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.