Book Summary: Classroom Instruction that Works, 2nd Edition

Classroom Instruction that Works--Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement, 2nd Edition (Ceri Dean, Elizabeth Hubbell, Howard Pitler, Bj Stone, ASCD McREL, 2012)

I have read and used the 2001 version of this book, which for many of us was our first exposure to Robert Marzano.  In that book he and his coauthors Debra Pickering and Jane Pollock identified the "notable nine"--nine instructional strategies that have been assigned effect sizes for their supposed correlation with student achievement.  For many BHS teachers the data behind these strategies validated lesson planning choices that were already being made, and for others the book may have influenced some changes in how teaching was planned, but building-wide I don't think there was any large effect from the book because we didn't attempt to implement a planned and monitored program around the nine concepts.  Even now, under the PLA/Transformation Plan, there is no intervention based on utilizing the notable nine.  However, the redesign plan through its various elements (teacher performance evaluation, data teams, formative assessment, differentiated instruction, common lesson plan format) does require teachers to be very creative in instructional design--to select strategies that best address students' needs and that create the greatest student growth toward learning goals.  For that reason teachers will need a large repertoire of strategies; the information in this book can be a good starting point.

In my opinion this 2nd edition is superior to the first as a usable resource for teachers.  In the 1st edition a lot of time is spent in discussing the meta-analyses that were done to compute the effect sizes, and then the strategies are listed in order by effect size.  But, this order isn't particularly helpful to lesson planning, and the book didn't always provide much help for actually putting the nine categories into action in a classroom.  One of the best detailed explanations in the 1st edition is about how to directly teach vocabulary--great stuff! but not even one of the nine strategies.  Also very helpful from the first book is the discussion of how to approach teaching different types of knowledge:  details, organizing ideas, skills, processes.  What's nice about the 2nd edition is that it takes this useful information that was in just one chapter of the first book and reorganizes the whole text to give clearer direction to teachers.

Introduction

The notable nine are categorized into three groups:

• Strategies to create the environment for learning
• Strategies to help students develop understanding
• Strategies to help students extend and apply knowledge

The introduction also contains a section on the importance of developing good student-teacher relationships in the classroom, something that I don't recall the first book dwelling on.  Yet, we all know this is critical.  If students and teachers don't like and respect each other, then no strategies, however notable, are going to work.

Part 1 Creating the Environment for Learning

Chapter 1 Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback

The 2nd edition gives an average 0.31 effect size for setting objectives and a 0.76 effect size for providing feedback.  What this means is that when recommended techniques for these strategies are used with fidelity, students should increase their achievement by about 12% and 28% respectively.  That is, if a student would score 50% on a test without having received the strategy, she should score about 50 + 12 + 28 = 90% when receiving the two strategies.  Of course, we know it doesn't really work this way; in fact, this overestimation of the influence of effect size is a common criticism of the work of researchers such as Marzano or John Hattie.  It's not so simple as just picking a few strategies with large effect sizes and thinking that alone is going to raise students' achievement.  No doubt despite researchers best efforts to control other factors there is still overlap between the influence of instructional strategies, for example, the 28 percentile gain predicted from feedback might overlap the 12 percentile gain from objectives.  Also, these are just averages from multiple research studies--some studies in which there were negligible or even negative associations between a strategy and achievement.  The 2nd edition authors are more forthright about this, and that's why they don't dwell on the "size" of the effect size, but instead have sought to identify features within the strategies that would seem to lead to positive correlations with learning.  It is these recommendations and tips that I want to summarize here.

Recommendations for setting objectives in the classroom:

• Set learning objectives that are specific but not restrictive
• Communicate the learning objectives to students and parents
• Connect the learning objectives to previous and future learning
• Engage students in setting personal learning objectives

So, students are supposed to average about 12% better on assessments if we use objectives (learning goals) in our classrooms.  Well, I did that last year and am not convinced that my students did any better (they may have done worse than the previous year's students).  How could this happen if there is a 0.31 effect size?  Well, what if the largest portion of that effect size comes from students personalizing the objectives and that wasn't something that I handled effectively?  (It's actually kind of hard for students to personalize algebra learning goals--they're so removed from their experience.)  There's just no way for me to know for sure what's going on because the book doesn't detail the original research; it just gives average effects.  Yet, I can do my best to follow the recommendations in the hope that there will be some positive influence upon student achievement.  

