At the national level there is growing agreement that direct instruction in higher order thinking skills should be a major educational focus. The concern for teaching thinking is also reflected at the local level. To satisfy this growing awareness and perceived need, a number of programs have been developed. Given the widespread interest in…

Reviews research indicating that presenting vocabulary in semantically related clusters may improve students' vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. Describes how words from elementary school textbooks were divided into semantic clusters and makes suggestions for their use. (FL)

Classroom teachers frequently use various programs, strategies, and techniques to enhance student thinking, including questioning, writing, and general information processing (meaning construction, encoding, matching, analyzing, representing, and abstracting). The paper notes other strategies not used or underutilized by teachers. (SM)

This paper presents an instructional model for thinking skills and discusses implementing the model. Based on a unitary theory of human cognition and some basic assumptions about the conditions for successfully intervening in public education, the model can be implemented at any grade level within any instructional framework. Currently used models…

Schools can have a tremendous impact on student achievement if they follow the direction provided by research. The book attempts to synthesize the research over the last 35 years that has provided clear and unprecedented insight into the nature of schooling. (It contains 601 references.) The book is organized into four sections. The first three…