seemingly difficult problems, thereby motivating the student to pursue success and to problem solve. The third step of SFBC involves encouraging the student and providing him or her with positive feedback and what researchers call “positive blame.” Positive blame is a method by which one takes the blame for a positive experience, reinforcing the belief that one is capable of performing favorably and obtaining positive outcomes. In the fourth stage, students are asked to identify potential obstacles to their correctly solving a problem and to generate solutions to these obstacles. Finally, students receive positive feedback and advice in the form of a written note.

SFBC is applicable in all content areas. All content areas lend themselves to individualized lessons with students. Additionally, self-efficacy does not develop within any particular content area. Rather, a sense of self-efficacy should bolster one’s sense of ability across all content areas. This experiment specifically focused on completion of math assignments, but the organizational structure of SFBC lends itself to implementation in all content areas.

In addition to being relevant to all content areas, SFBC is relevant to all types of learners. Typically developing students and students with mild or moderate disabilities, and even severe disabilities, benefit from SFBC. Students in general education classrooms may benefit from SFBC in small groups, or in the form of weekly sessions in reading skills. Students with mild or moderate disabilities, or even severe ones, may also benefit from SFBC simply because it fosters self-efficacy, confidence and problem solving without directly addressing or focusing on students’ deficits. Students benefit from individualized instruction and exercises in problem solving and building self-efficacy.

SFBC would be particularly successful with M.W., who responds well to praise but shies away from criticism. SFBC does not incorporate criticism and so would be an effective framework for addressing M.W.’s math skills. SFBC sessions in multiplication would significantly build M.W.’s confidence in her own academic abilities and render her more likely to attempt “difficult” math problems in the classroom. The written note, in particular, would bolster M.W.’s confidence. Additionally, the benefit of individualized attention from an instructor, on a weekly basis for approximately 30 minutes, would further cater to M.W.’s desire to be a focal point of adults’ attention.

References

Fearrington, J. Y., McCallum, R. S., and Skinner, C. H. (2011). Increasing math assignment completion using solution-focused brief counseling. Education and Treatment of Children 34(1), 61-80.

Study Skills

Marion is a second grade student at a public school in Muscogee County, Georgia. Marion is very good at math – she is at the top of her class and is performing at a third grade level. Marion struggles with reading vocabulary, letter-word recognition, sound awareness, picture vocabulary and phonics. Marion also gets very off task when she is not engaged in an assignment; she becomes disengaged because she struggles to sift through directions and other blocks of text. Marion’s tendency to get off task appears to be rooted in her poor reading skills; struggling to read makes Marion less committed to the task at hand. Additionally, Marion has relatively poor expression skills. She has only recently begun telling and retelling stories in chronological order and often gets distracted when communicating a story or event. Improving Marion’s reading and language skills is the first priority, however, Marion is quite forgetful of her glasses, schools supplies, homework, etc. Her lack of organization is also important to address.

Marion needs multiple levels of support. Getting her onto a regular schedule, both in the classroom and at home, will enable her to focus on single priorities at one time; she will not be sitting at home with her homework, become frustrated by the directions and turn to the television or to her Nintendo DS. A schedule will help Marion understand the concept of having specific windows of time for various commitments and activities. In order to create a realistic and functional weekly schedule and to-do list, Marion’s classroom teacher, mother and father will need to communicate their individual interests in Marion’s schedule. Marion, too, will need to provide feedback. The schedule should travel in Marion’s binder, so that it moves between school and home. Marion can reference the schedule any time she is unsure as to what comes next in her day, or what she is committed to doing for the week. Additionally, Marion’s parents should post the schedule in the home, so that they can also reference the schedule. It is important that Marion’s parents and teacher adhere to the schedule as much as possible; deviating from the schedule undermines its importance.

A schedule will allow Marion’s parents and teacher to build academic time into her day beyond school. Marion’s reading skills are low, and her classroom teacher has asked her mother to read a book with Marion each night before bed. This can and should be built into Marion’s daily schedule. Additionally, Marion attends tutoring sessions for two hours a day, two days a week; these sessions focus on phonics and reading comprehension skills and should be noted in Marion’s schedule. Additional blocks of time, perhaps 30 minutes a day, should be devoted to reinforcing these skills in the home.