Recommendations for providing feedback:

• Provide feedback that addresses what is correct and elaborates on what students need to do next
• Provide feedback appropriately in time to meet students' needs
• Provide feedback that is criterion referenced
• Engage students in the feedback process

The book gives some explanation for each of these recommendations and then concludes the chapter with additional tips for setting objectives and providing feedback.  Here are the tips:

1. 1.   State learning objectives in simple language and in terms of knowledge rather than learning activities.
2. 2.   Relate the learning objectives to things that are personally relevant to students.
3. 3.   Model for students how to set their own learning objectives, and provide feedback on the learning objectives they set.
4. 4.   Periodically check student understanding of the learning objectives.
5. 5.   Select content sources, discussion questions, activities, assignments, and assessment methods according to how well they help students achieve learning objectives.
6. 6.   Provide students with information about what good performance or high-quality work looks like well before an assessment.
7. 7.   Provide students with feedback as soon after the event as possible and throughout a unit of instruction--not just at the end of a unit.
8. 8.   After providing students with feedback about what they did correctly and what they need to do to improve performance, provide opportunities for them to continue working on the task until they succeed.
9. 9.   Consider using technology to increase the rate of feedback, help organize it, and document it for further reflection.

Chapter 2 Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition

This chapter begins with a discussion of the importance of motivation and identifies several factors that influence motivation:  student beliefs, parent beliefs, cultural beliefs, teacher beliefs, student beliefs in their own competence and whether they have any control over the outcome of a task, student interest in a task and the reason why they're interested.  The research cited in the chapter indicates links between the two instructional strategies and the following variables that affect motivation:

• Self-efficacy:  beliefs about one's competency
• Control beliefs:  beliefs about one's ability to influence what is happening or will happen
• Intrinsic motivation:  motivation that comes from an individual's desire for self-satisfaction or pleasure in completing the task rather than from an external source, such as a reward
• Task value:  beliefs about the reasons for doing a task

Recommendations for reinforcing effort:

• Teach students about the relationship between effort and achievement
• Provide students with explicit guidance about exactly what it means to expend effort
• Ask students to keep track of their effort and achievement

Recommendations for providing recognition:

• Promote a mastery-goal orientation
• Provide praise that is specific and aligned with expected performance and behaviors
• Use concrete symbols of recognition

The first recommendation goes hand in hand with differentiated instruction, but it isn't enough to just establish multiple performance levels for a learning goal.  If students are to derive any feeling of recognition from mastering goals (in turn enhancing their motivation), then the goals have to be masterable (this isn't a word, but it should be).  So, when differentiating, we have to ensure that goals and tasks are scaffolded for students so that they experience success and are able to progress.  At BHS the data team process will classify student performances on pretests into four levels, the last being Intervention Students--students far to go and not likely to become proficient.  For these students the teacher may have to develop completely different goals and tasks and delay the targeted learning goal until students are developmentally in the ballpark.

Tips for Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition

1. Ensure that your curriculum recognizes the importance of effort by allocating time over the course of the academic year to assist students in learning about effort and how to apply and track it.  This means building attention to effort into curriculum documents and lesson design and delivery.
2. Reinforce what effort is and how knowledge about effort translates into success inside and beyond the classroom.  This helps students develop a sense of control over their learning.
3. Keep praise simple and direct, using straightforward sentences without gushing or dramatizing.
4. Specify the particular accomplishment being praised, pointing out any noteworthy effort, care or perseverance and calling attention to new skills or evidence of progress.
5. Vary the phrases you use to praise students, and use nonverbal communication along with praise to convey warmth and appreciation for students' efforts and achievements.

