From Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock (Classsroom Instruction that Works)
The chapter in Classroom Instruction that Works (ASCD 2001) was one that gave me many opportunities for self-reflection and evaluation of my own practices. Using convincing research, Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock review what best practices say should be the purpose of homework and offer very practical, common-sense advice for teachers to make the most of their homework assignments.
A most compelling fact is the research on the benefits of appropriate homework: the authors use research from Harris Cooper that shows that at the high school level, homework produces “a gain of about 24 percentile points” (61).
They state two common purposes of homework. The first is practice, but when assigning homework for this purpose, the teacher must insure that the work be “structured around content with which the students have a high degree of familiarity” (63). Practicing a skill with which the students are not familiar can create misconceptions, reinforce errors, and frustrate students. The second common purpose is to prepare students for new content or have them elaborate on material that has been introduced.
If homework is assigned, it should be commented on, say Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock. One study they used reported that the effects of homework vary greatly, depending on the feedback that the teacher provides (64).
Finally, the authors give several tips to guide teachers in their homework planning:
1) Establish and communicate a homework policy to both students and parents. The authors give suggestions for parents to make homework more productive.
2) Design homework assignments that clearly articulate the purpose and the outcome of the work. It’s important for students to know the point of the assignment: Are they supposed to practice what they’ve learned in class or prepare for new information that’s been introduced?
3) Vary the approaches to providing feedback. This doesn’t mean that the teacher needs to grade every piece of homework students do, but some sort of feedback helps reinforce the value of the work. In fact, when the purpose of an assignment is to do help students practice a skill, students can often provide their own feedback of the progress by tracking and monitoring their success.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition
From Classroom Instruction that Works
As part of a weekly installment highlighting the 9 instructional strategies that increase student learning and achievement from Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock’s book Classroom instruction that Works (ASCD: 2001), this blog focuses on the chapter on reinforcement and recognition. In this chapter, the authors offer a refresher course on the power and importance of effort and how we as educators can influence our students simply by how we respond to their work.
The first striking point they make is that we as classroom teachers can explicitly teach students about effort and the connection between effort and achievement. One way to do this is to talk about effort and its rewards, to give students concrete examples and encourage their own observations and connections. A second thing we can do is to ask students to periodically keep track of their own effort and its relationship to achievement or success. On pages 52-53 of Classroom Instruction that Works, the authors include a rubrics and tracking charts that might be tools to assist students in their self-reflections of their efforts.
The second important part of this chapter is a discussion of the research and theory behind providing recognition of student progress. Marzano et al. say they prefer the word “recognition” over “reward” or “praise,” as they feel “recognition” more appropriately identifies the purpose and intent of teacher comments about student effort and work. The research these authors quote is compelling. For instance, using Cameron and Pierce, they quote: “Rewards can have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation they are offered to people for engaging in a task without considering any standard of performance” (Marzano, p. 56). Thus, if teachers reward students for just “doing” the work, student performance is not improved. Instead, they suggest that recognition makes the most difference when it is personal and specific. The authors include a very informative chart called “Guidelines for Effective Praise” (p. 56). This chart makes a great self-reflection tool for educators to evaluate their own responses to their students.
A few other tidbits from this chapter:
*Abstract symbolic recognition is more effective than tangible rewards (p. 57).
*Rewards are more effective when they are linked to specific standards of performance. (p. 56)
*Verbal praise is a powerful motivator that positively alters student attitude and behavior (p. 57)
If you'd like to check out the other blogs using information from Classroom Instruction that Works, here are the blog entry dates:
Jan 8: Similarities and Differences
March 10: Summarizing and Note-taking
As part of a weekly installment highlighting the 9 instructional strategies that increase student learning and achievement from Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock’s book Classroom instruction that Works (ASCD: 2001), this blog focuses on the chapter on reinforcement and recognition. In this chapter, the authors offer a refresher course on the power and importance of effort and how we as educators can influence our students simply by how we respond to their work.
The first striking point they make is that we as classroom teachers can explicitly teach students about effort and the connection between effort and achievement. One way to do this is to talk about effort and its rewards, to give students concrete examples and encourage their own observations and connections. A second thing we can do is to ask students to periodically keep track of their own effort and its relationship to achievement or success. On pages 52-53 of Classroom Instruction that Works, the authors include a rubrics and tracking charts that might be tools to assist students in their self-reflections of their efforts.