Marion’s regular schedule will help her anticipate class schedules and family commitments each week, in addition to homework that needs to be completed and turned in to her teacher. A schedule will also provide support for Marion’s memory; she can reference the schedule at any time, as it will be with her at school and posted at home. Teaching Marion memory tricks will further boost her retention. The Memory Furst books provide memory strategies for remembering everything from grocery lists to to-do lists to lists of academic information. These strategies will provide even more support for Marion’s memory. The FIRST strategy (Nagel et al., 1994) will be beneficial to Marion. The FIRST strategy encourages students to take the first letter of each item, activity or bit of information to be remembered and build an acronym that will job the student’s memory and enable her to retrieve the desired information. Marion is already beginning to implement this strategy, but teaching her to use it for more than academic tasks will build her foundation of problem-solving skills and help her to be a better student and more successful child. Visualization and key word methods will also benefit Marion. Visualization is already being utilized to help Marion complete tasks; she is already being instructed in picturing a specific book on her desk at home to help her remember what homework assignment she must complete. Further employing visualization strategies will also build Marion’s stock of tools to help her remember specific tasks and activities.

Marion’s expression skills will improve as her reading and language skills improve. These are being supported at school, in tutoring sessions and at home, but the lack of structure in Marion’s day partially accounts for her lack of retention of skills learned. A carefully made schedule will allow Marion to continue to improve her reading skills while also addressing her tendency toward being disorganized. If Marion commits to her schedule, and to checking it and using it as a tool, she will improve upon her self-monitoring skills. Marion is a second grader, but learning to rely on scheduling mechanisms now will serve her well as her education progresses. Learning to rely on and utilize memory strategies will also be beneficial to Marion in this stage of her education, as building a foundation for problem-solving skills in the second grade will only strengthen Marion’s ability to self-navigate both academic and personal dilemmas as she ages.

References

Vaughn, S. & Bos, C. S. (2009). Strategies for Teaching Students with Learning and Behavior Problems (7^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Nagel, et al. (1994). The FIRST-letter mnemonic strategy (rev. ed.). Lawrence, KS: Edge Enterprises.

Steps 1-7 of the Response to Intervention Process

Response to Intervention, Step One

Marion is in the second grade at a public elementary school in Muscogee County. This school has not manifested Adequate Yearly Progress for two consecutive years. The school is high-minority and high-poverty. Marion lives with her mother and younger sister; her father does not live with the family, although he often picks Marion up from tutoring. Marion struggles in several language-related areas, although her math skills are on grade level. The following Woodcock Johnson Tests of Academic Achievement have been administered to Marion: Letter-Word Identification, Spelling, Writing Fluency, Passage Comprehension, Word Attack, Picture Vocabulary, Reading Vocabulary and Sound Awareness. MARION made the following scores on each test: Letter-Word Identification, second grade, zero months; Spelling, first grade, eighth month; Writing Fluency, second grade, third month; Passage Comprehension, first grade, eighth month; Word Attack, first grade, sixth month; Picture Vocabulary, kindergarten, seventh month; Reading Vocabulary, first grade, sixth month; and Sound Awareness, first grade, third month. Marion’s picture vocabulary is particularly low. Although Marion’s classroom performance suggested difficulty with the language-oriented areas letter-word identification, phonemic awareness, reading and writing fluency, her scores on the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Academic Achievement substantiate the identification of her academic needs as being language-based.

Marion’s reading skills are below grade level. Her letter/word identification is poor and her ability to recognize commonly used, grade-appropriate sight words is limited. While Marion is capable of identifying letters individually, she often requires prompting in order to replicate an individual letter’s sound. In particular, Marion struggles to combine her knowledge of letter identification and relevant letter sounds to determine the phonemic nature of letter pairs. When reading aloud, Marion frequently confuses the words “is, it, in” and “of, on, in.” It appears that Marion looks at the first letter of the pair and guesses at the word. When provided with letter pairs in SCORE reading program, Marion struggles to generate letter pairs’ sounds even after having been coached in the pairs’ sound.

Marion also struggles to stay in her chair. She fidgets a great deal and frequently drops her belongings (pencils, erasers, books, papers). She removes her glasses often and only puts them back on when prompted to do so. Often, Marion forgets her glasses entirely. Nonetheless, it does not appear that Marion’s academic struggles are behavior-based or performance related. It seems that her deficits are skill-related. She does not appear to have been taught to combine letter sounds to form words (create blends and utilize syllabication), which hindered her development of reading and writing fluency.