Chapter 3 Cooperative Learning

By glossing over the research and effect sizes that were such a major part of the 2001 edition, the 2nd edition I think is missing some crucial information for us with respect to cooperative learning.  So, I'm going to include some of the 1st edition information in the summary that concerned homogeneous vs. heterogeneous grouping.  I believe this is important to us at BHS because of two initiatives starting in 2012 - 2013:  ability-grouped sections and differentiated instruction.  While one consequence of enrolling students into sections of a course based on standardized test scores is to make each section more homogeneous, which facilitates differentiated instruction, our data team protocol will still generate four classifications of students per classroom.  And, while targeting instructional activities to these students doesn't necessarily mean separating them into ability-grouped cooperative groups, in many instances that is a realistic way to accommodate differentiation.  With that in mind, here are the pertinent research-based facts:

• Cooperative grouping (if implemented with fidelity to cooperative learning models such as Johnson's 5 elements, Kagan's structures, or Cohen's model) has positive effect sizes vs. no grouping for all ability levels
• Cooperative grouping, if implemented poorly, has a negative association with student achievement (i.e., students will do worse when teachers subject them to poor cooperative learning experiences)
• Low-ability grouping:  has a large negative effect size vs. heterogeneous grouping
• Middle-ability grouping:  has a large positive effect size vs. heterogeneous grouping
• High-ability grouping:  has a very small positive effect size vs. heterogeneous grouping
• Group size:  Pairs:  small positive effect size; 3-4:  slightly bigger effect size; 5-7:  tiny negative effect size

This data has several inferences for us.  One, we should make effective cooperative grouping a systematic part of our instructional program and follow all recommendations for what makes grouping effective.  Two, we need to keep group size to a maximum of 4 students--this means that when differentiating we can't just split up the class into four groups, we need to make sure that groups are of appropriate size.  Three, we need to be very careful with the tasks given to our groups.  It doesn't surprise me that when high-ability groups are formed that there isn't much gain vs. heterogeneous groups because in either case the performance of the group will be largely established by the ability of the "smartest" student or students in the group.  The data about middle-ability groups is a little surprising--it seems to indicate that a group of middle-ability students will outperform a heterogeneous group that might contain one or more high-ability students.  I wonder if research has looked into why this might occur.  But, our more important concern at BHS has to be  with low-ability groups, whether they happen to be the "lowest" group in a classroom or whether they are groups formed in our "lowest" section of a class (which may or may not be the section that contains many of the special education-identified students).  What will that "lowest" cooperative group in the "lowest" section of a class be like?  And, what is the realistic potential for that group to master the content identified in our high school courses?  Teachers will need to do some serious reflection here and make some important decisions about grouping.  Maybe in some sections of a class any cooperative groups will need to be made as heterogeneously as possible considering the students in those sections.  Or, maybe goals and tasks will need to be scaffolded so that they are manageable for students.  I've already mentioned in this summary and in others that a basic tenet of differentiation is to give students what they need and that sometimes this means delaying the "required content standards" until a time when they're developmentally appropriate for a student.  

Back to the 2nd edition...

Tips for cooperative learning:

1. Establish a classroom culture that supports cooperative learning by being clear with students about the norms and parameters within which cooperative learning will take place.
2. Focus on the underpinnings that lead to group success by establishing and teaching the structures and processes students will follow as they work in cooperative groups.  Model what students should do as they move into and work in their cooperative groups.  Be sure they understand how to use the social skills required of them.
3. Provide additional instruction, practice, and corrective feedback on the social skills necessary to function successfully in cooperative groups.
4. Ensure that the use of cooperative learning aligns with the intent for learning.  When the target for learning includes mastery of skills or processes, balance the use of cooperative learning with sufficient opportunities for students to practice those skills and processes independently.
5. To avoid misuse of cooperative learning, use cooperative learning tasks that are well structured.  A well-structured task has clearly defined goals for learning, roles, and responsibilities for each member, and it maintains individual accountability.
6. Design cooperative learning tasks to include strategic use of other instructional strategies that help students deepen their understanding and use knowledge meaningfully.

Two final comments:  (1) remember that you are to score students' progress toward successful cooperative learning as one of the life skill goals, (2) I wish that our school would establish specific expectations for building-wide cooperative grouping structures and protocols (like we have for a reading & writing strategy) because if all students were engaging in the same structures upward of six times per day, then we'd likely have more success with teaching our students the social and work skills needed during groupwork.