The second important part of this chapter is a discussion of the research and theory behind providing recognition of student progress. Marzano et al. say they prefer the word “recognition” over “reward” or “praise,” as they feel “recognition” more appropriately identifies the purpose and intent of teacher comments about student effort and work. The research these authors quote is compelling. For instance, using Cameron and Pierce, they quote: “Rewards can have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation they are offered to people for engaging in a task without considering any standard of performance” (Marzano, p. 56). Thus, if teachers reward students for just “doing” the work, student performance is not improved. Instead, they suggest that recognition makes the most difference when it is personal and specific. The authors include a very informative chart called “Guidelines for Effective Praise” (p. 56). This chart makes a great self-reflection tool for educators to evaluate their own responses to their students.
A few other tidbits from this chapter:
*Abstract symbolic recognition is more effective than tangible rewards (p. 57).
*Rewards are more effective when they are linked to specific standards of performance. (p. 56)
*Verbal praise is a powerful motivator that positively alters student attitude and behavior (p. 57)
If you'd like to check out the other blogs using information from Classroom Instruction that Works, here are the blog entry dates:
Jan 8: Similarities and Differences
March 10: Summarizing and Note-taking
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Similarities and Differences
From Classroom Instruction that Works
In the blog entry for January 8, I wrote about instruction that asks kids to look at “similarities and differences,” based on the research of Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock, in their book Classroom Instruction that Works (ASCD: 2001). This great resource gives strong evidence for the effect that the individual classroom teacher has on student achievement. In this researched-based book, the authors describe 9 instructional strategies that affect student achievement. Following is a brief overview of those 9 essential strategies:
1) Identifying similarities and differences (see Jan. 8 blog)
2) Summarizing and note taking
3) Reinforcing effort and providing recognition
4) Homework and practice
5) Nonlinguistic representation
6) Cooperative learning
7) Setting objectives and providing feedback
8) Generating and testing hypotheses
9) Cues, questions, and advance organizers
For the next few weeks, I’ll discuss a different strategy per blog entry.
The second strategy Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock discuss is summarizing and note taking. Being able to summarize is critical to academic success, and most students need help sorting out the important information from the minor details. Helping kids locate important information and then restate it briefly and concisely improves their comprehension.
How can we help our students understand that summarizing is not just rewording a text or information, but synthesizing and “translating” it into a form they understand? According to the authors of Classroom Instruction that Works, “both [note taking and summarizing] require students to distill information into a parsimonious, synthesized form” (30).
Good summarizing requires a reader to delete some material, substitute some words or phrases for others, and keep some things. Marzano et al. use Brown, Campione, and Day’s “rules” for summarizing (32):
1. Delete trivial material that is unnecessary and material that is redundant
2. Substitute superordinate terms for lists (e.g., “pets” for “dogs, cats, birds, guinea pigs”)
3. Select a topic sentence or invent one if a topic sentence is missing
Modeling and having students work in pairs to practice these three rules with specific passages is an effective way for students to begin to learn how to summarize. It is also important for students to practice summarizing with a variety of differently structured texts. Is the passage structured by cause/effect, problem/solution, narrative, argumentation, definition, etc.? Knowing the organizational pattern of a passage can make summarizing much more efficient.
Marzano et al. suggest that teachers use “summary frames” to help students understand the structure of texts. Their text includes models of 6 different summary frames, series of questions that are designed to highlight critical elements in different types of text.
Note taking is related to summarizing, as in order to take effective notes a reader needs to determine what information is the most important and state it in a brief form. An effective teacher can make the difference in his/her students’ note-taking abilities by providing scaffolding of some sort: outlines of reading to guide note taking, graphic organizers appropriate to the text or lecture, modeling of note-taking techniques, etc. Marzano and colleagues conclude their chapter on summarizing and note taking with this statement: “Although we sometimes refer to summarizing and note taking as mere ‘study skills,’ they are two of the most powerful skills students can cultivate. They provide students with tools for identifying and understanding the most important aspects of what they are learning” (48).