Marion’s understanding of mathematics is strong. She is a tactile learner and learns best when information is conveyed through an experience. To help Marion learn letter sounds and the ways in which letters interact with other letters when paired together, Marion benefits from visualization of information. For example, explaining, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking,” does not appeal to Marion’s natural visual strengths. Showing Marion a pair of letters and having them “walk” along a table or sheet of paper, and “making” the first letter speak, so that Marion has a visual representation of the orally presented data, more adequately insures her reception of information.

Marion has received very few relevant interventions for her reading difficulties. While she has received some one-on-one instruction from her classroom teacher, this instruction appears to have been unstructured and generally ineffective. Marion received “additional” instruction in the classroom, but that additional instruction manifested in additional prompting rather than skill formation and actualization. Despite the “additional” instruction, Marion still does not know letter sounds or grade-appropriate sight words. Marion’s failure to be affected by past interventions does not signify failure on her part. Rather, she has been unaffected by past interventions because they appear to have been haphazardly conducted and inadequately implemented.

Response to Intervention, Step Two

Marion is extremely motivated by praise and authority figures’ approval of and excitement about her work. Marion must be taught intrinsic motivation, but this has to be fostered before it can be actualized: encouraging Marion to meet teacher-generated goals and gradually progress to generating her own goals and then mastering those goals may facilitate the actualization of internal motivation. Marion is also motivated by small treats. A sticker chart might be ideal in keeping her on track; allowing Marion to track her progress by applying stickers to the chart would also increase her sense of personal investment in her academic progress. As Marion is particularly drawn to mathematics, incorporating math skills into the tracking of her progress toward language-oriented achievement might increase her interest in academics overall.

Response to Intervention, Step Three

M. W. has glasses but rarely wears them. Marion brings her glasses to school perhaps three days a week; she wears them only when prompted to do so. Additionally, Marion’s glasses’ arms seem to have stretched out to the point where Marion’s glasses merely sit on the bridge of her nose. In order to see through her glasses rather than over them, Marion must continuously push her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Additionally, Marion may suffer from a deviated septum. It often seems that Marion has difficulty breathing through her nose. A deviated septum would explain Marion’s frequent difficulty with breathing through her nose and talking at the same time. Marion’s mother and father, who do not live in the same home, both believe that Marion suffers from severe sinus infections, but it seems that Marion’s difficulty with breathing and speaking clearly is consistent rather than the product of mere sinus infections.

As previously mentioned, Marion struggles to sustain focus and remain relatively still. Her younger sister has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) but Marion has not been diagnosed. Nonetheless, Marion manifests characteristic of ADHD. Marion struggles to remain in her seat: she often stands up, tucks one leg under her, changes her seat position (i.e. standing up to tuck one leg under her, very shortly after standing up again to tuck the other leg under her or repeatedly crossing her legs and uncrossing them), etc.; Marion also struggles with physically remaining in one place: when provided with the task of reading a book, she attends to a few pages then steps away to inspect something else that catches her interest. Even with prompting, Marion occasionally fails to remain focused on tasks at hand. That said, Marion may very well not have ADHD at all but rather be diverting attention away from the fact that her phonics and reading skills are weak and that she is unable to complete a given task even with prompting and individual guided instruction.

Response to Intervention, Step Four

Marion’s sound awareness is on a first grade, third month level and her letter-word identification skills are on a second grade, zero months level. Additionally, Marion’s picture vocabulary is on a kindergarten, seventh month level and her reading vocabulary is on a first grade, sixth month level. Marion struggles particularly with reading fluency and comprehension due to these four core deficits. They inhibit her ability to syllabicate words, read irregular high frequency words, incorrectly identify core high frequency words (is, in, on, the, of, etc.) and blend letter sounds. Utilizing the guiding principles of Solution-Focused Brief Counseling, a curriculum based measurement associated with working through math problems, and peer coaching fluency building in conjunction with the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) for second grade students, Marion will make gains toward achieving grade-level sound awareness, letter-word identification, picture vocabulary and reading vocabulary.

Additionally, the teacher and paraprofessional will implement a behavioral intervention to encourage Marion to bring her glasses to school and wear them every day.

