Abstract of

The Strategy Toolbox: A Ladder to Strategic Teaching

Katherine Riley Mehigan

The Strategy Toolbox is a concrete model developed to increase the academic achievement of students through increased teacher knowledge and expertise in teaching strategies. It is intended for implementation by individual teachers who share their ideas, classroom applications, and reflections in a group setting as an overall strategy for school improvement. The model involves teachers in continual development of a repertoire of research-based strategies evaluated as consistently effective for helping students comprehend and compose text—with countless possibilities across content areas. Each strategy is described on an index card; cards can be regrouped and separated for illustrative purposes during instruction, and new cards can be added for new strategies. The toolbox provides scaffolding for teachers as they develop expertise in orchestrating the use of the strategies over time through a reflective cycle of continual practice. As teachers apply, validate, and add new strategies, the toolbox becomes an increasingly valuable reference tool for unlocking student learning.

Abstract from Mehigan, K. (2005, March). The Strategy Toolbox: A Ladder to Strategic Teaching. The Reading Teacher, 58(6), 552–566. doi: 10.1598/RT.58.6.5