Marzano Chapters 8-10

Chapter 8:

What?
Grading requires a long, hard look into what's fair for a student. Students deserve to know what to expect when it comes to an assignment. Especially in English, when grading can be so subjective, it's important to decide on and adhere to certain standards. My kids spend so much time and effort on their research papers. The day I assigned the project, they received a rubric outlining the grading procedures I would follow.

So what?
So far, no student has come to argue with me about his or her grade. I expect that this is due to having a rubric and sticking to it. The kids like to see the breakdown of their grades so that it makes sense to them. Rubrics also make grading a huge project like their research papers easier on me to grade. Without one, I'd spend a lot of time tapping my red pen on my desk wondering how much that error should be deducted against a student's grade. Without rubrics, grading papers would be a very daunting task. Objective grading is the only way to go.

Now what?
I will always use rubrics to be fair to my students and to make my grading life easier. There are so many resources online that allow you to set up a rubric in a heartbeat. It's an easy, efficient, objective way to grade that the students appreciate.

Chapter 9:

What?
When looking for ways to get kids interested and thinking outside the norm, testing and generating hypotheses is a great practice. Before actually reading this chapter, I would have thought that this strategy was just for math and science, that ELA wouldn't fit the mold. With all of the inferences and generalizations I have my kids making, this strategy actually fits like a glove. Developing questions to guide my students' research required them to test a hypothesis - this time about leadership. Take Vlad the Impaler - Some students who chose this person to research wanted to know how he became the basis for th character we know as Dracula.

So What?

They were asked to generate a hypothesis and test their hypotheses by using reliable resources to discover the truth. They loved the concept. It was like a mystery that needed to be solved. This was a brilliant strategy for research in English.

Now What?

So many kids look at research as a boring, daunting task that they just have to "get through". This strategy allows them to see it as something to be solved and figured out. The mystery entices them to get into what they have chosen to research, and an assignment that allows students to get sucked in motivates them to do a better job. I will always approach research questions by generating hypotheses.

Chapter 10:

What?
Asking questions is what literature is all about. I want my kids to go into a piece of literature building a list of questions through their annotations as they read - not just questions about plot or questions about which character is which, but ANALYTIC questions that require students to "analyze and critique" (Marzano 116) things about a piece of literature that force them to read deeply and find authors' purposes. For my students' inner/outer circle discussions, they are forced to come up with analytic questions to ask their classmates for a student-driven discussion.

So what?
Students rarely "get" literature without being forced to read and think on a deeper level. During the discussion, the students are allowed to ask what are called "Level 1" questions, which are questions that can be answered by yes or no or a short word or phrase. The students begin to "get" the point of analytical questions when they discover that the discussion is only fun when we move beyond the Level 1 questions and get to the "meat" of the text with answers to their analytic questions

Now what?
I love watching kids learn. It is inspiring and energizing. Watching students during these inner/outer circle discussions seeing the importance of analytic questions is so very rewarding. Questioning is essential to knowledge acquisition.

Final Reflection I: What Instructional Strategies Worked Best and Why?"

What?

So many of Marzano's strategies work wonderfully in my English classes. Note-taking, non-verbal recognition, cooperative learning, and note-taking have all benefited my class and made me a better teacher, but I believe that more than any of these, I believe that reinforcing effort and providing recognition has had the biggest real-life impact on my students. Tapping into the motivation of students is a powerful, effective way to have an impact. Every student has the need to feel recognized. Being the one to recognize a student puts one in a position to get to know a student, to reach them, to build a relationship, and then to improve their academic efforts. It all begins with building relationships. Reinforcing effort and providing recognition is the only way I have had any success motivating the most apathetic kids. One student, Derek, seemed to me to be unreachable. Covington's research tells us that the four causes of success are ability, effort, other people, and luck. Derek was a low-performing content mastery student, who slept through every-other class period, had no support at home, and a student who luck seemed to have completely passed by. What chance did Derek have? There is no amount of yelling at, forcing, redirecting, intimidating or graduation plan-making that could entice him into success. He hated school, and it seemed that school hated him. He was so close to not passing for the year. Currently, he needs a 91 to get credit for my class, when in prior six weeks, he has either failed or barely passed. He is in my 3rd period class, and he often stays back from lunch and sleeps. One day, he stayed back and I decided to go over to his desk and talk to him. He had a piece of paper that was supposed to be his research paper, with sparse writing scribbled all over it. I saw it and said, "Is that your research?" He hid it with his arm, expecting to be railed for his lack of effort and sub-standard work. Instead I asked to see it, got a highlighter, and highlighted certain words and phrases I thought gave him a great start to his research. Then we talked about where he could go from there, using his scribbled paper as useful prewriting. True, he was WAY behind his classmates, but instead of stating the obvious, putting him down and putting a knot in his stomach, I used the opportunity lift him up.

