Weekly Newsletter Post 2

Info From the book: Classroom Instruction That Works by Robert Marzano

***Review from last week:

Remember that Dopamine is needed to move information from our students “working memory” to their long-term memory.  Dopamine is a chemical transmitted in the brain when we are happy and experience joy and success.  Remember, as children, when we live in high stress situations, our brains do not produce the high quantities of dopamine to help our brains function to capacity.  Some of the challenges with limited Dopamine production can be depression, impulse control problems, and attention problems including ADD and ADHD, .

To apply the information from last week, it is imperative that we provide students a framework for moving the information from their “working memory” to their long-term memory.  Robert Marzano (yes, many of us both love and loathe him at the same time) gives us the high yield strategies that can be used in the classroom. Some of his research is scientifically based, some evidence based and some is pulling together other research.  (HOLD That thought …)

Our district is starting to talk a lot about about John Hattie’s work.  John Hattie has done s synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to student achievement.  In his book Visible Learning, (which you will likely see adorning every administrators desk in Manatee County) he looks at the “effect size” of each of the strategies used in the classroom.  We are starting to talk statistics (um …yuck) but an effect size of .5 has the ability to move the children a year with regard to academic growth.  So, what that means is this … any instructional practice or strategy that has an effect size of .5 has been correlated with adequate student growth.  This is amazing research because we, lovers of Title I schools, recognize that growing our students a year is not adequate for their success.  Through this meta-analysis, we can single out the most highly effective instructional strategies that have been proven to grow students more than year.  As a Title I staff member, you have the power and ability to move mountains. 

We started with relationships because we know the effect size of authentic relationships where students live in a “fail safe” and nurturing and most importantly “forgiving” environment makes all the difference in the world. 

I digress … back to Marzano.  I gave you the information about the “effect” size because I wanted you to know how the highest yield instructional practices were selected.  Now that you do, I can move on to explain that EFFECTIVE note taking (yes, note-taking) is pivotal.  Please focus on the word EFFECTIVE.  Effective note-taking is not copying information down verbatim or from the board.  Effective note-taking follows these concepts:

• Deleting Trivial Information that does not help comprehension
• Deleting redundant information
• Substituting superordinate words for lists (ex: flowers for daisies, pansies, roses, etc.)
• Selecting or inventing topic sentences or summary sentences if they do not exist.

Happy Teaching and “just keep swimming.”  You make a difference every day!