SIM Strategic Instruction Model

The Strategic Instruction Model (SIM) promotes the effective teaching and learning of critical content by helping teachers identify and use proven learning and planning tools, as well as providing students with a set of skills that will help them learn critical content, or “learn how to learn”. These strategies support students in middle school as well as throughout their academic careers.

There are two tiers of the SIM process that work together to improve student performance:

• Content Enhancement Routines (CER) are directed at how teachers plan for, adapt and present critical content to their students in a “learner friendly” fashion. Routines help teachers organize and present critical information in a way that assists them in thinking critically. Most Routines are structured around a graphic organizer that aligns with the educational philosophy of scaffolding, or developing concrete and practical, thinking-centered lessons that help students’ understanding become explicit and visible. CERs are used in EVERY classroom inRAISEup Texas schools to provide a consistent learning platform for students. (English, Math, Science… even PE and Choir!)

• Learning Strategies (LS) are focused interventions for students who are struggling and have fallen behind their academic peers. They are designed to provide the foundational skills that students need to learn content. The LS toolkit encompasses strategies for acquiring information from the printed word, for organizing information, for solving conceptual problems and for expressing information in writing. LS are provided in targeted intervention courses as well as integrated into content courses to help struggling learners catch up and achieve at and beyond grade level.

Through Content Enhancement Routines applied consistently in every classroom and Learning Strategies that give added supports in the critical foundation skills for struggling learners, the tiered approach of the SIM toolkit provides a powerful and evidence-based platform for whole-school transformation and improved student outcomes. By incorporating SIM tools into a whole school model for effective teaching and learning, RAISEup Texas schools are improving outcomes for all students.

Inference - Helps students to comprehend written passages and answer inferential questions

Paraphrasing - Helps students to focus on the most important information in the passage.

Self-Questioning - Helps students to create their own motivation to read.

Word Mapping - Helps students to determine the meanings of words by using their morphemic parts: map the word parts, attack the meaning of each part, predict the word's meaning, and see if you're right.

Sentence Writing- Helps students to write various patterns and types of sentences.

Paragraph Writing - Helps student to write organized detailed paragraphs.