Organize Your Teaching
Explore resources designed to improve instruction so that students can better understand, remember and apply what they have learned. 
- View a visual diagram of all four practices
- Watch a topic overview and download planning templates
- Listen to an expert
Explore the subtopics below to learn more about the recommended practices:
To learn more about the research underlying these practices, view the IES Practice Guide, Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning.
Visual Diagram: How to Organize Your Teaching
Organize Your Teaching > Overview & Tools
Organizing teaching and learning experiences so that students both remember and understand has a number of facets. Four research-based practices for improving student learning are represented in...
Resource Type
Visual Diagram
Instructional Strategies at a District Level
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
In this video interview, a district curriculum director shares lessons learned about successfully implementing instructional strategies, like the use of higher-order questions, across many schools...
Resource Type
School Example
Opportunities for Student Explanations
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
In this video students share the culminating project of a curriculum unit: museum exhibits designed to answer "essential questions." Students practice giving explanations that demonstrate their...
Resource Type
School Example
Response Groups: Eliciting Explanations in History
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
History teacher Matt Moorman describes how he uses higher-order questions to engage students in critical thinking about important historical concepts and to help students to internalize the...
Resource Type
School Example
Cupcake Geology: Using Models to Explain Abstract Concepts
Organize Your Teaching > Abstract & Concrete > See How It Works
In this multimedia presentation, fifth-grade teacher Deb Wickerham describes how she uses models and hands-on activities to help elementary students understand complex earth science concepts. See...
Resource Type
School Example
Demonstrating Thermal Layering
Organize Your Teaching > Abstract & Concrete > See How It Works
Using an aquarium and food coloring, science teacher Tasia Stamos re-creates the layers of warm and cool water in a summer lake to help her students visualize the effects of thermal...
Resource Type
School Example
Essential Questions: A Schoolwide Approach
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
Administrators at one school describe how they support the use of higher-order questions through professional development that focuses on curriculum planning and effective instructional...
Resource Type
School Example
In Front of the Class: Students' Whiteboard Explanations
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
A physics teacher describes how he organizes whiteboard presentations to give his students an authentic forum for explaining their problem solving and answering higher-order questions. Related...
Resource Type
School Example
Questioning in a Socratic Seminar
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
Watch how this fourth-grade teacher uses a line of questioning in a structured, text-based discussion to help students recognize important elements and themes in a piece of art. Related...
Resource Type
School Example
Connecting Classrooms to the World
Organize Your Teaching > Abstract & Concrete > See How It Works
Teachers at Normal Park Elementary explain how they use learning expeditions to make abstract concepts from textbooks into more memorable and understandable, concrete experiences for their...
Resource Type
School Example
Making History Come Alive
Organize Your Teaching > Abstract & Concrete > See How It Works
Social studies teacher and curriculum trainer Matt Moorman explains how to help students understand abstract ideas by using visual techniques, including graphic organizers and visual...
Resource Type
School Example
Mastery Over Time
Organize Your Teaching > Spacing Learning > See How It Works
Two math teachers describe their department's focus on student mastery of skills and knowledge over time. They have developed a curriculum that creates multiple opportunities for students to learn...
Resource Type
School Example