In the blog entry for January 8, I wrote about instruction that asks kids to look at “similarities and differences,” based on the research of Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock, in their book Classroom Instruction that Works (ASCD: 2001). This great resource gives strong evidence for the effect that the individual classroom teacher has on student achievement. In this researched-based book, the authors describe 9 instructional strategies that affect student achievement. Following is a brief overview of those 9 essential strategies:
1) Identifying similarities and differences (see Jan. 8 blog)
2) Summarizing and note taking
3) Reinforcing effort and providing recognition
4) Homework and practice
5) Nonlinguistic representation
6) Cooperative learning
7) Setting objectives and providing feedback
8) Generating and testing hypotheses
9) Cues, questions, and advance organizers
For the next few weeks, I’ll discuss a different strategy per blog entry.
The second strategy Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock discuss is summarizing and note taking. Being able to summarize is critical to academic success, and most students need help sorting out the important information from the minor details. Helping kids locate important information and then restate it briefly and concisely improves their comprehension.
How can we help our students understand that summarizing is not just rewording a text or information, but synthesizing and “translating” it into a form they understand? According to the authors of Classroom Instruction that Works, “both [note taking and summarizing] require students to distill information into a parsimonious, synthesized form” (30).
Good summarizing requires a reader to delete some material, substitute some words or phrases for others, and keep some things. Marzano et al. use Brown, Campione, and Day’s “rules” for summarizing (32):
1. Delete trivial material that is unnecessary and material that is redundant
2. Substitute superordinate terms for lists (e.g., “pets” for “dogs, cats, birds, guinea pigs”)
3. Select a topic sentence or invent one if a topic sentence is missing
Modeling and having students work in pairs to practice these three rules with specific passages is an effective way for students to begin to learn how to summarize. It is also important for students to practice summarizing with a variety of differently structured texts. Is the passage structured by cause/effect, problem/solution, narrative, argumentation, definition, etc.? Knowing the organizational pattern of a passage can make summarizing much more efficient.
Marzano et al. suggest that teachers use “summary frames” to help students understand the structure of texts. Their text includes models of 6 different summary frames, series of questions that are designed to highlight critical elements in different types of text.
Note taking is related to summarizing, as in order to take effective notes a reader needs to determine what information is the most important and state it in a brief form. An effective teacher can make the difference in his/her students’ note-taking abilities by providing scaffolding of some sort: outlines of reading to guide note taking, graphic organizers appropriate to the text or lecture, modeling of note-taking techniques, etc. Marzano and colleagues conclude their chapter on summarizing and note taking with this statement: “Although we sometimes refer to summarizing and note taking as mere ‘study skills,’ they are two of the most powerful skills students can cultivate. They provide students with tools for identifying and understanding the most important aspects of what they are learning” (48).
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Test-taking Strategies
Here are a few quick test-taking strategies for kids to keep in mind as they prepare for the spring’s high-stakes tests:
1) Don't waste time or space on a fancy introductory sentence if the answer space is just a few lines. Spend all your effort and time on the support or details that prove you know the answer. Cut to the chase--make your first sentence very clear and direct and to the point.
2) Write neatly enough that someone other than you can read the answer.
3) Even if you aren't sure of the correct answer, don't leave the answer space blank. In math, explain what you did to try to figure it out-- your explanation of what you did to figure out the answer is part of what you get credit for. In reading, try to figure out what the question asks and write something down, even if you aren’t sure if your answer is right. For either test, partial credit is better than no credit!
4) If you are going to have to answer questions about a passage that you will read, glance over the questions really briefly before you read the passage. Then highlight, take notes, or underline things in the passage that may help you answer the question.
5) The space you are given to answer the question is a dead giveaway of how important (how many points) the question is worth.
6) Use the space you are given. If there are 11 lines for a short essay answer, then if you only use 3 lines, you can pretty much bet you won't get much credit. If there are 11 lines, the scorers expect a response that has some support from the text.
7) Less is often more--instead of 7 examples that are just a list with little support, two or three examples that have explanations show more depth of understanding.
8) Before you turn in the test, reread your responses quickly. You'd be surprised at the little mistakes you might be able to catch.
