Lessons
Each of the ten design areas corresponds with a design question. These are a set of questions that help teachers plan units and lessons within those units. Table I.2 shows the design questions that correspond with each design area.
Table I.2: Design Questions
| Design Areas | Design Questions | |
| Feedback | 1. Providing and Communicating Clear Learning Goals | How will I communicate clear learning goals that help students understand the progression of knowledge they are expected to master and where they are along that progression? |
| 2. Using Assessment | How will I design and administer assessments that help students understand how their test scores and grades are related to their status on the progression of knowledge they are expected to master? | |
| Content | 3. Constructing Direct Instruction Lessons | When content is new, how will I design and deliver direct instruction lessons that help students understand which parts of the content are important and how the parts fit together? |
| 4. Conducting Practicing and Deepening Lessons | After presenting content, how will I design and deliver lessons that help students deepen their understanding and develop fluency in skills and processes? | |
| 5. Conducting Knowledge Application Lessons | After presenting content, how will I design and deliver lessons that help students generate and defend claims through knowledge application? | |
| 6. Using Strategies That Appear in All Types of Lessons | Throughout all types of lessons, what strategies will I use to help students continually integrate new knowledge with old knowledge and revise their understanding accordingly? | |
| Context | 7. Using Engagement | What engagement strategies will I use to help students pay attention, be energized, be intrigued, and be inspired? |
| 8. Implementing Rules and Procedures | What strategies will I use to help students understand and follow rules and procedures? | |
| 9. Building Relationships | What strategies will I use to help students feel welcome, accepted, and valued? | |
| 10. Communicating High Expectations | What strategies will I use to help typically reluctant students feel valued and comfortable interacting with me or their peers? |
Source: Marzano, 2017, pp. 6–7.
Within the ten categories of teacher actions, we have organized sets of strategies in even more fine-grained categories, called elements.
Forty-Three Elements
The forty-three elements provide detailed guidance about the nature and purpose of a category of strategies. Table I.3 depicts the full complement of elements. For example, we operationally define the category building relationships as:
• Using verbal and nonverbal behaviors that indicate affection for students (element 38)
• Understanding students’ backgrounds and interests (element 39)
• Displaying objectivity and control (element 40)
Finally, these forty-three elements encompass hundreds of specific instructional strategies. Selected strategies related to writing instruction are the focus of this book.
Over 330 Specific Strategies
At the finest level of detail are over 330 specific instructional strategies embedded in the forty-three elements. For example, element 24—increasing response rates—includes the following nine strategies.
1. Random names
2. Hand signals
3. Response cards
4. Response chaining
5. Paired response
6. Choral response
7. Wait time
8. Elaborative interrogation
9. Multiple types of questions
In effect, there are nine distinctive, specific instructional strategies teachers can use to increase students’ response rates, supporting the fact that two different teachers could both effectively improve their students’ learning by boosting response rates but with very different techniques. The reader will note that throughout the text we have addressed only those elements—and strategies within elements—that relate directly to writing instruction. Therefore, the breadth of this book will not extend to explanations and examples related to writing instruction for each of the more than three hundred strategies.
Table I.3: Elements Within the Ten Design Areas
| Feedback | Content | Context |
| Providing and Communicating Clear Learning Goals 1. Providing scales and rubrics 2. Tracking student progress 3. Celebrating success Using Assessments 4. Using informal assessments of the whole class 5. Using formal assessments of individual students |
Conducting Direct Instruction Lessons
6. Chunking content
7. Processing content
|
