Chapter 2: What will I do to help students interact with new knowledge?
In reference to content, Marzano uses the terminology critical-input experiences. These critical-input experiences make up the majority of teaching. New lessons are built upon older content with the addition of newer content, thus it is important for students to experience new content in a way that will benefit them and help them retain the experience. This chapter is designated to ideas and strategies teachers can use to help students store in and understand critical-input experiences.
It is shown that through engagement of critical-input, processing new information, and interacting relations between students and teachers, will help students deepen the amount taken away from a critical-input experience. This is done through highlighting the objective and main points in order for students to make the need connections to new and important material, which would teach them how to focus on the critical-input experience of the lesson.
Marzano gives many strategies which are beneficial to helping students engage in critical-input. These different strategies have different effects, while visual, dramatic and verbal instruction can enhance learning, Marzano shows that visual and dramatic have an advantage on verbal instruction. He states, “ visual instruction involves helping students generate mental pictures for the information being taught. Dramatic instruction includes anything that dramatizes content” (32).
Previewing is a strategy that helps students have an introduction to critical-input before the actual presentation. This can be visual, graphic organizers, cues or advance organizers. Essentially they will help students receive an introduction before the actual experience. It can also provide background information related to the experiences which can add a clarifying component to the experience.
Small chunks is where information is presented in stages so that students do not have to take in, interpret, and understand lots of information at the same time. This resembles a scaffolding ladder where content is built to a final concluding event. Marzano quotes a study where they believe that overloading a brain is possible when too much content is delivered at a time, and that it is more beneficial to have small amounts that can be focused on at a time, which can latter be built upon to have a final result.
Active processing using macrostrategies are instructional strategies that help students process the small chunks. These can include:
- Summarizing and Note Taking; this is where students can take a personalized, parsimonious account of the information in the critical-input experience.This a linguistic approach.
- Nonlinguistic Representations; this can include mental images of the material being presented. It can also include physical models, pictures or pictographs, and even kinesthetic representations. Mnemonic (memorizing devices are also non linguistic approaches.
- Questioning; higher cognitive questions in a classroom can be very beneficial and have a higher success rate. It will require students to use information from their critical-input experiences.
- Reflection: This allows students to express what they have learned, what they didn’t understand, or any confusions they may have had during the critical-input experience. It can also allow them to see if preconceptions they had on a topic were correct or misguided.
- Cooperative Learning; this allows students to see how their way of interpreting information is either the same or different than their peers. It provides a new type of experience related to material shared.
Action 1. Identify Critical-Input Experiences. The first action requires teachers to identify what the critical aspect of the unit will be, and what the objectives will be as well.
Action 2. Preview the content prior to a critical-input experience. This can include asking students what they already know (KWL CHART) about a topic; pointing out connections to previous material studied; preview questions that give guidance to what to pay attention to during a viewing; a spoken summary of the topic; skimming effective material while looking for headings and subheadings or other important facts; and teacher prepared notes to give guidance of critical material.
Action 3. Organize students into groups to enhance the active processing of information. As said earlier, groups can share information that will help students see other ways of thinking and also create a reference point for their own way of thinking. It is best utilized if their are rules (guidelines) set in place beforehand.
Action 4. Present new information in small chunks and ask for descriptions, discussion, and predictions. I have already stated the importance of having information broken into small chunks. Adding the description, discussion and prediction into the equation will help engage all students, and as Dylan Wiliam puts it, learning is at a high when all are engaged. This will put some responsibility on the students for their own learning. Ex: Reciprocal teaching, Jigsaw, Concept attainment.
Action 5. Ask questions that require students to elaborate on information. This requires the avoidance of yes and no type questions and also simple recall question, but is better suited to having them make decisions based on prior and current learning.
Action 6. Have students write out their conclusions or represent their learning non linguistically. This can be seen in #2, which was previously stated.
Action 7. Have students reflect on their learning. At the end of the Unit to bring all the experiences together, by allowing students to reflect on the material will allow them to actively process the information which has been shared.