This pamphlet reviews five reports that highlight an emerging consensus among researchers about the value of systematically incorporating cognitive instruction into the elementary school curriculum. First is a comprehensive framework by Robert J. Marzano and C. L. Hutchins for an integrated approach to thinking skills that has been developed and…

A semantic mapping heuristic is presented which provides an instructional strategy for teaching notetaking, recognizing main ideas and pertinent details, and sorting and organizing them into a report. The strategy enables learning-disabled students to read independently about a topic and subsequently write a report, thus establishing a…

A study examined the effects of using heuristics, a problem-solving approach, to respond to drafts written by six university students of advanced composition in English as a second language (ESL). The students had varied language backgrounds. The teacher responded to first drafts of each of three writing assignments by writing heuristic questions…