The University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning
The Strategic Instruction Model (SIM™) is a comprehensive, evidence-based framework designed to enhance teacher effectiveness and student success, focusing on empowering educators through research-backed Content Enhancement tools, and teaching students essential Learning Strategies to help them thrive in school and beyond.
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Popularly known as The Kansas Strategies, each has been shown in research studies to produce statistically significant and socially valid improvements in student's writing performance. This virtual course is separated into two self-paced courses and includes follow-up coaching with a SIM Professional Developer.
Research has shown that students who master the Paragraph Writing Strategy consistently produce written pieces that contain topic, detail, and clincher sentences. Their sentences are written with a consistent point of view, tense is consistent, ideas are logically sequenced, and they include appropriate transitions between ideas. This self-paced virtual course includes follow-up coaching with a SIM Professional Developer.
The Fundamentals of Paraphrasing and Summarizing Strategy helps older students acquire the fundamental skills they need to be able to identify and paraphrase main ideas and details. Lesson topics include paraphrasing words, phrases, and sentences; identifying details, topics, and main ideas; creating summaries; and more. These skills are foundational to being able to paraphrase and summarize information and are required when students write answers to questions or write reports in schools. This self-paced virtual course includes follow-up coaching with a SIM Professional Developer.
The Inference Strategy helps older students make inferences about information they have read and answer inferential questions.
Possible Selves is designed to increase student motivation by having students examine their futures and think about goals that are important to them. Students think about and describe their hoped-for possible selves, expected possible selves, and feared possible selves. They set goals, create plans, and work toward their goals as part of this program. This self-paced Canvas course guides teachers through the program.
The writers of academic textbooks often use complex language structures that are very different from the everyday speech patterns that students actually use. Thus, many learners find academic text extremely difficult to understand. In order to improve their understanding, students must understand how words and phrases are arranged to create wellformed sentences. They must also understand the role that active and passive voice play in creating comprehension, how connectives are used to signal relationships between ideas, and the importance of pronouns. Built around the four-step TEXT Strategy, Understanding Academic Language provides a framework that teachers can use to convey this information. This self-paced virtual course includes follow-up coaching with a SIM Professional Developer.
Do you want to feel confident that your daily instruction is truly evidence‑based, standards‑aligned, and designed to give every student access to high‑quality Tier 1 learning? Are you looking for practical ways to ensure students master grade‑level content and take more ownership of their learning in the process? Then you’re in exactly the right place. In this self-paced online course, you will learn 4 SIM Content Enhancement Routines with this new online class designed to strategically integrate CERs across an entire course to support the full learning journey. Includes follow-up coaching.
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The University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (KUCRL) has developed this crosswalk to assist educators in understanding the relationship between Structured Literacy and the elements and processes used when implementing the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM™). These comparisons demonstrate that some SIM instructional tools and interventions can be used to deliver structured literacy for adolescent learners. It is important to note that SIM was designed for adolescents who have gained reading proficiencies at the fourth-grade level yet still need to advance their reading skills to meet grade level content expectations.
The University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (KUCRL) has developed this crosswalk to assist educators in understanding the relationship between the High-Leverage Practices for Students with Disabilities (HLPs) and the elements and processes used when implementing the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM™). These comparisons demonstrate how SIM can empower all teachers with evidence-based instructional tools and interventions which embed HLPs shown by research to improve achievement for students with disabilities. Likewise, these comparisons demonstrate how fluency in the use of HLPs provides a solid foundation with which to implement evidence-based practices, such as SIM. High leverage practices and the instructional process built into SIM have complimentary and related research foundations showing effectiveness to improve outcomes for students.
Research conducted by KUCRL for more than four decades has shown students can be taught how to learn by teaching them learning strategies. Schumaker and Deshler (2006) define a learning strategy as “an individual’s approach to a task. It includes how a person thinks and acts when planning, executing, and evaluating performance on a task and its outcomes.” When implementing any learning strategy instruction, the overarching goal is to have students apply and generalize the strategy in all classes and settings at an automatic, internalized level. Learn some basics about all of the SIM Learning Strategies in this brochure.
SIM Content Enhancement Routines (CERs) are dynamic instructional tools that use powerful teaching devices and procedures to plan for and teach critical content in an understandable and easy-to-learn manner. Teachers engage students collaboratively to develop understanding in a way that maintains the integrity of the content while meeting both group and individual needs. Learn some basics about all of the SIM Content Enhancement Routines in this brochure.
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