The Interactive Lecture: How to Engage Students, Build Memory, and Deepen Comprehension

This PLC Guide focuses on inference, or the ability to examine information, generate hypotheses, and draw conclusions that are not explicitly stated. Making inferences is a crucial foundational process that underlies higher-order thinking and 21st century skills. This PLC Guide walks readers through four research-based, classroom-tested strategies that help develop students’ inferential thinking skills:

• Inductive Learning helps students draw inferences by grouping data, labeling the data groups with descriptive titles, and using the groups to generate and test hypotheses.
• Mystery presents students with a puzzling question or situation and has students examine clues that help them explain the mystery.
• Main Idea teaches students how to use inferential thinking to construct main ideas that are not explicitly stated.
• Investigation directs students to use various problem-solving approaches that require inference.

This PLC Guide focuses on Compare & Contrast, a critical thinking strategy unique in its capacity to build students’ memories, eliminate confusion, and highlight crucial similarities and differences.

Research shows that comparative thinking strategies are the single most effective way to improve student learning. Compare & Contrast takes the natural human capacity to make comparisons and maximizes its effectiveness by leading students through a four-phase learning process that involves

• Describing each item separately using criteria.
• Capturing key similarities and differences on a comparison organizer.
• Forming and discussing generalizations and conclusions.
• Synthesizing learning by completing a relevant task.

This PLC Guide focuses on Reading for Meaning, a reading and reasoning strategy that helps students understand new ideas, make inferences, and support their thinking with evidence. The strategy is designed around research showing that proficient readers use a specific set of thinking skills to build deep understanding of the texts they read and apply those skills in three distinct phases: before reading, during reading, and after reading. Reading for Meaning gives all students the opportunity to practice this three-phase approach by

• Using simple statements to preview and predict before reading.
• Actively searching for relevant evidence during reading.
• Reflecting on and synthesizing both their learning and their thinking process after reading.