Part 2 Helping Students Develop Understanding

Chapter 4 Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers

Recommendations for Cues and Questions:

• Focus on what is important
• Use explicit cues
• Ask inferential questions
• Ask analytic questions

The first piece of advice reminds me of something I read elsewhere, but I can't remember where.  It had to do with selecting appropriate activities to engage or hook students.  At the start of a lesson a teacher did a really cool demonstration--lots of fire and explosions--and followed up with the science concept.  But, when students left the classroom that day, all they remembered was the fire and explosions, they had missed the important science because the cue was too distracting.  Maybe the lesson would have been more effective had the science been discussed first, then the neat demonstration, then a quality summary to tie the demonstration back to the concepts.

This section also reminds me of the recent book summary I did for math teachers using the book Accessible Mathematics.  Non-math teachers might want to check it out too in the Livebinder because it'll make you feel good--the premise is that math teachers should start teaching like other teachers because students are usually more engaged in those other classes.  Math teachers need to start using the strategies that other content area teachers use.  And, specifically in regard to questioning, math teachers need to get away from the basic "what is the answer?" and start using inferential and analytic questions.  It may have been in that summary where I cited a quote from a teacher that went something like "I never ask a question for which I already know the answer."  What she was getting at is that she doesn't waste her class time asking students to do factual recall, but she asks questions that get at how and why they're thinking what they're thinking.  Good advice for all content area teachers.

Recommendations for Advance Organizers:

• Use expository advance organizers
• Use narrative advance organizers
• Use skimming as an advance organizer
• Use graphic advance organizers

All of this reminds me of our commitment in 2012 - 2013 to make pre-teaching an integral part of our lesson design.  The lesson planning form lists the steps to follow for direct instruction of vocabulary (part of which is pre-teaching).  The 1st edition of the book gives an effect size of 0.32 for direct vocabulary instruction.  And, while I can't locate any specific effect sizes for other instructional strategies that involve pre-teaching (not even in John Hattie's book), common sense would indicate that if teachers prepare students ahead of time regarding what content and activities are upcoming, then students would be better prepared to succeed with them.

Chapter 5 Nonlinguistic Representations

Recommendations:

• Use graphic organizers
• Make physical models or manipulatives
• Generate mental pictures
• Create pictures, illustrations, and pictographs
• Engage in kinesthetic activities

With respect to graphic organizers, remember that a few years ago our school made a commitment to using Thinking Maps (well, a weak and short-lived commitment due to no follow-up) so we would probably achieve the greatest benefit if we used those building wide.  I'll link the Thinking Maps website to the Livebinder as an instructional resource to remind everyone what the maps are and which type of thinking each is used for.  

Tips for Teaching Using Nonlinguistic Representations

1. Model the use of the strategies for nonlinguistic representation through demonstrations and think-alouds.
2. Provide students with opportunities to practice each of the strategies with familiar information before they are expected to use the strategies with new material.  This makes it possible for students to focus on the process and not worry about learning new content at the same time.
3. Provide students with a variety of opportunities to use nonlinguistic representations as they learn new content.
4. Model how students can use more than one nonlinguistic representation as they learn a new concept or vocabulary term.
5. Provide students with information about and opportunities to use graphic organizers when developing summaries, taking notes, identifying similarities and differences, generating and testing hypotheses, and organizing information that may be difficult or poorly organized.

Chapter 6 Summarizing and Note Taking

The 1st edition gave an average effect size for this category of 1.00 (that's big).  The 2nd edition separates the two strategies and gives effect sizes of 0.90 for note taking and 0.32 for summarizing.  Thus, effective note taking is a more powerful strategy than summarizing.  We have building-wide strategies for both, but only the Stop & Jot (followed by a written summary) is specifically mentioned in the PLA/Transformation Plan and included in the teacher evaluation system as a scored element (note:  remember that not only are you to regularly--like every day--make use of literacy strategies in your classroom, you are to formally score and submit data to the Reading & Writing committee according to the schedule given in the Google Calendar, which is available via the Livebinder and other places).  However, you are strongly encouraged to teach and require your students to use the Cornell notes method.  I'll link some information about Cornell notes in the Livebinder as an instructional resource.  But, if you are already familiar with Cornell notes, you know that they combine note taking with summarizing, so in a sense Cornell notes is simply an alternative to the Stop & Jot + Summary method for reading comprehension.  Check out the Reading & Writing tab or the Instructional Coach tab in the Livebinder for more information.

