The Works of Robert Marzano
- Classroom Instruction that Works
- Classroom Management that Works
- Building Academic Vocabulary
- The Art and Science of Teaching
- Science: Teaching follows a research-based practice
- Art: Teaching must also be creative/flexible
- Effective instructional strategies
- Effective classroom management
- Curriculum design
- Comprehensive framework
- 10 design questions representing a logical planning sequence for effective instructional design
- Question 10 organizes the first nine into a framework for think about units of instruction and the lessons within those units
- Communicating learning goals – making the invisible visible for the student; allowing them to understand the unit goals, how that manifests in weekly goals and daily goals, and how they will be measured along the way; along connections to both content and language objectives (the what and how of learning)
- Formative assessment refers to the checkpoints set in place along the way to ensure that students are making progress in meeting daily, weekly, unit, and yearly goals
- Celebrating the success of every learner means recognizing each student for their individual accomplishments at their particular learning pace; not all students may meet the same goals at the same time in the same way–but they can all be celebrated
- Previewing new content refers to frontloading information for students before beginning new lessons; this can mean building background knowledge, developing key vocabulary, previewing new texts, etc.
- Critical-input experiences to introduce new content has to do with the anticipatory/introductory type of activities built into a unit or a lesson to act as the foundation for students’ new learning
- Nonlinguistic representations refers to how you and students may represent concepts and learning without using words; this can be through realia, pictures, acting, etc.
- Identifying and analyzing similarities and differences has to do with helping students to build connections between what they are learning–to see how new concepts and skills are connected in their similarities and dissimilarities
- Strategies for deepening student understanding refers to both the teaching strategies used to facilitate student learning as well as learning strategies used by students.
1. What will I do to establish and communicate learning goals, track student progress, and celebrate success?
2. What will I do to help students effectively interact with new knowledge?
3. What will I do to help students practice and deepen their understanding of new knowledge?
4. What will I do to help students generate and test hypotheses about new knowledge?
5. What will I do to engage students?
6. What will I do to establish or maintain classroom rules and procedures? 7. What will I do to recognize and acknowledge adherence and lack of adherence to classroom rules and procedures?
8. What will I do to establish and maintain effective relationships with students?
9. What will I do to communicate high expectations for all students?
10. What will I do to develop effective lessons organized into a cohesive unit?
The Big Ideas: Part One Effective Instructional Strategies
#1: What will I do to establish and communicate learning goals, track student progress, and celebrate student success
- Establish and communicate learning goals, tracking student progress, and celebrating success
- Distinguish between learning goals (with clear directions) versus activities used to achieve learning goals. The goal is a statement of what students will know or be able to do. The learning activities allows them to master that learning goals.
- Once learning goals have been established, utilize rubrics/scales to track student progress. This informs both the teacher and students about their progress in achieving mastery.
- Invite students to identify learning goals to enhance their involvement.
- Utilize formative assessments throughout lessons and unit; these can gauge whether students are ready to move on–or if further attention needs to be paid to the concept or skill.
- Show students how to chart their growth by using the data from their formative assessments
- Recognize and celebrate growth and success frequently.
#2: What will I do to help students effectively interact with new knowledge?
Helping student effectively interact with new knowledge:
- Identify critical input experiences. This means identifying the key steps in leading to mastery.
- Preview the content/skills prior to a critical input experience; this can include questioning, discussion, etc.
- Dividing students into groups to enhance active processing of information;
- Organize into new info into small chunks and ask for descriptions, predictions, and discussions;
- Ask students questions to require elaborations;
- Have students record conclusions in linguistic/nonlinguistic formats;
- Ask ask students to reflect on their learning.
#3 What will I do help students practice and deepen their understanding of new knowledge?
Helping students practice and deepen their understanding of new knowledge
This has to do with how students develop mastery of both procedural and declarative knowledge through gradually less scaffolded instructional moves.
Procedural knowledge refers to the how of learning whereas declarative knowledge refers to the what of learning. Procedural knowledge is shaped by the learner over time as they add, revise and delete steps until the process becomes automatic and fluent. It is developed through initial modeling, shaping, and eventually internalization of the process. Declarative knowledge is different in that students learn new concepts–and then review those concepts until they are mastered.
Students develop their understanding of similarities and differences as they compare, classify, create similes/metaphors, and analogies with new concepts/skills and formerly mastered ones in order to develop connections and mastery.
