Lesson Planning with Marzano

Video Transcription

Hi, and thank you for joining me for Lesson Planning with Marzano. Before we get started, keep in mind this class is all about you, the learner. So please feel free to fast forward, rewind, pause, or use any of the information from this tutorial to better help you in your classroom.

Before we get started, let's look at the essential questions we're going to able to answer today. How can I use Marzano's strategies for lesson planning? And why are Marzano's strategies a useful framework for lesson planning?

A couple of reminders. Today's application lesson is based on teaching how to write a well-organized essay. You'll remember, this is the same lesson plan we used when we were looking at lesson planning with the Shulman framework. The examples given will be in blue and there are no key terms.

Let's get started by having a quick review of Marzano. Remember, the Marzano features nine high-yield instructional strategies. Those are identifying similarities and differences, summarizing and note taking, reinforcing effort, and providing recognition, homework, and practice, nonlinguistic representations, cooperative learning, setting objectives and providing feedback, generating and testing hypotheses, and questions, cues, and advanced organizers. For each one of the strategies, there's going to be a couple of questions that we can ask ourselves while we're lesson planning. So the format of this tutorial is going to include the strategy, questions we can ask ourselves about the strategy, and then an example.

To begin, we're going to look at identifying similarities and differences. Some questions to ask are, have I directly instructed my students on how to use graphic organizers and nonlinguistic representations to compare, contrast, classify, and create metaphors and analogies? In my example, I have given them a tool box of different graphic organizers, such as Venn diagrams, flow charts, idea clusters, and outlines to help them visualize the organization of an essay.

For summarizing and note-taking some questions to ask are, am I modeling summarization techniques such as identifying key concepts? Are students able to eliminate extraneous information? Are students able to organize this key information and put it in their own words?

At the beginning of the year, I go over with my students summarizing and note-taking skills, and I do model these. We use the Cornell Note Method, and this helps students because there's a summarization aspect after every single day of notes. We frequently review it. And for this lesson, I've identified ahead of time what the key terms are that I want the students to take notes on, such as thesis, topic sentence, transitions, et cetera.

I ask the students to explain the importance of these terms to the writing process to check for understanding. And that's how I can tell that they're summarizing it and putting it in their own words. For reinforcing effort and providing recognition, I want to ask myself, do I provide rewards based on standards and performance? And I said, yes, I do. I provide non-tangible rewards like reading aloud great thesis statement examples or asking students who are quickly mastering a concept to help others, giving them a leadership role. It's important with the recognition that it is non-tangible. Don't give out candy for right answers.

For homework and practice, I need to ask myself, am I differentiating homework based upon student need and age? Am I sending home homework that is at an independent level, an instructional level, or a frustration level? And I said, yes, I am differentiating. For independent work, I sent home identification of thesis and organization, for instructional work, I sent home how to write a thesis, and for frustration level, I asked the students to create an outline based on the thesis.

For nonlinguistic representations I need to ask myself, do I allow students the opportunity to create graphic representations, models, mental pictures, drawings, et cetera? Do I allow students the opportunity to participate in hands-on or kinesthetic learning to build skills and take ownership?

I said for this writing unit that I do offer a variety of models to show writing organization and connectedness between different ideas and papers. And one way to have a really cool kinesthetic lesson is by cutting up aspects of an essay and giving each student a different aspect, having them get up and move around the room, and figure out how to put the essay in order by standing in a row. This is actually really fun, and you can adapt this technique for almost anything you're teaching in class.

For cooperative learning, I want to ask myself, how big are my groups? Have I assigned roles? Do the students know the expectations for group work? Group size depends on the size of your class. I usually have groups of three to four. You never want to have a group bigger than five.

And I will only use ability-based grouping for direct instruction aspects of the class. I will mostly use mixed-ability groups to allow for peer scaffolding and growth. We talked about this a little bit when we discussed feedback. You don't always want to do ability-based grouping because some of the best ways for students to learn is to learn from their peers. And I will have students work in a three to four-member mixed-ability group to peer edit for organization.

For studying objectives and providing feedback, I'm asking myself, have I created specific goals? Am I allowing for student choice? Have I provided opportunities to provide specific, timely, actionable feedback? My main objective or goal is for students to write a well-organized essay. The objective is visible on the board, on the class website, and has been orally explained to the class.

I've created and distributed rubric outlining more in-depth expectations for the performance event of writing an essay. And I circulate the room during group work and offer feedback. I also hold paper conferences where I offer feedback.

For generating and testing hypotheses, have I provided opportunities for students to generate, explain, test, and defend hypotheses using inductive and deductive reasoning, problem solving, historical investigation, experimental inquiry, or decision making? My students are doing a lot of generating and testing ideas. They're doing it when dissecting article and labeling the various parts for organization. Students are making decisions when choosing their essay topics and writing their essays as well.

For questions, cues, and advanced organizers, I want to ask myself, have I built on cues and questions that focus on what is important? Have I used ample wait time before accepting responses? My questions all focus on why organization is important to writing.

I also require my students to back up everything they state has fact with evidence. This is really in line with common core. And I use cold calling and wait time as well as no opt out strategies when questioning.

Cold calling just means calling on students randomly. The way I do this in my classroom is by having everybody write their name on a popsicle stick and keeping them in a little canister that I draw from. Wait time can be hard, but it's very necessary. So make sure you give students ample time to answer. No opt out is another strategy where if a student says, I don't know, I might call on another student, but I'm going to go back to the original student and have him repeat the answer so that he understands he can't opt out of participating. My students have access to a variety of advanced organizers.

Let's look at why is lesson planning with Marzano useful? Lesson planning with Marzano is useful because it helps teachers look at how the nine high-yield instructional strategies actually look in their classroom. By asking ourselves questions about what these look like before we do the lesson, it helps to be more intentional in our planning. IT also shifts the focus from content to pedagogy. When teachers reflect on Marzano strategies, we look at how we can change the pedagogy to better reach the learners.

Let's reflect. What do you think are some benefits from lesson planning with the Marzano framework? Why? And what are some challenges with lesson planning with the Marzano framework? Why?

We were able to address, how can we use Marzano's strategies for lesson planning, and that's asking ourselves questions about how these high-instructional strategies look in our classrooms. And why are Marzano's strategies a useful framework for lesson planning?

To dive a little deeper and learn how to apply this information, be sure to check out the additional resources section associated with this video. This is where you'll find links targeted towards helping you discover more ways to apply this course material. Thanks for joining me, and happy teaching.