9) In the reading test, always use information or details from the passage in your answer. That's why it's called a "reading" test.
10) When you are doing one of the two writing tests, always keep in mind what they are scoring you on---WRITING! Make sure you use transitions, that you use elaboration and support.
11) Avoid the 5-paragraph organizational plan. Think instead of 1) a good introduction that gets the reader's attention and lets him know the point of your essay, 2) some very specific, well-detailed/elaborated support, held together with logical transitions, and 3) an ending of some sort (it doesn't need to be a summary ending).
12) Organization and development are the most important criteria for a good essay response.
13) Read the question very carefully before you start to answer it. Highlight or underline the words in the question that tell you what you need to do.
14. You are allowed to highlight or mark up the test booklet, so jot down any notes, highlight important words, underline possible support as you read. Just remember though, that you are only scored on what you write in the answer booklet.
15. Get a good night’s sleep!
1) Don't waste time or space on a fancy introductory sentence if the answer space is just a few lines. Spend all your effort and time on the support or details that prove you know the answer. Cut to the chase--make your first sentence very clear and direct and to the point.
2) Write neatly enough that someone other than you can read the answer.
3) Even if you aren't sure of the correct answer, don't leave the answer space blank. In math, explain what you did to try to figure it out-- your explanation of what you did to figure out the answer is part of what you get credit for. In reading, try to figure out what the question asks and write something down, even if you aren’t sure if your answer is right. For either test, partial credit is better than no credit!
4) If you are going to have to answer questions about a passage that you will read, glance over the questions really briefly before you read the passage. Then highlight, take notes, or underline things in the passage that may help you answer the question.
5) The space you are given to answer the question is a dead giveaway of how important (how many points) the question is worth.
6) Use the space you are given. If there are 11 lines for a short essay answer, then if you only use 3 lines, you can pretty much bet you won't get much credit. If there are 11 lines, the scorers expect a response that has some support from the text.
7) Less is often more--instead of 7 examples that are just a list with little support, two or three examples that have explanations show more depth of understanding.
8) Before you turn in the test, reread your responses quickly. You'd be surprised at the little mistakes you might be able to catch.
9) In the reading test, always use information or details from the passage in your answer. That's why it's called a "reading" test.
10) When you are doing one of the two writing tests, always keep in mind what they are scoring you on---WRITING! Make sure you use transitions, that you use elaboration and support.
11) Avoid the 5-paragraph organizational plan. Think instead of 1) a good introduction that gets the reader's attention and lets him know the point of your essay, 2) some very specific, well-detailed/elaborated support, held together with logical transitions, and 3) an ending of some sort (it doesn't need to be a summary ending).
12) Organization and development are the most important criteria for a good essay response.
13) Read the question very carefully before you start to answer it. Highlight or underline the words in the question that tell you what you need to do.
14. You are allowed to highlight or mark up the test booklet, so jot down any notes, highlight important words, underline possible support as you read. Just remember though, that you are only scored on what you write in the answer booklet.
15. Get a good night’s sleep!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Tips for making small group collaboration work
So you’ve decided that you want to increase student engagement in class. Having students work in small groups is certainly a way to get students involved, but unless you build in some structure, the students can waste time or get off task quickly. Here are a few guidelines to follow when you plan cooperative learning activities in your class:
1) Give the groups very specific tasks to accomplish. Rather than say, “Discuss in your group,” provide more structured guidelines: “As a group come up with three alternatives . . . ” or “List four reasons why . . .” or “Figure out two different ways to solve . . . .” Make sure your directions are very clear and easy to follow.
2) Set very limited time frames for the activities. Giving a small group five minutes to solve a problem will leave little room for socializing. Consider less time—you can always stretch it if the groups are still working. If you need your groups to work for an extended period of time, perhaps break the time up into smaller portions with “deadlines” for each smaller time segment.
Often when there are discipline problems related to small group work, the culprit is one of the above issues—or both.
3) Keep the groups small if you can. In a group of six or seven, it’s easy for a student to hide in the crowd. There is no crowd in a group of three. If you have to have larger groups, then consider assigning (or having the group assign) different roles or tasks to each group member.
