If you've ever played the game of chess, chances are you used a fairly unsophisticated approach when first making your way around the board. It's also likely that basic tactics quickly emerged after just a few games--moves that were at first aimless and erratic became much more planned and organized. You may have even found yourself thinking several moves ahead, beginning to develop a strategy. Some obvious strategies may have easily become part of your regular chess-playing arsenal. Other, more advanced strategies, however, may not develop without additional training or lots of practice.

It's always a good idea to have a plan of attack--and not just for chess. When it comes to teaching and learning, having a plan--or strategy--is definitely the way to go.

Strategy Instruction is a powerful student-centered approach to teaching that is backed by years of quality research. In fact, strategic approaches to learning new concepts and skills are often what separate good learners from poor ones. Considering that many students with disabilities struggle with developing strategies for learning and remembering on their own, a parent or teacher skilled in introducing this process can make a world of difference.

Strategy instruction supplies students with the same tools and techniques that efficient learners use to understand and learn new material or skills. With continued guidance and ample opportunities for practice, students learn to integrate new information with what they already know, in a way that makes sense--making it easier for them to recall the information or skill at a later time, even in a different situation or setting.
Not only does an impressive body of research exist with respect to strategy instruction, but that library of knowledge is also extremely broad and has direct and immediate application to practice in almost every area of the educational curriculum.

Even better, this method of instruction is appropriate and effective for students who have disabilities, as well as for those who do not. That's right, all students can benefit from understanding the strategies that good learners use. What's more, a skillful teacher can play a critical part in guiding students to use strategies until their use becomes an automatic part of each student's repertoire.

Let us begin by looking more closely at strategy instruction: its roots, outcomes of the multitude of studies, and its promise as a powerful research-based practice that results in improved student performance.