Weekly Commentary #4

Discuss any successes or challenges you may have experienced using any of these strategies. Did you
know you were using a high-yield strategy in the first place? How intentional are you when designing
learning experiences for your students?

After reading Marzano’s Nine High-Yield Instructional Strategies I have come to realize that I
have already been unwittingly utilizing many of these in my classroom. I was vaguely aware that some of
these were effective teaching practices, but had not seen any of the quantitative data associated with
them before reading this article. I have found these strategies to be effective in varying degrees
depending on the specific content and the grade levels where they are employed. Some of these
approaches I use almost every single day to great effect and others I have experimented with and have
not been pleased with the results.

By far, the strategy identified by Marzano that I employ most often is “identifying Similarities
and differences”. Every lesson lecture I find myself heavily relying on analogies to illustrate abstract
concepts and in making historical comparisons. I also consistently use the “Frayer Model” for key
vocabulary when teaching middle schoolers. While very effective when we do these together as a class, I
have found that its effectiveness drops off considerably for many students when they complete these
unassisted. I have also been pleased with using Venn diagrams to demonstrate conceptual overlap and
similarly pleased with the effectiveness of employing charts and “trees” of classification for concepts
with many sub-branches. Some examples of when I would use this would be in demonstrating how all
of the various sects of a given religion relate to the broader, generalized faith or in mapping out the
trajectory of a language family.

Another strategy I have been using is “questions and cues” to focus student’s attention on the
important parts of the lesson. This generally takes the form of asking probing questions to students to
explore their thoughts when introducing new content. I also often begin lessons with “bellringers” that
are designed to get students focus their thoughts on the subsequent lesson, as well as displaying lesson
objectives that specify the important things to take away from the classroom lectures and discussions. I
have found that the probing questions in particular are very effective in stimulating interesting thoughts
and conversations; however, if the questions I ask are not pointed or focused enough, the responses can
drift into areas somewhat off topic. Given the differences in learning styles among students, allowing
adequate response times after asking probing questions is also necessary to increase the effectiveness
of this strategy.

I have had an expectation for note-taking and summarizing for students for instructional lessons
at all grade levels; however, the form they take differs significantly by age. Fifth graders, for example
simply fill in the blanks with key words on worksheets of pre-written paragraphs and this process is done
as a group so there can be no ambiguity for the students to know what is important. As grade levels
increase, the “training wheels” correspondingly decrease to the point where high school juniors and
seniors are expected to take notes with no assistance beyond the clues I give with highlighted or
emphasized points in the lectures. Though I generally have not assessed the quality of student’s
notes, their ability to effectively summarize content can be shown in home work and test
questions of the short-answer and essay variety.

One high yield instructional strategy I have attempted on a couple of occasions which
results I have not been pleased with has been in cooperative learning assignments. In theory, it
seems as though this would be a good opportunity for students to work on team-building
strategies, negotiation and organization of roles and responsibilities but in practice it has either
devolved into off task socializing or in unfair workload distribution. I have found group projects
to be of generally low quality, less coherently organized, and a less efficient use of time than
individually assigned projects. I will not give up on attempting this in the future, but I will do so
in a way that has explicit benchmarks and expectations that will hopefully mitigate the
negatives of group work. The ideal would be to have a mix of high, middle and lower achieving
students sharing strengths and perspectives so students can learn from one another.