SIM Stories
The Center for Research on Learning (CRL) began as an organization focused on struggling adolescent learners in secondary schools. In large measure, and to our professional satisfaction, that is still what we do today. These stories capture a sense of the broad array of challenges we have met head-on through our development of the Strategic Instruction Model® (SIM) and related research.
Decoding Skills Leap Six Grade Levels with The Word Identification Strategy
Student Success: Strategy30+2: The Word Identification Strategy

The Power of One: Once Teacher's Story of Success (NC)
Katelyn Hagen's Teaching Success: 30+3: Xtreme Reading

A journey from memorization to understanding multiplication and division
Jessica Milton's Teaching Success: 30+5: The Strategic Math Series

Rural school's Dream Team initiates big change with Xtreme Reading
Swain County Middle School Success: 30+4: Xtreme Reading



The first SIM Profile School: Laura Belle Wallace Middle School in Kyle, Texas
School Success: 30+8: SIM

James Madison University, the Virginia Department of Education and SIM work together for student success
Collaboration Success: 30+13: SIM

From tears to cheers: One student’s SIM Learning Strategy success
Student Success: 30+21: Student success in Florida, LINCS Vocabulary Strategy, Word Mapping Strategy and Self Questioning Strategy

SIM Learning Strategies helped turn a career goal in to reality
Student success in Florida: 30+28: Learning Strategies

More Stories
- Striving Readers Grant Success: SIM interventions make a difference on the Fort Peck Reservation (Wolf Point, MT) and Three components for SIM success at Montana high school
- Shana Paterson's student success: The Sentence Writing and Paragraph Writing Strategies: "A million reasons"
- Speech Language Pathologist Susan Trumbo's SIM Tools of the Trade
- School Ensures Students Possess ALL the Skills Needed for Success (SLANT, Test-Taking, Self-Advocacy)
- Sabrina Saleh is on her way to nursing school (SLANT, Sentence Writing, Test-Taking, Reading Comprehension)
- Katherine Green and Larissa Bell teaching success: SIM Writing Strategies with advanced students in accelerated courses
- Jennifer Hunter teaching success: Using the Theme Writing Strategy with gifted students
- Cooperative Thinking Strategies in Glastonbury Connecticut public schools
- SIM sustainability and spread in Hays, Texas (Content Enhancement and Learning Strategies)
- Crafting an online course with Content Enhancement
- Support of SIM at Mashburn Institute in Arkansas
- SIM in Florida since 1985!
- When Stephen Hanson was a teenager, SIM Learning Strategies transformed his life. As an adult, Hanson teaches strategies to students in the same middle school he once attended.
- AP Calculus students at Riverbank High School in California like the Framing Routine for the organization it brings to their notes and for the way it helps them grasp difficult concepts in class.
- Until she was introduced to SIM, a Virginia teacher thought that all she had to offer students were short-term fixes. Now, she feels empowered, confident, and more accomplished, and her students are models of the long-term benefits associated with SIM.
- At Riverbank High School in California,scores on state competency tests rose more than 50 points in the first two years alone after the school adopted an extensive literacy improvement program based on SIM.
- Cabot Middle School North was named an Arkansas Diamond School to Watch in 2008, and the Strategic Instruction Model sparkled as one of the school's areas of academic excellence.
- Students who completed Muskegon High School's reading comprehension course, which consisted of four SIM strategies, performed better on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test at the end of the year than their peers at a comparison school.
- Sophomore finds his voice with SIM Writing Strategies