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.