Recommendations for Summarizing:

• Teach students the rule-based summarizing strategy
• Use summary frames
• Engage students in reciprocal teaching

Each of these three strategies deserves some explanation.  

Rule-based summarizing:  "The rule-based summarizing strategy helps to demystify the process of summarizing by providing explicit, concrete steps to follow" (p. 80).  Here are the steps:

1. Take out material that is not important to understanding.
2. Take out words that repeat information.
3. Replace a list of things with one word that describes them (e.g., replace "oak, elm, and maple" with "trees").
4. Find a topic sentence or create one if it's missing.
5. Optional step:  share the summary rough draft with a peer, then revise.

The text states that when rule-based summarizing is used school wide, students receive the greatest benefit.  At BHS we are to teach a building-wide literacy intervention (Stop & Jot + summary), and we could simply add to this a common note-taking approach (Cornell).

Summary frames:  These guide how students approach summarization based upon the structure of the information to be summarized.  Pages 83 - 88 discuss six frames (sets of questions students would address in their summary):  narrative, topic-restriction-illustration, definition, argumentation, problem-solution, conversation.  The point of these is to support students in summarizing instead of making them guess at what constitutes a good summary.

Reciprocal teaching:  Consulting my John Hattie book (he researched effect sizes for 150 different strategies), I see that reciprocal teaching was the 11th most powerful instructional strategy.  Even though it is a specific procedural thing, it's up there with the likes of major system strategies such as RTI, formative evaluation, and intervening with LD students.  It is more effective than strategies like direct instruction, peer tutoring, and giving homework.  Those three strategies are perennial favorites for a lot teachers, but how many of us utilize reciprocal teaching which supposedly is even more effective?  Reciprocal teaching is basically a cooperative learning strategy in which the group collaborates to deepen their understanding of a topic.  Pages 88 - 89 explain it very well, but in brief here it is:

1. It's used primarily with expository text.
2. When students first learn it, the teacher will need to model how to use the four comprehension strategies that are the heart of the process:  summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting.
3. Gradually the teacher releases control of these strategies to the students.
4. Groups of 4; roles:  summarizer, questioner, clarifier, and predictor (note:  with smaller groups, students just take on additional roles)
5. Step 1:  The summarizer reads a short passage and summarizes it.  Other students may add to the summary.
6. Step 2:  The questioner asks questions in order to identify important information.  The rest of the group answers the questions to move deeper into the meaning of the text.
7. Step 3:  The clarifier clarifies vocabulary words, pronunciations, and new or misunderstood terms.
8. Step 4:  The predictor asks for predictions of what will happen next based on relevant information that the group already possesses.

Notice how reciprocal teaching combines cooperative learning with summarizing and note taking, inferential and evaluative questions (higher order thinking), peer discussion and feedback, and I suppose even nonlinguistic representations and identification of similarities and differences if the group's discussion goes down that route.  So, it's no surprise that it's a powerful technique since it incorporates many of the notable nine.

Recommendations for Note Taking:

• Give students teacher-prepared notes
• Teach students a variety of note-taking formats
• Provide opportunities for students to revise their notes and use them for review

I'll share a strategy that the math department has committed to in 2012 - 2013.  Each teacher will use Academic Notebooks (Learning Logs, journals, whatever you want to all them) that are to be stored in the classroom and used to store the artifacts of students' class work including notes and summaries.  Class time will be provided for students to regularly interact with their own notebook (review it, write a summary, copy down some of the notes, create a practice problem to match a procedure, etc.) so they can in effect take home information from the notebook without the actual notebook ever leaving the classroom.  Math teachers have decided on this approach in the attempt to support BHS students who don't study for upcoming assessments, don't practice, and don't use their notes effectively.