4) If you haven’t used small group activities before, model explicitly what you expect to happen. Even be as specific as to how the group will share with each other, what each member’s expectations will be, how the individual members should record their work, how the group’s consensus will be shared out with the class, etc. If you find that some groups get off task, look at what happened to cause that and stop and model to the class what behavior you expect. Modeling is a positive approach to trouble-shooting problems.
5) Don’t have students remain in the same groups for extended periods of time. Mix it up regularly so groups don’t develop “bad habits.”
6) Small group work can be as simple as “turn and talk to your neighbor.” Just remember to be very specific with the task and limit the time.
1) Give the groups very specific tasks to accomplish. Rather than say, “Discuss in your group,” provide more structured guidelines: “As a group come up with three alternatives . . . ” or “List four reasons why . . .” or “Figure out two different ways to solve . . . .” Make sure your directions are very clear and easy to follow.
2) Set very limited time frames for the activities. Giving a small group five minutes to solve a problem will leave little room for socializing. Consider less time—you can always stretch it if the groups are still working. If you need your groups to work for an extended period of time, perhaps break the time up into smaller portions with “deadlines” for each smaller time segment.
Often when there are discipline problems related to small group work, the culprit is one of the above issues—or both.
3) Keep the groups small if you can. In a group of six or seven, it’s easy for a student to hide in the crowd. There is no crowd in a group of three. If you have to have larger groups, then consider assigning (or having the group assign) different roles or tasks to each group member.
4) If you haven’t used small group activities before, model explicitly what you expect to happen. Even be as specific as to how the group will share with each other, what each member’s expectations will be, how the individual members should record their work, how the group’s consensus will be shared out with the class, etc. If you find that some groups get off task, look at what happened to cause that and stop and model to the class what behavior you expect. Modeling is a positive approach to trouble-shooting problems.
5) Don’t have students remain in the same groups for extended periods of time. Mix it up regularly so groups don’t develop “bad habits.”
6) Small group work can be as simple as “turn and talk to your neighbor.” Just remember to be very specific with the task and limit the time.
Monday, February 16, 2009
The basic reading/thinking strategies
Wonder what you do as you read? What all good readers do. However, our struggling readers don’t always know what goes on in the minds of good readers; they need to be explicitly taught the strategies and guided to use them on their own. Daniels and Zemelman (Subjects Matter, 2004) list the following good reader strategies:
1) Visualize (to make mental pictures or sensory images from ideas, situations, details in the text)
2) Connect (to make connections between what they read and their lives, other texts or media, and the world)
3) Question (to ask questions of the text, of the author, of themselves as they read; to actively wonder)
4) Infer (to predict, hypothesize, interpret, draw conclusions)
5) Evaluate (to determine what’s important, to make judgments)
6) Analyze (to notice text structures, the author’s craft, vocabulary, purpose, theme, etc)
7) Recall (to retell, summarize, remember information)
8) Self-monitor (to realize when they are confused or uncertain or have lost attention)
It’s not enough, however, to just talk about the strategies and model them for the students. These strategies need to be embodied in very specific, concrete tools that we provide for our students as they read. That means that the graphic organizers we use to guide students’ reading must ask students to try out these strategies; the guiding questions we ask must lead students to use these strategies; the collaborative activities we plan must engage students in these strategies; and the language of our classrooms must reflect these strategies.
1) Visualize (to make mental pictures or sensory images from ideas, situations, details in the text)
2) Connect (to make connections between what they read and their lives, other texts or media, and the world)
3) Question (to ask questions of the text, of the author, of themselves as they read; to actively wonder)
4) Infer (to predict, hypothesize, interpret, draw conclusions)
5) Evaluate (to determine what’s important, to make judgments)
6) Analyze (to notice text structures, the author’s craft, vocabulary, purpose, theme, etc)
7) Recall (to retell, summarize, remember information)
8) Self-monitor (to realize when they are confused or uncertain or have lost attention)
It’s not enough, however, to just talk about the strategies and model them for the students. These strategies need to be embodied in very specific, concrete tools that we provide for our students as they read. That means that the graphic organizers we use to guide students’ reading must ask students to try out these strategies; the guiding questions we ask must lead students to use these strategies; the collaborative activities we plan must engage students in these strategies; and the language of our classrooms must reflect these strategies.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Best Practice Teaching Strategies
At a NSDC workshop I recently attended, the presenter shared with us the list of teaching strategies that her former Gwinnett County, Georgia, school district adopted. They are the following:
• Frequently access learning
• Use nonverbal representations
• Model strategies and skills and practice
• Teach essential vocabulary
• Teach summarizing strategies
• Provide collaboration experiences
• Teach and require goal setting
• Use inquiry-based problem solving
• Use and teach questioning and cuing
• Assess and/or build background knowledge
• Teach comparison-contrast/similarities-differences
• Use technology effectively
These are considerations we should keep in mind as we plan our lessons and reflect on our practice.
