In addition to asking students to take notes, teachers can also encourage the annotation of texts through the use of symbols, sticky notes, or different colored highlighters.
• Summarizing: Students’ summaries should build on and relate to the information they recorded in their notes. Ask students to try to describe the who, what, where, when, why, and how of information. Students looking for errors in their partners’ summaries should also focus on these details. Teachers can have students practice their verbal summarization skills by giving them only a limited amount of time to summarize new content. If students are new to providing verbal summaries, teachers can also allow them to freewrite their ideas and the points they would like to make before asking them to present their summaries. Students should not refer to notes during their freewrite but try to come up with points from memory.
• Acting as the listener: When students take on the listener role, they will need to critically engage with what their partner is saying and look through their notes for refining or additional information. While students might think the listener role is easier because they will have their notes in front of them, in fact, the listener role requires students to enact multiple processes at once and is equally as challenging as the recaller role. The listener must actively cross-check facts, procedures, and key ideas the recaller brings up and politely correct their partners when appropriate. Additionally, listeners should listen for information that they might have missed or didn’t quite understand when they were taking notes. In this way, scripted cooperative dyads are an exchange of information and ideas that should challenge students to examine what they know and understand about the topic.
Monitoring Element 7
Specific student responses and behaviors allow the teacher to determine whether this element is being implemented effectively and producing the desired effects.
• Students appear to be actively interacting with the content.
• Students volunteer predictions.
• Students can explain what they have just learned.
• Students voluntarily ask clarification questions.
Use this list to monitor student responses to element 7.
To monitor your own use of this element, use the scale in figure 3.6 (page 50) in combination with the reproducible “Tracking Teacher Actions: Processing Content” (page 63). As with other proficiency scales, level 3 or higher is the goal.
Figure 3.6: Self-rating scale for element 7—Processing content.
The following examples describe what each level of the scale might look like in the classroom.
• Not Using (0): A teacher does not provide opportunities for students to make predictions, summarize, or ask clarification questions about new content. After introducing new content, instead of providing time for the students to process what they have just experienced, the teacher uses direct instruction to introduce another piece of new information.
• Beginning (1): A teacher asks her students to use the thinking hats strategy to examine a new concept discussed in class. She encourages the students to use the thinking hats to deepen their responses and understanding but does not walk them through the process of using one hat at a time. Students fill out a worksheet using the hat descriptors but are not given the opportunity to discuss their conclusions or summarize how using the hats helped them better understand the new concept.
• Developing (2): A teacher uses the strategy of reciprocal teaching to help his students engage with new ideas in a unit on energy and motion. Within each reciprocal teaching group, he designates one student the discussion leader and asks that the other students answer the discussion leader’s questions, clarify difficult information, and summarize the new content. After the first round of reciprocal teaching, he asks for the groups’ summaries and predictions and moves on to the next chunk of new information. He does not monitor how well students executed the strategy or if it helped them increase their understanding.
• Applying (3): A teacher uses collaborative processing to introduce his students to a unit on triangles. He separates the students into groups and explains the overall process and their individual roles. The teacher models how the process works with several volunteers. After presenting each chunk of new content, he observes and assists the students as they implement the collaborative processing strategy. At the end of class, the teacher takes an informal survey to find out if the students found the strategy helpful and if they would use that strategy again.
• Innovating (4): A teacher uses the jigsaw cooperative learning strategy with her class during a unit on the French Revolution. She separates the class into groups of three and assigns each person in the group an effect of the revolution to investigate. As the students meet in their expert groups, she checks in, answers the groups’ questions, and asks each student to record his or her research. When students reconvene with their original groups, they compile their research into a chart that they can share with the class and teacher. Because the class was extremely successful with this strategy, she extends the activity and their learning by adding a class discussion about which effects of the French Revolution have most shaped modern-day beliefs and society.
Element 8: Recording and Representing Content
An effective teacher engages students in activities that help them record their understanding of new content in linguistic ways or represent the content in nonlinguistic ways. Research has shown that representing information linguistically (summaries and notes) is associated with student achievement gains (Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, & Wilkinson, 2004; Crismore, 1985; Ganske, 1981; Hattie et al., 1996; Henk & Stahl, 1985; Marzano, Gnadt, & Jesse, 1990; Pflaum, Walberg, Karegianes, & Rasher, 1980; Raphael & Kirschner, 1985). Research has also shown that representing information nonlinguistically (models, pictures, mental images) increases student achievement (Guzzetti, Snyder, Glass, & Gamus, 1993; Haas, 2005; Hattie et al., 1996; Lovelace, 2005; Mayer, 1989; Nesbit & Adesope, 2006; Powell, 1980; Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986). When information is both linguistic and nonlinguistic, students process information more thoroughly and deeply.
There are eleven strategies within this element.
1. Informal outlines
2. Summaries
3. Pictorial notes and pictographs
4. Combination notes, pictures, and summaries
5. Graphic organizers
6. Free-flowing webs
7. Academic notebooks
8. Dramatic enactments
9. Mnemonic devices
10. Rhyming pegwords
11. Link strategies
The following sections will explore each strategy to provide you with guidelines to effectively implement this element. Read through each before creating a plan for your classroom. Teachers may use the strategies individually or in combination. Remember, these are not merely activities to be checked off; they
