Peabody Middle School

725 Wesley Street

Petersburg, VA 23803
(804) 861.9100 FAX (804) 733.6091

Jerome Williams
Principal

Janet Wright
Assistant Principal

Sinclair Harris
Assistant Principal

TOP 30 EFFECT SIZE TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES

BASED ON JOHN HATTIES RESEARCH
(September 2013)
Self-Report Grades / Student Expectations (1) 1.44
Students are very adept at knowing how to rate their performance. Another form of prior
achievement is students estimates of their own performance typically formed from past
experiences in learning, and recording their grades to rate their performance. High school
students have very accurate understandings of their achievement levels across all subjects.
However, this may become a barrier for some students as they may only perform to whatever
expectations they already have of their ability.
Piagetian Programs (2)
1.28
Knowing the ways students think, and how this thinking may be constrained by their stages of
development may be most important to how teachers choose materials and tasks, how the
concept of difficulty and challenge can be realized in different tasks, and the importance of
developing successive and simultaneous thinking.
Response to Intervention (3)
1.07
This model and instructional rounds involve the student and the teacher in the presence of
content. There are 7 principles on pages 61 and 62 of Visible Learning for Teachers.
Teacher Credibility (4)
0.90
Certified teachers have slightly more effect on student achievement than those with probationary
or provisional licenses. Teacher consistency with high expectations for learners is an example of
teacher credibility.
Providing Formative Evaluation (5)
0.90
The major message is for teachers to pay attention to the formative effects of their teaching, as it
is these attributes of seeking formative evaluation of the intended and unintended effects of their
programs that makes for excellence in teaching.
Micro-Teaching (6)
0.88
Micro-teaching involves teachers conducting lessons to a small group of students, and then
engaging in post-discussions about the lesson. They are usually videotaped for later analysis,
and allow an often intense under-the-microscope view of their teaching. Laboratory
teaching experiences appear to have a strong effect on teacher behavior and this effect did not
significantly decrease over time.
Classroom Discussion (7)
0.82
This effect is high yield when teachers ask better questions and ask questions better, and when it
is based on the learning intention for the lesson.

Peabody Middle School

725 Wesley Street
Petersburg, VA 23803
(804) 861.9100 FAX (804) 733.6091

Jerome Williams
Principal

Janet Wright
Assistant Principal

Sinclair Harris
Assistant Principal

Comprehensive Interventions for Learning Disabled Students (8)

0.77
Combine direct instruction and strategy instruction models as effective procedures for
remediating students with learning disabilities. Attention to sequencing, drill-repetition-practice,
segmenting information into parts or units for later synthesis, controlling task difficulty through
prompts and cues, making use of technology, systematically modeling problem solving steps,
and making use of small interactive groups.
Teacher Clarity (9)
0.75
Teacher clarity may be defined as organization, explanation, examples and guided practice, and
assessment of student learning such that clarity of speech is a prerequisite of teacher clarity.
Teacher personal vocabulary, professional vocabulary, and contextual vocabulary are important
skills as the teacher models for the learners.
Feedback (10)
0.75
Feedback to teachers about what students can and cannot do is more powerful than feedback to
the students, and it necessitates a different way of interacting and respecting students. The most
important feature is the creation of situations in classrooms for teachers to receive more feedback
about their teaching and then the ripple effect back to the student is high. Displaying student
work is an important indicator of student success and teacher expectations.
Reciprocal Teaching (11) 0.74
Teachers enable their students to learn and use cognitive strategies such as summarizing,
questioning, clarifying, and predicting, and these are supported through dialog between teacher
and students as they attempt to gain meaning from text. Each student takes a turn at being the
teacher, and often the teacher and students take turns leading a dialog concerning sections of a
text. Students check their own understanding of the material they have encountered by
generating questions and summarizing.
Teacher-Student Relationships (12)
0.72
To improve teacher-student relationships and reap their benefits, teachers should learn to
facilitate students development by demonstrating that they care for the learning of each student
as a person (which sends a powerful message about purpose and priority), and empathizing with
students see their perspective, communicate it back to them so that they have valuable
feedback to self-assess, feel safe, and learn to understand others and the content with the same
interest and concern.
Spaced vs. Massed Practice (13) 0.71
Distributing practice across different days instead of grouping learning episodes within a single
day greatly improves the amount of material retained for sizeable periods of time; the literature
suggests that distributing practice in this way is likely to markedly improve students retention of
course material.

