Through research-backed strategies and practical applications, author Julia A. Simms explores self-regulated learning, instructional sequences, and brain-based learning. She examines the development of cognitive and metacognitive skills, working memory, and effective explicit instruction, offering step-by-step guidance for teachers to facilitate…

The premise underlying this article is that identifying and using the "five practices model" can make discussions of cognitively challenging tasks more manageable for teachers. By giving teachers a roadmap that they can follow before and during whole-class discussions, these practices have the potential for helping teachers more effectively…

In this article, the author describes "Dr. Gesundheit and the Mysteries of Snake Valley," a mini-unit that he designed so that his middle-level students could learn to interpret archaeological diagrams, work cooperatively to discover relationships among their observations, and draw well-founded conclusions. The unit requires approximately four…