Response to Intervention, Step Five

Fearrington, McCallum and Skinner’s Solution-Focused Brief Counseling requires students to identify “problems” when they approach material and attempt to identify any obstacles to their successfully solving these problems (2011). The core element of interest in Solution-Focused Brief Counseling is the brief sessions during which a student engages with a teacher or paraprofessional for a brief period of time. The instruction received during this time is completely individualized; the nature of the counseling, which allows only for one student and one instructor, be it a paraprofessional or classroom teacher, ensures that the student receives the instructor’s full attention (Fearrington, McCallum & Skinner, 2011). During these sessions, the classroom teacher or paraprofessional will use the Using the Context Series, Picture Level and Preparatory Level, to increase Marion’s picture and reading vocabularies. Both are vital to Marion’s reading comprehension, which will further enhance her fluency; ideally, Marion will not have to puzzle over words’ significance while reading a passage. Additionally, the classroom teacher or paraprofessional will use the SCORE reading program, which focuses on letter-word identification, sound awareness and letter blends. These phonics skills will strengthen Marion’s deficit areas and likely increase her reading fluency.

Peer coaching fluency building will allow Marion to apply the skills she learns during her brief counseling sessions. Peer coaching fluency building utilizes stronger readers in a classroom to assist in enhancing the fluency of struggling readers (Marr, Algozzine, Kavel & Dugan, 2010). Peer coaching fluency building allows readers a few moments to read through a given passage independently before reading it aloud with a partner, thereby familiarizing themselves with text that they might stumble through and become anxious about if instructed to read it aloud upon the first interaction with the text (Marr et. al, 2010). After reading the text independently, struggling readers read the passage with their reading coach; the students alternate sentences, which allows the strong reader to provide a model of fluency for the struggling reader (Marr et. al, 2010). A third reading then takes place, in which the struggling reader reads the entire passage aloud, with the coach assisting the reader with any words that he or she may need help pronouncing (Marr et. al, 2010).

By this time, the struggling reader has read through the passage three times, first silently familiarizing himself or herself with the text; then reading the passage with a partner and being providing with his or her example of fluency; and finally reading the passage primarily independently, with help from the coach as needed. This concludes the guided practice. The instructor then starts a one-minute timer, during which time the struggling readers read the passage aloud, marking the words they read during the minute (Marr et. al, 2010). Marion will complete this exercise, in conjunction with the rest of the class, three times each week. The sessions will take place immediately after morning announcements. Peer coaching fluency building requires a degree of camaraderie between reading partners. Peer coaching fluency building sessions in the morning set a positive tone for the school day, as the structure of these sessions encourages feelings of success in both reading partners. All of the passages used during these peer coaching reading fluency sessions will be passages from the DIBELS program, which are structured so as to record students’ words per minute or oral reading fluency.

Response to Intervention, Step Six

Solution-Focused Brief Counseling sessions will occur daily for approximately 15 minutes for four weeks in the resource room. The resource room is directly across the hall from Marion’s classroom; going to and from the resource room will not waste unnecessary time. During this month of individualized instruction, Marion will practice the skills she will use in her independent reading and in her peer coaching fluency building sessions. Peer coaching fluency building sessions will occur in the general education classroom three times each week for four weeks before determining whether or not the intervention is eliciting success. Each session provides approximately 25 minutes of individualized reading practice and yields a reading score of words per minute. Collecting this data for four weeks will yield 12 scores of words per minute, or twelve scores measuring Marion’s increasing oral reading fluency.

As a class, students will record their words per minute scores for each DIBELS assessment on a classroom chart at the back of the classroom. At the end of each week, the paraprofessional will record each student’s words per minute for each session in an Excel spreadsheet. She will tally each student’s increase in words per minute, if there are any.

For every day that Marion brings her glasses to school, the paraprofessional will approach her at the beginning of the school day and ask her to place a star sticker on a chart taped to the side of the paraprofessional’s desk. The paraprofessional and classroom teacher will congratulate Marion on bringing her glasses to school. If the paraprofessional, classroom teacher or other students in the class notice that Marion removes her glasses at any point, with the exception of wiping them off or doing something similarly necessary for their maintenance, the individual will remind Marion that she needs to wear her glasses. On Friday, the paraprofessional will call Marion to her desk and they will tally the week’s star stickers that Marion received for wearing her glasses. If Marion brings and wears her glasses for each day that she was at school, she will be permitted to visit the “treasure chest” at the back of the classroom.