Peabody Middle School

725 Wesley Street
Petersburg, VA 23803
(804) 861.9100 FAX (804) 733.6091

Jerome Williams
Principal

Janet Wright
Assistant Principal

Sinclair Harris
Assistant Principal

Meta-Cognitive Strategies (14)

0.69
Meta-cognitive activities can include planning how to approach a given learning task, evaluating
progress, and monitoring comprehension. The most effective meta-cognitive strategies are
awareness of textual inconsistency and the use of self-questioning. The more varied the
instructional strategies throughout a lesson, the more students are influenced.
Acceleration (15)
0.68
Accelerated instruction enables bright students to work with their mental peers on learning tasks
that match their abilities. It typically involves progress through an educational program at rates
faster than is conventional. Accelerated students surpass the performance of non-accelerated
students of equivalent age and intelligence by nearly one grade level.
Classroom Behavioral (16) 0.68
Programs targeting academic outcomes have the greatest effect, then those targeting behavior
and social interaction. The most successful programs include social or token reinforcement,
cooperation, behavioral consultation, and cognitive behavior modification; the least successful
involve social skills training.
Vocabulary Programs (17) 0.67
Vocabulary instruction and knowledge of word meanings help growth in reading comprehension.
Students who experience vocabulary instruction have major improvements in reading
comprehension of passages containing taught words. The most effective vocabulary teaching
methods include providing both definitional and contextual information, involve students in
deeper processing, and give students more than one or two exposures to the words they are to
learn. Word walls are visual representations, and make the invisible visible.
Repeated Reading Programs (18) 0.67
Repeated reading consists of re-teaching a short and meaningful passage until a satisfactory level
of fluency is reached.
Creativity Programs on Achievement (19) 0.65
Creativity programs are grounded in a common idea that training, practice, and encouragement
in using creative thinking skills can improve an individuals ability to use creative thinking
techniques such as thinking with fluency, flexibility, and with an element of the unusual in
responses to questions or problems. Overall, creativity programs have a larger positive effect on
outcomes. Creativity programs that include explicit instruction are among the most successful.
Creative training is enhanced when activities aimed at setting and meeting high expectations are
provided.

Peabody Middle School

725 Wesley Street
Petersburg, VA 23803
(804) 861.9100 FAX (804) 733.6091

Jerome Williams
Principal

Janet Wright
Assistant Principal

Sinclair Harris
Assistant Principal

Prior Achievement (20)

0.65
What a student brings to the classroom each year is very much related to their achievement in
previous years brighter students tend to achieve more and not so bright students achieve less.
The correlation between ability and achievement is very high. Prior achievement predicts
success from preschool to the first years of schooling, between high school and college or
university grades, between college and adult success, and between grades in school and later job
performance. Evidence of prior achievement is a powerful predictor.
Self-Verbalization and Self-Questioning (21)
0.64
Self-questioning is one form of self-regulation, and is probably of more use to those in the early
to intermediate phase of skill acquisition and for those of lower to middle ability. Selfverbalization is among the most effective of the strategies, and it works better for task oriented
skills (e.g., writing or mathematics). Self-questioning is effective with lower ability students.
Self-instructional training is effective for many students in special education.
Study Skills (22)
0.63
Study skills interventions are programs that work on improving student learning using
interventions outside what the teacher or teachers involved would normally undertake in the
course of teaching. Courses in study skills alone can have an effect on the surface level
information, but it is necessary to combine the study skills with the content to have an effect on
the deeper levels of understanding.
Teaching Strategies (23)
0.62
Teaching strategies include, but are not limited to, the following: explanation, elaboration, plans
to direct task performance, modeling verbally, questioning, and demonstration, reminders to use
certain strategies or procedures, step-by-step prompts, multi-process instructions, dialog between
teacher and student, questions from teachers, and provision by the teacher of necessary
assistance. The most successful are sequencing, drill repetition, and strategy cues, and these are
particularly high in reading comprehension and creativity.
Problem-Solving Teaching (24)
0.61
Problem solving involves the act of defining or determining the cause of the problem,
identifying, prioritizing, and selecting alternatives for a solution; or using multiple perspectives
to uncover the issues related to a particular problem, designing an intervention plan, and then
evaluating the outcome. The methods include, for example, the following;
(1) understand the problem, (2) obtain a plan of the solution, (3) carry out the plan, and
(4) examine the solution obtained. Problem solving methods can also have a positive influence
on interpersonal outcomes.