So what?

Derek is making an 87 in my class right now, and (with a great deal of help) has caught up with his classmates. I am convinced that the encounter we had during lunch that day is completely responsible for his success at the moment. He is not afraid to ask me questions, and he knows that my classroom is a safe place to grow.

Now what?

I wish I could have had as much success with so many of my other kids as I did with Derek. His other teachers are asking me how I was able to get to him. I know that it was the reinforcement on the effort he had made (though small) that encouraged him to keep going, to do more. I know that I won't reach every one of my students like Derek, but as far as strategies Marzano presented, this is the one that will reach a kid like Derek. No student wants to stay unrecognized and look at school like a battleground that they simply have to 'survive'. This strategy is one I will continue to use as long as I teach and as long as I am a parent. Education begins with relationships. Because this is a philosophy I believe in, this is the strategy for me.

Final Reflection II: Professional and Personal Goals

Personal Goal:

I am desperate to get into a doable routine at home to be more organized, to find time to grade thoroughly and get students’ work back efficiently

Result: Routines are the skeleton to the body of life. They hold things up and provide stability to an otherwise loosey-goosey situation! Creating structure has not been easy with all of my new challenges this year, but I must say that I have been successful. I am proud to say that even though my personal life has been busier and more hectic than ever, not only has my professional life not suffered, but it has benefited from my conscious efforts to be more organized. It's taken a great deal of effort and planning to get my school and home life organized in a way that satisfies my needs to be a great mom and a great teacher. I have made better use of my conference periods by avoiding lounges and copy rooms where distractions are abundant. True, I've seen a lot less of my teacher friends this year, but I have been able to do most of my grading during the work day. The up-side to this is that the turn-around for grading and returning assignments has sky-rocketed. I guess taking papers home added to the likelihood of putting off the inevitable. Now that I force myself to spend an hour and half grading every work day, I stay caught up and avoid the stress of fifteen stacks of compositions staring me in the face, begging to be graded.

The flip side to meeting this goal is that when I come home, I can be Mommy. I don't have to worry about planning or grading because I stay caught up. I don't have to spend my work day feeling guilty about not being the best teacher I should be and dread going home because I'm not the best mom I should be, focusing on school when my daughter needs me.

It's taken a lot of discipline. I know that if I let my guard down, it could all come crashing down. That's the thing about setting personal goals. Meeting them is only half the battle. Maintaining personal goals I've already met is the struggle for me. I guess that's why they say that life is about the journey and not the destination. I am proud that I was able to meet this particular goal because if I am a poor teacher and a poor mom, I've lost my identity completely. I take pride in being good at both, and I'm happy to say that I've made great strides.


Professional Goal:

I intend to read articles/research to help me do new things in the classroom for reading comprehension. Getting students to read on a deeper level is a very big professional concern for me.

Result: I have been completely lax about this professional goal outside of all of the wonderful things I've learned, thanks to Mr. Marzano. I have a dream that some day I will make the time to research all of the wonderful ideas that exist in the huge community of teaching. I know that it would make me a better teacher. I don't feel too bad about not seeking out research on my own since I have been able to apply the wonderful ideas Marzano has suggested with much success. I have had the most success with note taking ideas, non-linguistic representations, and providing recognition.