Response to Intervention, Step Seven

Second grade students should read approximately 50-60 words per minute at the beginning of the school year and approximately 80-90 words per minute by the end of the school year. Marion is currently reading only 40-50 words per minute. At the end of four weeks, during which Marino will have engaged in daily brief counseling sessions on phonics skills and picture and reading vocabulary skills, in addition to having engaged in thrice-weekly peer coaching fluency building sessions, Marion should be able to read approximately 30 more words per minute than she could when the intervention started. This breaks down into Marion’s being able to read between five and seven more words per minute each week.

The success of the behavioral intervention targeting Marion’s frequent failure to bring her glasses to school or wear them during the day will be assessed on the premise that Marion bring her glasses to school and wear them 95% of the time.

References

Fearrington, J. Y., McCallum, R. S., and Skinner, C. H. (2011). Increasing math assignment completion using solution-focused brief counseling. Education and Treatment of Children 34(1), 61-80.

Marr, M. B., Algozzine, B., Kavel, R. L., and Dugan, K. K. (2010). Implementing peer coaching fluency building to improve early literacy skills. Reading Improvement 47(2), 74-91.

Cognitive Strategy Instruction - written for Dr. Blalock's SPED 6295

Cognitive strategy instruction is a method of teaching students routines that incorporate and promote cognitive modeling, or thinking aloud, self-instructional techniques and evaluation of performance (Vaughn & Bos, 2009). According to Rosenshine (1995), a cognitive strategy is "a heuristic or guide that serves to support or facilitate the learner as she or he develops the internal procedures that enable them to perform the higher level operations" (p. 266). The emphasis that Cognitive Strategy Instruction places on cognitive modeling, self-instruction and self-evaluation facilitates greater self-efficacy among students, particularly those with learning disabilities. Essentially, Cognitive Strategy Instruction teaches students how to learn using explicit frameworks, much in the same way as does operant learning. Cognitive Strategy Instruction requires that students analyze a task and the thinking process, or cognitive process, involved in completing the task (Vaughn & Bos, 2009). Cognitive Strategy Instruction incorporates aspects of operant learning, social learning theory and cognitive theory. The relationship between Cognitive Strategy Instruction and these three arenas of educational thought substantiates its success with students, particularly those with learning disabilities.

Cognitive Strategy Instruction operates under the same premise as does operant learning: behaviors can be learned, indicating that they can also be relearned or modified for more favorable outcomes. If behaviors can be learned, unlearned or modified, it follows that cognitive behaviors, or thinking processes, can also be learned, unlearned or modified. Operant learning seeks to reinforce positive behaviors and increase the likelihood of their reoccurrence while simultaneously decreasing the likelihood that negative behaviors will reoccur. In order to promote operant learning, teachers, administrators and researchers must be able to identify and tailor antecedents, or environmental factors that occur prior to a certain behavior and increase the likelihood of its recurrence, to promote positive behaviors. Manipulating situations so that they are favorable to learning is significant: a noisy classroom could negatively influence students’ ability to concentrate; a curriculum beyond students’ skill level could incite frustration; unclear instructions and expectations could muddy students’ ability to understand and fulfill their role in various situations. Guiding situations toward being positive learning environments increases the likelihood of experiencing desirable behaviors. While educators must be able to control antecedents, Vaughn and Bos (2009) assert that they must also be able to control consequences of certain behaviors; a student’s behavior, according to operant learning theory, “is controlled by the consequences that follow it” (p. 33). If a child speaks kindly to a peer and is congratulated on his or her prosocial behavior, he or she is more likely to speak kindly to peers in the future. If, however, a child speaks unkindly to a peer and is not reliably corrected, he or she is likely to continue speaking unkindly to peers.