Peabody Middle School

725 Wesley Street
Petersburg, VA 23803
(804) 861.9100 FAX (804) 733.6091

Jerome Williams
Principal

Janet Wright
Assistant Principal

Sinclair Harris
Assistant Principal

Not Labeling Students (25) 0.61

Many institutional practices such as tracking can lead to beliefs that preclude many opportunities
to learn. The controversy in distinguishing between mentally disabled and non-disabled students
is often couched between the developmental and cognitive processing claims. The
developmental position is that disabled students pass through cognitive developmental stages in
an identical manner but differ in rate and the upper limit of development. The informationprocessing claim is that they differ in the cognitive processes they use in reasoning. Know the
kids and let go of the labels!
Comprehensive Programs (26)
0.60
Various curricular and special types of programs include, but are not limited to, the following:
literacy and numeracy, writing, drama/arts, science, values, and integrated curricula. Specific
programs include the following: creativity programs, bilingual programs, career interventions,
outdoor programs, moral education programs, perceptual motor programs, tactile stimulation
programs, and play.
Concept Mapping (27)
0.60
Concept mapping involves the development of graphical representations of the conceptual
structure of the content to be learned. It can be considered as a form of learning intention. The
difference between concept mapping and other organizing methods (e.g., behavioral objectives,
learning hierarchies) is that it involves the students in the development of the organizational tool.
There is little difference between concept mapping and asking students to construct an outline of
the topic, but the effects are larger for concept mapping when compared to lectures or
discussions on the topic. The effects from concept mapping are higher than for studying text
passages, lists, and outlines.
Cooperative vs. Individualistic Learning (28)
0.59
Cooperative learning has a prime effect on enhancing interest and problem solving provided it is
set up with high levels of peer involvement. Cooperation is superior to competition in promoting
achievement across all subject areas for all age groups. Both cooperative and competitive
learning are more effective than individualistic methods pointing out the power of peers in the
learning equations. Students who engage in cooperative learning are more successful in four
types of problem solving linguistic, non-linguistic, well-defined problem, and ill-defined
problem than those in competitive learning. In an individualistic situation, the outcome for
others is ignored as irrelevant to the attainment of personal outcome.
Direct Instruction (29)
0.59
Direct instruction methods have been most powerful in teaching phonics skills. Research on
reading intervention for students with learning disabilities found that models that used both
direct instruction and teaching strategies for recognizing words improved student reading
comprehension performance. Measures such as rapid naming and letter identification are highly
related to reading especially reading comprehension. The greatest predictors of reading
comprehension are real-word reading and spelling ability followed by word attack skills.

Peabody Middle School

725 Wesley Street
Petersburg, VA 23803
(804) 861.9100 FAX (804) 733.6091

Jerome Williams
Principal

Janet Wright
Assistant Principal

Sinclair Harris
Assistant Principal

Tactile Stimulation Programs (30) 0.58

Tactile stimulation is a type of sensory enrichment or stimulation used with those at risk of
developmental delay, to encourage their development. Students receiving some form of
controlled tactile stimulation performed better on a variety of outcome measures than those not
receiving the intervention. The effects are greatest on social and personal outcomes,
physiological, motor/reflex, cognitive/language, and lowest on visual/auditory.