Professional Growth Measurable Activites-

Personal Goal:
I want to have more time for myself and with my husband so that I can be more relaxed with my students and not feel so torn between my personal and professional life. I want to plan activities and stick to them.

Result:
My husband, John, and I have both taken on this goal. Because Janie has been so sick in her young life, I've been a little over-protective about taking her out. John has done all he can to break me of this. Now, we make sure that either Friday or Saturday, we go out together. Sometimes we go out to eat, sometimes to walk in a park, sometimes just to stock up at Sam's Club, but we do it. We're together, hanging out as a family, enjoying each other.

Professional Goal:
I want more of my AP kids to get commended performance on TAKS Professional Growth Assessment and Evaluation:Personal:I will apply and implement researched techniques in the classroom.Professional:I will evaluate Benchmark/Milestone progress of my students.

Result:
Oh, I can't wait to see the scores! We have worked so hard to move from passing to Commended Performance. My students have impressed me so much by their willingness to come to tutoring, to work on their own to develop an endurance and familiarity for different types of literature. I believe with all my heart that their hard work will pay off. The last Benchmark scores made me very hopeful. Scores that would have been commended were up by several percentage points. I'm confident that this professional goal will be met.

Cohort - April

Chapter 6:
What?
Non-linguistic representation is crucial for prewriting exercises in English class. Right now my 10th graders are doing their research papers and we are at a stage where we have gathered a multitude of information, but haven’t done anything with it yet. A lot of kids stare at their stacks of note cards with their heads spinning, wondering how all of their information is going to come together into a paper. There is no better way that I’ve found to help achieve organization of concepts more than using graphic organizers. Yesterday, I had my students choose from a variety of graphic organizers as a precursor to an outline. I could almost say they had fun doing it. One – they had choices, Two – they could manipulate their note cards and sort them almost like a puzzle. I can imagine if I had said, “Turn your cards into an outline,” what kind of response I would have gotten – blank stares, frustrated expressions, and a huge lack of production. Graphic organizers are gold!

So what?
The kids were able to see that the information they found was not balanced and that it was OK as long as they had enough information to develop into a paragraph. They were able to see that different sources were better at providing certain types of information and that organization of information is crucial to the research process.

Now what?
I will always use graphic organizers to support lessons I have about organization of information. Visualizing organization makes the concept more real to the students. It is easy, productive, and a very valuable tool.

Chapter 7:
What?
Cooperative learning is such a useful tool for Language Arts. Once the ice is broken, it’s fun to see the students interact with each other without relying on me to make decisions for them or having me push them every step of the way. Working in groups is not always appropriate, but when it is, students are allowed to teach each other, and since you retain 90% of what you teach, it is a great learning tool.

So what?
I decided to try it this year with our reading of Romeo and Juliet with my Pre-AP students. They were broken into groups of 5 or 6 (I know the book suggested fewer people per group, but because they were reading a play, the needed a larger pool of strong readers to lead the way.), and each group was given a folder of information about how to tackle each act of the play. Each member of the group had a particular job to perform, and it truly is running like clock work. They are self-motivated, they get out of their desks to act out certain scenes, and more people are moving around, talking, and participating than there would be otherwise. I am very pleased with the outcome.

Now what?
I think when it comes to reading a play, this is the only way I’ll do it from now on. Otherwise, so few people are actually involved in the telling of the story. Since one of my biggest struggles is participation and since this fixes a big part of that problem, there would be no reason to abandon such a useful method of learning.

Cohort - March

Chapter 3 – Summarizing and Note Taking
What –
Note taking is vital to reinforcing comprehension and having materials to study before a test; however, simply jotting down everything a teacher says, isn’t the most effective way to use the skill. Most information can be and should be deleted. I had my students practice the exercising technique Marzano suggested to help my students practice becoming aware of extraneous information, which is helping in the research process.

So what-
I found that my students’ writing actually improved on their research papers after having taken notes that were free of repetition and information that vital and not unimportant, frivolous details.

