Conducting Practicing and Deepening Lessons
9. Using structured practice sessions
10. Examining similarities and differences
11. Examining errors in reasoning
Conducting Knowledge Application Lessons
12. Engaging students in cognitively complex tasks
13. Providing resources and guidance
14. Generating and defending claims
Using Strategies That Appear in All Types of Lessons
15. Previewing strategies
16. Highlighting critical information
17. Reviewing content
18. Revising knowledge
19. Reflecting on learning
20. Assigning purposeful homework
21. Elaborating on information
22. Organizing students to interact
Some strategies use the same or similar terms; for example, the strategy of summary appears in element 8 (strategy 40, summaries), element 10 (strategy 59, summaries), and element 17 (strategy 133, summary). This is because teachers will use strategies differently depending on their particular purpose as we show in the following example.
• Element 8: In chapter 3 (page 46), “Conducting Direct Instruction Lessons,” element 8—recording and representing content—asks that students summarize content briefly and quickly to identify critical information and describe how the pieces fit together.
• Element 10: In chapter 4 (page 61), “Conducting Practicing and Deepening Lessons,” element 10 focuses on students examining similarities and differences. Students can succinctly summarize the attributes of two opposing topics through a graphic organizer or other method.
• Element 17: In chapter 6 (page 98), “Using Strategies That Appear in All Types of Lessons,” element 17 suggests that students use summaries to review content. Teachers can furnish a summary for students or ask students to prepare them as the basis for an ensuing discussion.
Figure A.1 in appendix A (page 156) presents an overview of the entire New Art and Science of Teaching framework featuring the three overarching categories (feedback, content, and context), ten teacher actions, forty-three elements, and over 330 accompanying strategies. This figure can serve as an advance organizer while reading this book.
The Need for Subject-Specific Models
General models like The New Art and Science of Teaching certainly have their place in a teacher’s understanding of effective instruction. However, teachers must adapt those models to specific subject areas to produce the most powerful results. That is what we have attempted to do in this book. Specifically, in the following chapters, we address the three overarching categories—(1) feedback, (2) content, and (3) context—with their corresponding ten teacher actions and the embedded forty-three elements. We do so by providing concrete examples for how to apply a generous representation of the hundreds of instructional strategies expressly for writing, with some reading as well, since these areas of literacy closely align and interconnect.
Although this text predominantly provides suggestions to support lesson planning around writing instruction, we encourage readers to explore the foundational book The New Art and Science of Teaching (Marzano, 2017). In doing so, they will likely infuse their content areas and grades with additional strategies. For example, element 16—highlighting critical information—encompasses the following eleven strategies.
1. Repeating the most important content
2. Asking questions that focus on critical information
3. Using visual activities
4. Using narrative activities
5. Using tone of voice, gestures, and body position
6. Using pause time
7. Identifying critical-input experiences
8. Using explicit instruction to convey critical content
9. Using dramatic instruction to convey critical content
10. Providing advance organizers to cue critical content
11. Using what students already know to cue critical content
Teachers could wisely incorporate all these strategies into various lessons throughout a unit, as they represent sound instructional practice. For example, when teachers continually repeat important information during a lesson and unit, it alerts students to critical content and helps them remember the information. As well, when teachers intentionally and strategically use their tone of voice, gestures, and body position to emphasize salient information, it again highlights what students should remember and focuses their attention on key content. Instead of focusing our attention on these more pervasive strategies—and other such strategies throughout the model—we provide ideas specific to writing. For example, for element 16, we choose the strategy of using visual activities as an opportunity to show how teachers can apply this strategy to teach a writing skill, which we detail in chapter 6 (page 89). As readers continue through this text, strategies linked to writing and reading take center stage.
This Book
This book is organized into three parts—(1) feedback, (2) content, and (3) context—mirroring the overarching categories of The New Art and Science of Teaching model as described earlier in this introduction. The chapters align with the ten teacher actions and then focus on selected elements (of the forty-three total) within each action and specific strategies for teaching writing.
In part I, chapters 1 and 2 focus on feedback. Chapter 1 pinpoints strategies for providing and communicating clear learning goals, and chapter 2 concentrates on using assessments.
