So, I am probably going to embarrass Mr. Schuyler Emde by giving him a shout out, but I feel it is necessary. For those of you who don’t know, Schuyler is one of my former students and is currently rocking as a paraeducator in Miss Lauren Wilcox’s room. He stops by from time to time and we talk football, life, and teaching. Last Thursday he stopped by and asked if I was going to pick up any quarterbacks for the week in fantasy. I stated that I was pretty happy with my options and we both carry on with the day.
Later on that evening I decided to double check my quarterback options, just in case I was missing something. There it was. Tyrod Taylor doubtful for Sunday’s game due to a knee issue! What?! Had I been monitoring my lineup?! Nope! Major mistake! If my desired effect is winning the Gnome trophy, I really need to do a better job of monitoring my lineup throughout the week.
Now, I ‘m sure you weren’t ready for a vocabulary lesson today. Are we ever? I mean, let’s be honest. However, in order to really understand ways to monitor students for the desired effect, we need to take a look at some terminology. Bear with me and I promise the end result will be worth the wait!
Important (Critical Content) Vocabulary terms and their definitions:
Desired Result or Effect
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The intended result for the student(s) due to the implementation of a specific strategy. In other words, how we want the students to respond or behave in response to the strategy.
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Monitoring
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The act of checking for evidence of the desired result of a specific strategy while the strategy is being implemented.
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The test results are too late! How many times have we heard or experienced this reality? My hand is in the air right now. Can you see it? In Five Ways to Incorporate Student Monitoring into Lessons, the Marzano Center staff point out that we (teachers) need to monitor the relationship between teaching and learning while it is happening. When done well, monitoring clears misconceptions before students leave for the day so they don’t live with errors in reasoning and rehearse those errors in their homework assignments. It also allows teachers to capture additional instructional time, once students have demonstrated mastery of key concepts and skills.
So, in what ways can we monitor students? What if the answer lies within the desired effect? Monitoring should look different within each segment. Let’s take a look at Element 8 Previewing New Content and Element 24 Noticing When Students are Not Engaged. The chart below will help us to unpack these elements.
Focus Statement
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Teacher Evidence
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Desired Effect
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Student Evidence
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Ways I could monitor
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Element 8 Previewing New Content
(Lesson Segment Addressing Content)
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The teacher engages students in previewing activities that require students to access prior knowledge and analyze new content.
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Teacher uses anticipation guide
Teacher uses digital resources to help students make linkages
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Students make a link from what they know to what is about to be learned: activating prior knowledge.
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Students make predictions about upcoming content
Students can provide a purpose for what they are about to learn
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Conference with students during their work time, coaching, prompting, and questioning students as appropriate to the anticipation guide.
Vote with your feet
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Element 24 Noticing When Students are Not Engaged
(Lesson Segment Enacted on the Spot)
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The teacher scans the room and notices when students are not paying attention or not cognitively engaged and takes overt action.
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Teacher notices when specific students or groups of students are not paying attention or not cognitively engaged
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Students modify their level of engagement as a result of teacher action.
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Students increase their level of engagement when the teacher uses engagement strategies
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Scan the room and recognize potential sources of disruption and deal with them immediately
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**Consider the following: How does knowing the focus statement of an element help us to implement the instructional strategy correctly? What if we try to make a connection between the focus statement and the teacher evidences? How do the teacher evidences help us to plan to implement a strategy correctly? Next, let’s make a connection between the desired effect and the student evidence. If we put it all together, in what ways could we plan to monitor for the desired effect?
Now, take a moment to reflect upon what you already do to monitor students. Keep in mind that monitoring should always have two components: 1) something that students do (student evidence) to demonstrate the desired effect of the technique; and 2) something that the teacher does (teacher evidence) to check for the desired effect and respond to students’ progress. How might you tweak this technique to include the majority or all of your students and drive your instruction?
Additional reading:
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