• Know-Want to Know-Learned (KWL)

• Ken Texler

• Gorton High School, Yonkers, NY

This deceptively simple instructional strategy is a useful way to launch new projects and research assignments. Students recall their knowledge about a topic before using their own questions to direct and focus their inquiry. In the third phase they practice metacognition by articulating what they’ve learned. This video provides concrete examples of how to use this strategy to best effect and thorough explanations of why it is so useful for students of all abilities.

• List, Group, Label

• Griselda Vile

• New Utrecht High School, Brooklyn, NY

This strategy helps students to see that generating an associative, mixed up list of words can be a great way to develop a richer, more comprehensive understanding of a concept or topic. This video explains the wide application of this strategy and its power to develop student vocabulary while providing a forum for all students to contribute and learn from each other.

• The Defining Format

• Melody Cockrell

• Ben Barber Career Tech Academy, Mansfield, TX

By using this strategy, students build a deep and lasting understanding of new topics and concepts by ferreting out a particular term’s unique characteristics. The format enables students to see relationships between terms and requires them to use language with precision in order to nail down meaning. This video explains the many benefits of this truly constructivist tool, as well as the optimal situations for using it.

• Think, Pair, Share

• Marta Rodriguez

• Evans High School, Orlando, FL

This highly versatile instructional strategy is a means of engaging all students as they consider a response to a prompt, discuss it with a partner, and share their collective ideas with their group or class. Students develop facility with articulating their own opinions, which also stimulates their interest in the topic of study. This video enumerates the student skills this strategy builds over time, a wide range of situations in which to use it, and some effective variations.

• Taxonomies

• Don Festge

• Barbara Goleman Sr. High School, Miami, FL

A taxonomy provides a way for students to collect as many words as they can on a particular subject and is a powerful tool for building vocabulary. Used in the beginning of a lesson, it is an effective means of assessing students’ familiarity with a topic; used at key points throughout the lesson, it gives students a place to collect new terminology and find the connections between terms. This presentation explains how to make best use of a taxonomy and illustrates its role in increasing comprehension as well as expanding vocabulary.

• The Internship-Classroom Connection

• Kelly Dolson

• Ernst and Young

In this presentation, Kelly Dolson of Ernst and Young, one of NAF’s corporate partners, describes the elements of the NAF curriculum that prepare students for internships. She explains how Project Based Learning, literacy activities, and assignments that mimic professional work build student skills that are pertinent for internships. She also discusses the many opportunities students have for developing a professional demeanor that are embedded in the curriculum to ensure a successful internship experience.