• Frequently access learning
• Use nonverbal representations
• Model strategies and skills and practice
• Teach essential vocabulary
• Teach summarizing strategies
• Provide collaboration experiences
• Teach and require goal setting
• Use inquiry-based problem solving
• Use and teach questioning and cuing
• Assess and/or build background knowledge
• Teach comparison-contrast/similarities-differences
• Use technology effectively
These are considerations we should keep in mind as we plan our lessons and reflect on our practice.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Before-During-After
Effective teachers don’t just assign reading and expect students to “get it.” They craft the preparation for the reading, help students organize their thinking as they read, and plan meaningful work after the reading to guide students to reflect on, integrate, and share the ideas they culled from the assignment.
While the questions at the end of the passage might seem like the way to go, those questions can be tedious to students and result in cursory responses. As you plan for activities to help students construct meaning, think about the purposes of before, during, and after work. Harvey Daniels and Steve Zemelman, in Subjects Matter (2004) describe in detail what teachers need to do BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER reading to help students improve their comprehension:
BEFORE Reading activities are ones that
As you plan for readings for you students to complete, always consider: What am I doing to help them make meaning BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER they read?
While the questions at the end of the passage might seem like the way to go, those questions can be tedious to students and result in cursory responses. As you plan for activities to help students construct meaning, think about the purposes of before, during, and after work. Harvey Daniels and Steve Zemelman, in Subjects Matter (2004) describe in detail what teachers need to do BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER reading to help students improve their comprehension:
BEFORE Reading activities are ones that
- get students focused on and excited about the reading
- develop purposes for reading
- activate students’ questions, beliefs, and predictions about the reading
- help students make connections between their prior knowledge and the new material, which will help them make sense of the reading
- visual what is happening in the reading, whether it is a story or a science experiment
- make connections between the reading and their lives and the world around them
- question the author or the text
- make inference (going beyond the information given to other implications)
- distinguish between main ideas and minor ideas as they read
- monitor their understanding and comprehension as they read, noticing when they lose track of the meaning
- synthesize ideas, connecting what they’ve learned to information they already know
- make inferences and connections
- look back at questions they initially had and decide if they have had those questions either answered or changed
As you plan for readings for you students to complete, always consider: What am I doing to help them make meaning BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER they read?
Monday, February 2, 2009
30-30-30 (Think-Aloud Scaffolding)
This activity from Jeff Zwiers' Building Reading Comprehension Habits in Grades 6-12 (2004) is called 30-30-30 because it divides a text into thirds, and the reading and thinking are scaffolded as you move through the text. In order to get through 100% of a text with enough time for you to model and for the students to both practice and do alone, make sure the passage isn’t too long. This 30-30-30 uses the “gradual release of responsibility” model first developed by Pearson and Gallagher (1983).
Elementary teachers have used “think-alouds” for decades in their reading instruction. The teacher and her students look at a picture in a children’s book, then the teacher says to herself (and to her students), “Hmmm, I wonder what this picture is about? What’s happening here?” She continues as she reads, asking herself questions—about the text, about her own thinking, about the author’s intent. The purpose is to model for the children the kinds of thinking that goes on in a good reader’s mind, to push the young readers to begin to be metacognitive.
Effective secondary teachers use think-alouds too, even if they don’t realize they do. This exercise helps students focus on the kinds of questions they should be asking themselves as they read aloud by making think-alouds the point of the lesson.