Now what-
Next year I will begin the school year with skills in note taking. I think that my students could have benefited in other writing assignments earlier in the year had I thought to take the time to show them how to tell the difference between different types of information.

Chapter 4 – Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition

What –
I agreed with Covington’s research that the four causes of success are ability, effort, other people and luck. Knowing this, I acknowledge that I can affect two of these areas. I can help change a students’ view on effort so that they put forth their best efforts. I loved the idea of sharing examples of successful people with my classes on a regular basis. Their worlds are often so small, that not only was I able to open their worlds a bit, but make them see that average people can do great things, i.e. cure diseases, change social standards, and change people’s ideas about the world through their hard work and determination. Hopefully, seeing these examples can motivate them to try a little harder in their own worlds and turn in assignments, revise an essay and take compositional risks, and come to class on time, showing that their education is a priority.

So what –
After reading a biographical essay on the success of author Alice Walker, one student, Mia, wanted to know more about her. Alice Walker overcame being a social outcast and partial blindness to become a prolific author. Mia, although a decent student, never tried her hardest on any paper that was assigned. Mia came to see me before she left my classroom to share something with me: After hearing Walker’s story, has decided that there’s nothing stopping her from achieving greatness, and that she should try harder to show what she’s really capable.

Now what –
I know that not all students will be as touched as Mia by stories of others’ success stories, but if I can reach even a few, what a worthwhile use of 5 minutes of class time. I will continue to incorporate these examples to encourage students to increase student effort and performance. Much like the note taking strategy, I will begin at the very beginning of the year and make it a consistent part of my routine.

Chapter 5 – Homework and Practice

What –
Homework is crucial to practicing and “getting” what they’ve learned in class. I think the idea that stuck with me the most is that the homework given should be at a level in which they can perform – that homework is not a time to push and challenge them – that should be done under my supervision. Giving homework for homework’s sake is pointless. The homework I gave my students were focused practices, taking one lesson and focusing in on one particular skill to master.

So what –
I tried to give the homework on a more consistent basis, which my students hated. I have to confess that a lot of what I saw was students pulling empty papers out of backpacks and trying to rush to get it done during the class period for a late grade (which I hate) or students getting help from others to complete their homework. My feedback on their homework was harsh, and I haven’t seen much of a change in their homework efforts, unfortunately.

Now what –
Research shows that consistent homework is the way to go, so I have not reason not to continue. I guess the problem must be me, so I will continue to tweak how I’m managing their homework practice.

Identifying Similaritites and Differences - Marzano Chapter 2

What: I used Venn diagrams in all of my classes for the following purposes:
To compare and contrast characters in Of Mice and Men and Julius Caesar, to compare and contrast different types of phrases, and to compare and contrast good open-ended responses from great open-ended responses.

So What? The strategy worked exceptionally well to allow students to see good from great- a distinction that is difficult to make for most students. It allowed students to visualize similarities between characters that on the surface did not seem so similar, much to the surprise of many students.

Now What? There is no reason to stop using this strategy that proved so useful. It doesn't require any materials, any heavy planning, and it is completely student-driven, not to mention helpful to the students. I will continue to use Venn diagrams on a regular basis.

Personal and Professional Teaching Goals

Professional Growth Goals:

Personal:
I am desperate to get into a doable routine at home to be more organized, to find time to grade thoroughly and get students’ work back efficiently

Professional:
I intend to read articles/research to help me do new things in the classroom for reading comprehension. Getting students to read on a deeper level is a very big professional concern for me.

Professional Growth Measurable Activites:

Personal:
I want to have more time for myself and with my husband so that I can be more relaxed with my students and not feel so torn between my personal and professional life. I want to plan activities and stick to them.

Professional:
I want more of my AP kids to get commended performance on TAKS

Professional Growth Assessment and Evaluation:

Personal:
I will apply and implement researched techniques in the classroom.

Professional:
I will evaluate Benchmark/Milestone progress of my students