Examples: Venn diagrams, classification charts, comparison matrix, etc.; vocabulary development
As they create these connections between old and new concepts/skills, students must also identify errors that they develop in their thinking along the way; these errors may have been developed prior to the introduction of new concepts/skills or as they are learning them. It can also refer to how teachers might use inaccurate information or processes to enrich students mastery of a concept/skill by giving them the opportunity to evaluate and correct them.
A critical part of teaching is providing students with opportunities to develop their skills as learners–the way in which they master new knowledge. When students are able to automatically and fluently utilize a skill, strategy, or process, they have mastered it. Students must have multiple opportunities to be introduced to these ways of learning through modeling as well as structured and unstructured practice opportunities in order to effectively scaffold their mastery of such skills.A certain amount of drill and practice is required to develop students’ automaticity and fluency once they can masterfully use that skill without coaching or error.
Cooperative learning can play an important role in the development of such skills as students share their individual understandings, check each other as they go through the process and practice together to develop automaticity and fluency. This can include comparison, error analysis, and authentic, real-world cooperative learning activities for practice and peer critique.
Example: Teaching students how to make predictions by modeling the strategy with the whole class by watching movie previews and discussing predictions, leading into reading a passage together and previewing it to make predictions by first observing the teacher model and then collaboratively doing so as a whole class, repeating this process with small groups or partners to practice and allow the teacher to check for understanding, and then gradually doing it independently until it becomes an automatic part of how they read.
Students can continue to practice and deepen their understanding through homework and academic notebooks.
#4: What will I do to help students generate and test hypotheses about new knowledge
Helping students generate and test hypotheses anbout new knowledge
- Teach students how to generate effective support for their claims and assertions; ask them to respond to higher order questions and to back up their responses with evidence.
- Engage students to generate and test hypotheses.
- Engage students in problem-solving tasks.
- Engage students in decision making tasks.
- Engage students in investigation tasks.
- Have students design their own tasks.
- Consider extent of cooperative learning.
#5: What will I do to engage students?
Engaging students in learning in multiple ways:
- Use games
- Use inconsequential competition
- Manage question and response rates
- Use physical movement
- Use appropriate pacing
- Demonstrate intensity and enthusiasm for content.
- Engage students in friendly controversy.
- Provide students with opportunities to talk about themselves.
- Use unusual or missing information to grab students attention.
#6: What will I do to establish classroom rules and procedures?
Establishing and maintaining classroom rules and procedures
- Organize the classroom for effective teaching and learning. No students should ever be more than four steps away from where the teacher spends most of his or her time.
- Establish a set of rules and procedures. There shouldn’t be too many.
- Interact with students about rules and procedures.
- Periodically review rules and procedures, making changes if necessary.
- Use classroom meetings to discussions relative to classroom management.
#7: What do I do to recognize and acknowledge adherence and lack of adherence to classroom rules and procedures?
- Use simple verbal and nonverbal acknowledgement.
- Use tangible recognition when appropriate. This might include point system to earn candy or access to a prize box.
- Involve the home in recognition for positive student behavior.
- Be with it–have proactive set expectations, occupy the whole room, and make eye contact with all students. Notice potential problems. Have a serious of graduated actions.
- Use direct-cost consequences. Follow action steps.
- Use group contingency. Hold the whole group responsible.
- Use home contingency.
- Have a strategy for high-intensity situations.
- Design a plan for disciplinary problems, such as a behavioral intervention plan.
- Recognizing and acknowledging studetsn’ adherence and lack of adherence to classroom rules and proceres
#8: What will I do to establish and maintain effective relationships with students?
Establishing and maintaing effective relationshipswith all students include:
- Know something about each students.
- Engage in behaviors that indicate affection for each student.
- Personalize learning activities according to student interest.
- Engage in physical behavior that communicate physical interest in students.
- Use humor when appropropriate.
- Constantly reinforce positive and negative consequences.
- Project a sense of emotional objectivity.
- Maintain a cool exterior.
#9: What will I do to communicate high expectations for all students?
Communicate high expectations for all students by:
- Identify your expectation levels.
- Identify differential treatment.
- Make sure that all that all students receive equal verbal/non-verbal indications that they are valued and respected.
- Use appropriate questioning levels.
- Stay with them.
#10: What will I do to develop effective lessons organizezd into cohesive units?