Tips

1. Post the appropriate steps for rule-based summarizing, and reference the poster as students summarize information.
2. Come to an agreement with colleagues about the version of rule-based summarizing that will be used throughout the school.
3. Provide students with opportunities to practice summarizing and note-taking techniques using familiar information before they are expected to use them with new material.
4. Model the note-taking process several times before students are expected to demonstrate an understanding and appropriate use of the various formats.
5. When students practice note taking, provide explicit corrective feedback that helps them elaborate on their understanding and improve their note-taking skills.
6. Instruct students to leave space between each note they take to create room to add to their notes as they continue learning about a topic.
7. Intentionally build time into your lesson plans for students to review and edit their notes.  Do not expect students to take care of this important step on their own, especially if they have had no prior experience doing so.
8. When possible, provide time for students to share their thinking with other students.  This provides opportunities to rehearse their learning, use relevant vocabulary, and deepen their understanding.

Chapter 7 Assigning Homework and Providing Practice

While the 1st edition found a positive effect size for homework (it was next to nothing for elementary homework and greater for high school homework), the 2nd edition authors state that the association needs to be used carefully because other factors influence the effectiveness of homework:  degree of parental involvement and support, homework quality, students' learning preferences, and structure and monitoring of assignments. If a school or teacher decides to use homework, then here are some recommendations:

• Develop and communicate a district or school homework policy
• Design homework assignments that support academic learning and communicate their purpose
• Provide feedback on assigned homework

In 2012 - 2013 the math department, at least in its double-dosed classes where more time is available to do practice during the school day, has established a No Homework policy.  The reasoning behind this decision is:  (1) many BHS students don't receive adequate support at home or have a fair opportunity to complete homework outside of school hours, (2) math homework is generally used to increase fluency but that can only be done with skills that students have already mastered, (3) most BHS students don't do assigned homework, (4) failure to complete assigned homework, whether because students don't know how to do it, do it incorrectly, or choose not to do it damages students' motivation and self-efficacy in the classroom.  Math teachers believe they will be further ahead in the long run by dumping the non-effective practice of using homework at BHS.  I think that other content area teachers need to reflect on their experience with homework completion, and if it's historically been a struggle, then to bag it.  Unless BHS is going to institute a homework policy accompanied by a homework completion policy (one that we stick to--we dumped ZAP/working lunch after just one year because we couldn't manage the number of students who didn't complete their work), then homework is a lost cause for us.  With classwork we seem to have much better luck in getting students' compliance to do the assignments, especially when appropriate classroom environments and teacher-student and student-student relationships are developed.  If we keep giving homework and expecting it to be done, but students don't do it and we have no workable mechanism to follow-up and arrive at compliance, then we're reinforcing exactly the wrong sort of academic culture.  We don't want students to not succeed with instructional tasks, and unfortunately homework is a task that for whatever reason many students don't complete successfully.  Let's replace homework with distributed in-class practice.

Now, having suggested that, I realize that beginning in 2012 - 2013 there is a 7th period class which is primarily a study hall for students to complete assigned work.  What work are they to complete if not homework that was assigned that day?  I think that it could be short assignments given by teachers with the specific intent that they are to be completed in 7th period.  7th period is 40 minutes long, and if every one of a student's six teachers gave an assignment, then it would be fair to make each assignment require about 6 minutes of time from students.  Examples:  a reflective question in science, create a thesis statement for an upcoming writing assignment in ELA, five practice problems (over a skill that students' have already mastered) in math, study notes taken from social studies' academic journals for an upcoming test, etc.  But, we would need to agree as a staff that a teacher isn't going to break ranks and assign a 30-minute worksheet, or 20 math problems, or a 4-week extended project.  Unless......  For instance, maybe 11th and 12th graders should have greater requirements relative to independent/outside of class work?  Maybe there is some big research paper expectation in an ELA class that necessitates extended outside of class time?  These sorts of special cases are why the school should have a policy so teachers can make instructional decisions that support overall school improvement goals.

Recommendations for practice:

• Clearly identify and communicate the purpose of practice activities
• Design practice sessions that are short, focused, and distributed over time
• Provide feedback on practice sessions

If the purpose of doing practice math problems is to increase accuracy and fluency, then tell students that and create a structure for the practice that aligns with this purpose.  Research apparently indicates that students need to practice a skill at least 24 times before they reach 80% competency (p. 111, taken from Anderson, 1995).  In a math class I don't think this means to assign 24 problems once.  Instead, I think it's closer to meaning students should practice a skill on 24 separate occasions!  All teachers, not just math teachers, need to put some careful thought into lesson planning this year to distribute practice over time, something that I don't think many of us have been doing very effectively in the past.