Operant learning’s effectiveness relies primarily upon two conditions: the behavior on which students are assessed is already in their repertoire and the consequence of the behavior, be it positive or negative, must be delivered directly after the behavior’s occurrence or linked to the occurrence through language (Vaughn and Bos, 2009). Desirable behaviors are rewarded with positive reinforcement, which encourages students to increase the behavior. Likewise, undesirable behaviors are followed with negative reinforcement, which Vaughn and Bos (2009) explain as the “removal of a stimulus to increase responding” (p. 34). Negative reinforcement is not synonymous with punishment, but rather the removal of a negative stimulus, such as staying after school or receiving a dark look from a teacher. Vaughn and Bos (2009) refer to this as “avoidance learning,” in which a student ceases an undesirable behavior in order to avoid negative reinforcement (p. 34). The very nature of avoidance learning implies that student and teacher must have some sort of social relationship, which will be inspected at a later point.

Cognitive Strategy Instruction relies upon the same conditions as operant learning. Just as students cannot engage in behaviors that they have not yet learned, they cannot replicate cognitive processes to which they have not been introduced. Teaching a student a cognitive process is very similar to teaching him or her to tie a shoe: there are explicit steps that guide the individual through the process and ostensibly lead him or her to the desired outcome, which could be a successful, self-guided reading of a poem or a well-tied shoelace. It is essential to introduce students to new instrument of Cognitive Strategy Instruction by first modeling the relevant strategy for them. Additionally, giving students explicit instructions that guide them through a process allows them to refer back to the instructions when they are unsure of the next step. The individual modeling the relevant strategy for students should verbalize each step in the process, illustrating physically and audibly the various stages of the relative strategy. This is called cognitive modeling, or thinking aloud (Vaughn & Bos, 2009; Bronson & Merryman, 2011). Students should initially be encouraged to verbalize the various stages of the particular strategy; the students will gradually assimilate the instructions into their cognitive schemas and eventually direct themselves through the process toward the desired behavior without consciously referring back to the instructions. Students will learn to self-correct, or “self-instruct.”

Self-instruction is central to the effectiveness of Cognitive Strategy Instruction. The promotion and cultivation of self-instruction inherent in Cognitive Strategy Instruction can remedy learned helplessness. David Scanlon (2002) explains learned helplessness as a situation in which a “student learns to avoid failure or an uninteresting task by acting helpless” (p. 48). Learned helplessness is dangerous: students avoid foundational content skills and do not learn to think independently. The University of Miami’s Marjorie Montague and Samantha Dietz suggest that Cognitive Strategy Instruction is particularly relevant to students with learning disabilities (LD) in that they often have not independently developed strategies to facilitate problem-solving or struggle to assign an appropriate method of problem-solving and execution to a given task (2009). Additionally, students that are efficient and strategic learners possess a collection of strategies and skill sets and are able to negotiate when these varied skills are appropriate to a task. Strategic learners are able to self-direct, self-regulate and motivate themselves, in addition to generalize strategies across various content areas (Pressely, Borkowski, & Schneider, 1987). Cognitive Strategy Instruction allows teachers to direct students explicitly in identifying and applying appropriate problem-solving strategies, yielding more strategic learners and facilitating self-efficacy.

Research indicates that if students do not possess appropriate problem-solving skills, they can actually be taught how to think (Montague and Dietz, 2009). Thinking is a cognitive, or mental, process; cognitive theory relates to mental processes. Mental processes are expedited or impeded by an individual’s processing speed, which relates to one’s brain plasticity. Brain plasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change as an individual learns (Murphy et al., 2011). The Salk Institute (2001) has demonstrated that brain plasticity is not finite; students’ mental processing speeds can be enhanced. Salk researchers’ findings indicate that exercising the brain facilitates new neural development and strengthens frequently used neural paths, increasing mental processing speeds. Cognitive behavior theory investigates the ways in which individuals think, or the actual behavioral aspects behind thinking. Although some children are able to learn basic skills, like subconsciously grouping similar and dissimilar objects, writing complete sentences or extracting the main idea from a reading passage, others are unable to learn these tasks unless they are taught how to complete the tasks. Herein lies the particular value of Cognitive Strategy Instruction as it relates to cognitive theory: Cognitive Strategy Instruction teaches students to think in a specific way, which increases the efficiency of their cognitive processes, or thought processes. If a student spends a great deal of time trying to figure out how to approach a situation, or how to solve a given problem, and then muddles through the process with the method he selected, which may or may not be appropriate, his thinking is not efficient. Cognitive Strategy Instruction increases cognitive efficiency.

