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Course Organizer Routine

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Instructional materials for this component of the Strategic Instruction Model are available only through professional development sessions conducted by certified SIM instructors.

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The Course Organizer Routine is used to plan courses around essential learning and critical concepts. The teacher uses the routine to introduce the course and the rituals that will be used throughout the course. The teacher then uses this framework throughout the year to maintain the big ideas and rituals.

Research showed that the use of the Course Organizer Routine helps teachers and students keep the big ideas in mind and focus their attention to understand important relationships. Instruction results in learning more about the big picture and less in trying to cover large amounts of information.

Teachers using the routine spent more time introducing major course ideas, concepts, themes, and routines to students than did the comparison teachers who did not learn the routine. Students with LD answered an average of three "big idea" course questions correctly at the beginning of the year. The students with LD in the class that used the Course Organizer answered correctly an average of eight "big idea" questions by the end of the course, while the students with LD in the class that did not use the Course Organizer answered only an average of four of the "big idea" questions correctly.