I also want to offer some comments about how practice might relate to our formative assessment system.  Teachers are to make at least four "status checks" (checks for understanding, formative assessments, whatever you want to call them) during the instructional phase of any learning goal.  The first must be a pretest, for reasons explained elsewhere.  The second and third should be checks for understanding along the way.  Now, these checks can be scored using the 4-point scale and the scores can be entered into the TIES gradebook, but more important is to provide students appropriate and timely feedback from these checks.  If a score such as 2.5, when matched to a rubric, is sufficient to give students useful information about what they do and don't yet understand, then great, but if a lone number isn't sufficient, then the teacher needs to provide better feedback.  TIES isn't going to compute students' "final" LG scores in the same way as Pinnacle--there is no learning trend that is automatically calculated.  Instead, the teacher will record the pretest score, but with an assigned weight of 0, and can record the second and third scores (again with 0 weight), and then the fourth/final score (with 100% weight).  This final score could be an actual score earned on the fourth/summative assessment for a LG, but really it should be the teacher's best judgment of the student's final status.  In addition, if at any point in time a student demonstrates a change in status (up or down), the teacher needs only to replace that post-test score in order to modify the final score for the LG.  I mention all of this because there is no reason that the 2nd and 3rd "scores" can't be taken from assigned practice problems.  Practice is not necessarily separate from formative assessment; teachers may use whatever activities they wish as their mechanism to gather data about students' current status toward a learning goal.

Part 3 Helping Students Extend and Apply Knowledge

Chapter 8 Identifying Similarities and Differences

The 1st edition gave an effect size of 1.61 for this category.  The 2nd edition gives the effect size as 0.66.  Oops!  Maybe Marzano, et al. were a little ambitious with respect to the awesomeness of this category.  But, 0.66 is nothing to sneeze at; it equates to a 25 percentile point gain.  Just remember my caveat from the start of this summary, this strategy isn't mutually exclusive of all of the rest.  It's not like students will gain 25% on top of all the other points they've gained if you do the other eight strategies.  There's probably quite a bit of overlap between this strategy and note taking, let's say, or nonlinguistic representation.  

There are many methods you can use to have students focus on similarities and differences.  Some are graphical--there's a Thinking Map specifically for this type of thinking.  And another Thinking Map to create analogies.  Cornell notes can focus on this strategy.  Even our Stop & Jot strategy can have students go after similarities or differences--it's all in the purpose you give to students when telling them to stop and jot something.

Pages 133 - 134 give good tips, but this summary is getting monstrously long, and I'm getting tired of typing. So, you're all encouraged to read it for yourself if interested in more explanation about how to go about having students compare, classify, create a metaphor, or create an analogy.

Chapter 9 Generating and Testing Hypotheses

This strategy isn't just for science class.  Recommendations are:

• Engage students in a variety of structured tasks for generating and testing hypotheses
• Ask students to explain their hypotheses and their conclusions

Some structured tasks:

• Systems analysis:  analyzing the parts of a system and how they interact
• Problem solving:  overcoming constraints or limiting conditions that are in the way of achieving goals
• Experimental inquiry:  generating and testing explanations of observed phenomena
• Investigation:  identifying and resolving issues regarding past events about which there are confusions or contradictions

*Each of these tasks has step-by-step procedures.

Part 4 Putting the Instructional Strategies to Use

Chapter 10 Instructional Planning using the Nine Categories of Strategies

In conclusion, the book is a great resource for teachers who want to try different approaches this year.  Data teams may find it useful when trying to agree on instructional strategies to test out in classrooms (e.g., maybe the Electives data team might agree to try out reciprocal teaching for a few months).  Please remember that when I'm not busy with the data coordinating part of my job description I am available to support you in any of these strategies.  Even those that I'm no expert in (like not ending sentences with prepositions).  I can be a second set of hands in the classroom, can help you to do lesson plans, or can gather or create materials.  I can just observe your class or video record it if you like, afterward debriefing with you to see how a strategy that you are trying out is coming along.  Any work that you do with me is confidential and has nothing to do with your evaluation from Suzanne.  Please see the Instructional Coach tab in the Livebinder for more information about the supports available to you.