Educational Consultant: Robert Marzano Winner of the 2005 Telly Award- Bronze! Here's a DVD that helps teachers and other audiences understand what to do about students who are ill-prepared for classroom learning. Based on the best-selling ASCD book Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research on What Works in Schools, this series of three programs on DVD introduces your school to research-based strategies for overcoming the deficiencies that hamper the achievement of so many students. Research expert Robert J. Marzano explains the importance of building background knowledge for all learners, especially for low-achieving students who tend not to have been exposed to the kinds of experiences necessary for academic success. Classroom scenes from a variety of subject areas and grade levels illustrate how to build students' background knowledge and help them overcome obstacles to learning. Interviews with cognitive neuroscientists and reading experts show how these strategies relate to how the brain naturally learns. Workshop outlines and learning activities in the accompanying facilitator's guide get everyone in your school focused on implementing practices that research shows result in greater student achievement. Use this series with teacher teams and other school groups to introduce key principles of research-based practice, such as Why direct teaching of certain vocabulary terms leads to higher academic achievement. Why sustained silent reading helps improve student understanding of content. Why indirect learning experiences — such as field trips and mentoring — give students better contexts for learning new content. Show your school how teams of teachers create classroom experiences that promote student learning. And provide your school with insights on how to close achievement gaps with effective vocabulary instruction, a sustained silent reading program, and teaching strategies such as nonlinguistic representation, projects, cooperative learning, and note taking. Users of ASCD's What Works in Schools framework for school improvement can use this video to take action on the key school-, teacher-, and student-level factors that influence academic achievement.