Here are the steps:
1. Make sure you have a list of reading strategies available to refer to as you model. If you have found that students are not using a specific strategy (like summarizing, questioning, using context clues, etc.) then use that strategy as you model your thinking aloud.
2. Start by modeling some prereading strategies by thinking aloud (predicting the author’s purpose, asking questions of the title, graphics, headings, etc.). Ask the students to also do some of this questioning. Besides modeling what good readers do, you are building background knowledge.
3. Now, for the first 30% of the passage, read and think aloud while your students listen and perhaps take notes. You might even mention the strategy you are using as you think aloud to yourself (and to the students).
4. For the second 30% of the passage, continue to read aloud, stopping occasionally at places where you want students to think or question. Ask students to work in pairs to actually think aloud. You might want students to share some of their think-alouds with other pairs or the class. This would also insure that they are actually using the specific strategy you have discussed. Continue with this teacher-directed reading aloud and stopping for the middle 30% of the text.
5. For the last 30% of the text, have the students read silently, taking individual notes on sticky notes and pasting the notes in the margins where they stopped to think silently about their reading. This would also make a great “share with your elbow partner” activity, so students could compare the spots where they stopped to think as well as the questions or ideas they thought about. If you think you need to give a little more structure to this independent work, you could put a minimum on the number of thinking stops the students would need to make.
6. Finally, as a postreading activity, do another think aloud where you model the process of putting it all together, either summarizing or determining the author’s purpose.
Elementary teachers have used “think-alouds” for decades in their reading instruction. The teacher and her students look at a picture in a children’s book, then the teacher says to herself (and to her students), “Hmmm, I wonder what this picture is about? What’s happening here?” She continues as she reads, asking herself questions—about the text, about her own thinking, about the author’s intent. The purpose is to model for the children the kinds of thinking that goes on in a good reader’s mind, to push the young readers to begin to be metacognitive.
Effective secondary teachers use think-alouds too, even if they don’t realize they do. This exercise helps students focus on the kinds of questions they should be asking themselves as they read aloud by making think-alouds the point of the lesson.
Here are the steps:
1. Make sure you have a list of reading strategies available to refer to as you model. If you have found that students are not using a specific strategy (like summarizing, questioning, using context clues, etc.) then use that strategy as you model your thinking aloud.
2. Start by modeling some prereading strategies by thinking aloud (predicting the author’s purpose, asking questions of the title, graphics, headings, etc.). Ask the students to also do some of this questioning. Besides modeling what good readers do, you are building background knowledge.
3. Now, for the first 30% of the passage, read and think aloud while your students listen and perhaps take notes. You might even mention the strategy you are using as you think aloud to yourself (and to the students).
4. For the second 30% of the passage, continue to read aloud, stopping occasionally at places where you want students to think or question. Ask students to work in pairs to actually think aloud. You might want students to share some of their think-alouds with other pairs or the class. This would also insure that they are actually using the specific strategy you have discussed. Continue with this teacher-directed reading aloud and stopping for the middle 30% of the text.
5. For the last 30% of the text, have the students read silently, taking individual notes on sticky notes and pasting the notes in the margins where they stopped to think silently about their reading. This would also make a great “share with your elbow partner” activity, so students could compare the spots where they stopped to think as well as the questions or ideas they thought about. If you think you need to give a little more structure to this independent work, you could put a minimum on the number of thinking stops the students would need to make.
6. Finally, as a postreading activity, do another think aloud where you model the process of putting it all together, either summarizing or determining the author’s purpose.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The Frayer Model
Vocabulary is essential in all content areas; in fact, for math, science, and social studies, understanding of the content often hinges on essential terms or concepts. The Frayer model (developed by Frayer, Frederick, and Klausmeier in 1969) is an efficient, engaging way for students to make meaning of a difficult, complicated concept.
You don’t really have to even copy or make a graphic organizer for the students; they can do it themselves by taking a blank piece of paper and folding it in half and then half again, resulting in 4 blocks. At the center of the opened paper, where the blocks intersect, they should draw a circle or another box in which to write the term or concept.