Social learning theory bridges operant learning and cognitive theory. Social theory is underpinned by a belief that individuals can learn from other individuals through observation, imitation and modeling, but also by a belief that learning relies on many cognitive processes, like being aware of and able to anticipate reinforcements for desirable behavior (Ormrod, 1999). Social learning places a premium on the value of social interactions, emphasizing students’ awareness of and reaction to others’ assessment of their behavior, be it social or academic. Purcell-Gates, Jacobsen, and Degener (2004) believe that the cognitive occurs in a sociocultural context and that both are necessary for educational success; this can be achieved using Cognitive Strategy Instruction. For example, if a positive reinforcement for completing a task according to a Cognitive Strategy Insturction is a kind word from a teacher, the student must value that teacher’s praise in order for it to be a reinforcer. The cognitive processes involved in moving through the Cognitive Strategy Instruction to complete the given task are expended for the sake of receiving positive reinforcement from the teacher, which in this case is praise. This proposed situation illustrates the connection between operant behavior, social learning theory and cognitive theory as they relate to Cognitive Strategy Instruction.

There are many variations of Cognitive Strategy Instruction, but all cognitive strategies share a common goal: they seek to teach students to interact with content such that they become more deliberate, self-directed and self-regulated learners (Jitendra, Burgess and Gajira, 2011). This is of particular significance for students with learning or behavior problems that may not be able to regulate their behavioral or cognitive processes independently. Deshler et al. (2001) found that Cognitive Strategy Instruction is effective with students with learning disabilities because of its “self-cueing and self-monitoring … help students become independent learners.” This combats learned helplessness. Students should be able to apply Cognitive Strategy Instruct instruments in multiple classes rather than only in the specific classroom of the teacher that taught the student the strategy (Scanlon, 2002).

One example of implementing Cognitive Strategy Instruction for math for students with learning disabilities is evidenced by Chung and Tam (2005), whose model is based on Marjorie Montague’s 1992 cognitive strategy. Montague’s procedure was entitled SAY, ASK, CHECK (Montague, 2008) and involved saying the problem aloud, asking relevant questions and checking one’s answer. Chung and Tam elaborated on Montague’s original procedure and generated the following steps:

l. Read the problem out loud.

2. Select the important information.

3. Draw a representation of the problem.

4. Write down the steps for doing the computation.

5. Check the answer.

Both Montague’s 1992 Cognitive Strategy Instruction and Chang and Tam’s 2005 instruments of Cognitive Strategy Instruction sought to improve the mathematical abilities of students with learning disabilities by providing explicit steps to direct students through problem-solving (Montague, 2008). Both instruments of instruction promoted strategic and self-regulated learning in that students could apply the relative strategy and, by moving through the strategy’s stages and constantly referring back to the strategy as a guide, self-regulate their progress toward the end goal of successfully solving a math problem (Montague, 2008). Students did not move blindly through the problems but followed explicit strategies designed to enhance their academic success and increase their self-efficacy.

Tools of the Mind classrooms, though not specifically developed for students with learning disabilities, are microcosmic testaments to the powers of Cognitive Strategy Instruction. Tools classrooms promote self-regulation from students’ first day at school by engaging in very structured daily routines so that students can anticipate their schedule and learn to self-navigate through the day by cognitively preparing themselves for upcoming activities. Each day, students make a “play plan,” which they will act out during a very scripted 45-minute play period. If students deviate from the plan, their instructor asks simply, “Is that in your play plan?” The child is then able to redirect himself to his self-determined plan for the 45-minute period and self-regulate his behavior so that he once again is aligned with his play plan (Bronson & Merryman, 2011).

Another salient example of Tools of the Mind classrooms’ reliance upon Cognitive Strategy Instruction is Tools’ embracement of promoting self-reflection and self-regulation. Students in Tools classrooms talk themselves through their daily activities. When they write letters, they repeat verbalize the instructions first modeled by their teachers. The students continue to verbalize and then, without being told to stop, begin to internalize the words and engage in a thought-conversation (Bronson & Merryman, 2011). Students are also provided with examples of a “good” letter and then asked to choose the letter they drew that most closely resembles the “good” letter modeled for them. In this way, students learn to reflect on their work and analyze whether or not they have demonstrated an adequate skill level and degree of effort (Bronson & Merryman, 2011). This increases their self-efficacy, as do many other exercises in Tools classrooms.