Recall Knowledge Instructional Strategies

Three empirically-based instructional strategies are effective when instructing for a Recall Knowledge objective: (1) Rehearsal Strategy, (2) Elaboration Strategy, and (3) Organization Strategy. All instructional strategies for recall knowledge consist of instructional tasks that function as explicit manifestations of the implicit cognitive processes students carry out when they encode target information in their long-term memories, and then later retrieve it from long-term memory. And all instructional strategies consist of instructional guidance that is intended to help students think their way through the implicit processes of encoding and retrieving target information.
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When using a Rehearsal Strategy the teacher helps students encode target information in long-term memory by telling and/or showing it to them, and then having them practice retrieving it from long-term memory. The way the teacher tells or shows students the target information and then has them retrieve it depends on the kind of information, whether the target information is in (a) discrete pieces (such as with the names of the provinces in Canada and with the simple electric circuit in the recall knowledge assessment tasks shown in an earlier blog), or (b) within connected discourse (such as the written discourse you are now reading).
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When using an Elaboration Strategy the teacher helps students encode together in long-term memory two kinds of information, (a) the target information they are learning, and (b) elaboration information that will help cue their retrieval of the target information from long-term memory if they are unable to retrieve it by itself. Then the teacher helps students practice retrieving the target information without the elaboration information, using the elaboration information only as a retrieval cue for the target information if they are unable to retrieve that information by itself. Eventually, students will learn to retrieve the target information from long-term memory by itself.
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When using an Organization Strategy the teacher first helps students (a) identify the target information in the connected discourse of verbal and/or visual information they are reading, or hearing, or seeing, only some of which is the target information, and (b) organize that target information around a skeletal representation that shows in an explicit, visual form the implicit relationships between and among the separate items of target information, and then (c) encode together in long-term memory the target information and skeletal representation. The skeletal representation is intended to facilitate students' retrieval of the target information from long-term memory. The teacher then helps students practice retrieving the target information without the skeletal representation, using the skeletal representation only as a means of helping students cue retrieval if they are unable to retrieve the target information by itself.
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Because this blog is intended as a concept paper rather than an extensive review of research about effective instructional strategies, only illustrative research citations are given. Where a citation is preceded by the phrase, (For example), only one citation is given out of an actual 3 to 50, or so, relevant ones.