The four blocks can be labeled with a variety of headings, depending on the term, the level of students, the needs of the unit. Here are a few options:
• Essential characteristics/nonessential characteristics/examples/nonexamples
• Definition/characteristics/examples/nonexamples
• Definition/sentence/I think . . ./non-verbal representation (a drawing)
• What others say/what I say/what it is/what it isn’t
It’s always a good idea to try out a new graphic organizer or note-taking organizer with an easy concept that requires little background information first so students can use the format before moving on to difficult content material. Once you are certain students understand the organizer itself, then move on to the material they are to read, view, listen to, or research and from which they will use to fill out their Frayer model notes.
You don’t really have to even copy or make a graphic organizer for the students; they can do it themselves by taking a blank piece of paper and folding it in half and then half again, resulting in 4 blocks. At the center of the opened paper, where the blocks intersect, they should draw a circle or another box in which to write the term or concept.
The four blocks can be labeled with a variety of headings, depending on the term, the level of students, the needs of the unit. Here are a few options:
• Essential characteristics/nonessential characteristics/examples/nonexamples
• Definition/characteristics/examples/nonexamples
• Definition/sentence/I think . . ./non-verbal representation (a drawing)
• What others say/what I say/what it is/what it isn’t
It’s always a good idea to try out a new graphic organizer or note-taking organizer with an easy concept that requires little background information first so students can use the format before moving on to difficult content material. Once you are certain students understand the organizer itself, then move on to the material they are to read, view, listen to, or research and from which they will use to fill out their Frayer model notes.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
The Importance of Similarities and Differences
Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock, in their book Classroom Instruction that Works (2001), give strong evidence for the effect that the individual classroom teacher has on student achievement. In this researched-based book, they describe 9 instructional strategies that affect student achievement. The strategy that they consider “the core of all learning” is identifying similarities and differences.
According to Marzano et al. (pp. 15-16), teachers enhance “students’ understanding of and ability to use knowledge” when they
• present students with explicit guidance in identifying similarities and differences
• ask students to independently identify similarities and differences
• represent similarities and differences in graphic or symbolic form
While the most recognizable similarities and differences organizer is the Venn diagram, using other lesser-used activities will often yield fresher insights. Besides comparing and contrasting, the following three are processes that require students to think at higher levels:
Classifying—this process asks students to note specific qualities or characteristics. A semantic features analysis chart or a comparison matrix that lists categories or characteristics would use this process.
Creating metaphors—similar to creating analogies, this process asks students to identify a general or basic pattern in a specific topic and then find another topic that appears to be quite different but that has the same general pattern. An example that Marzano’s group uses is comparing the function and structure of the cell to Star Trek’s Enterprise (the nucleus would be like the bridge).
Creating analogies—this process asks students to identify the relationship between pairs of concepts. Analogies are the most complex of the similarities and differences formats as they deal with the “relationships between relationships” (p. 26). Remember the old SAT analogy questions? (Newton is to force and motion as Bernouli is to air pressure.)
With these three levels of similarities/differences, modeling examples for the students before they work on finding their own analogies, metaphors, etc. will reap better results.
According to Marzano et al. (pp. 15-16), teachers enhance “students’ understanding of and ability to use knowledge” when they
• present students with explicit guidance in identifying similarities and differences
• ask students to independently identify similarities and differences
• represent similarities and differences in graphic or symbolic form
While the most recognizable similarities and differences organizer is the Venn diagram, using other lesser-used activities will often yield fresher insights. Besides comparing and contrasting, the following three are processes that require students to think at higher levels:
Classifying—this process asks students to note specific qualities or characteristics. A semantic features analysis chart or a comparison matrix that lists categories or characteristics would use this process.
Creating metaphors—similar to creating analogies, this process asks students to identify a general or basic pattern in a specific topic and then find another topic that appears to be quite different but that has the same general pattern. An example that Marzano’s group uses is comparing the function and structure of the cell to Star Trek’s Enterprise (the nucleus would be like the bridge).
Creating analogies—this process asks students to identify the relationship between pairs of concepts. Analogies are the most complex of the similarities and differences formats as they deal with the “relationships between relationships” (p. 26). Remember the old SAT analogy questions? (Newton is to force and motion as Bernouli is to air pressure.)
With these three levels of similarities/differences, modeling examples for the students before they work on finding their own analogies, metaphors, etc. will reap better results.
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