Classroom Strategies that Work...Effort & Recognition

We are a third of the way through our Marzano's classroom strategies that work and today I want to share some ideas for recognizing effort and providing recognition. According to Marzano, "students who believe the amount of effort they put into a task increases their achievement actually do better." The trouble is students do not inherently know the relationship between their effort and their success. So they need opportunities to see that relationship, perhaps by tracking the amount of effort to the achievement level.

Hello technology, ready to help!

Google Sites: Our county will be moving to student accounts within our Gaston Google Apps account beginning next semester. Think about using Google sites to allow them to create portfolios. There are basically three ways to use sites for portfolios: storage of digital work, single space for storage/reflection together, and then as a showcase in which the learner chooses things that really show off their learning. The thought processes behind the last two choices will help students make connections between effort and the results. A student blog, such as Kidblog or Edublog could serve a similar purpose.

Edmodo, a secure social networking site designed for teachers and students (think of it as as an educational Facebook), added a new feature a year or so ago allowing you to award badges. What a great incentive! Students love to earn the badges and again they will make the connection between effort and the recognition provided once they have the badge. Edmodo makes it easy to award the badge to the student by simply visiting the profile of that student and choose "award badge" button. You will have the option of creating your own badges or those from the Edmodo community. As a GCS teacher, you have access to Edmodo within our Edmodo domain. Just ask your Instructional Technology Facilitator for the school code.

I know one of my teachers' favorite is ClassDojo. Teachers use ClassDojo to build good behaviors and learning habits. Kids love it because they get instant feedback, have ways to earn points, and have cool avatars.

Check out these tools and please leave comments if you have any to add!

Classroom Strategies that Work for a 21st Century Classroom Pt. 2

Johan Larsson flickr 

The strategy that I want to focus on in this post is Summarizing and Note Taking, another of Marzano's high yield strategies. As teachers, we work to enhance the students' ability to synthesize information and then distill it into a concise form. This process brings in the higher order thinking skills of analyzing the information to determine key concepts and deleting the extraneous material. Note taking is related as students take notes by writing down every word or phrase. To be successful note takers, students must summarize the information to get the meaning which leads to greater understanding of the content. Again, note taking is a skill that students must be taught.

There are many tech tools which can be utilized as you teach and students use this strategy.

Google Docs - A collaborative platform in which students can work together to takes notes and summarize key ideas. Our school system is moving forward with Google Apps for Education which will include student accounts by 2013.

Wikis - are a collaborative website allowing users to add, modify, and delete content online. Our school system uses Wikispaces.com for our wikis, but you can also utilize Google Sites or PB Wiki. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia.

Evernote - This is quite possibly my favorite tool. Evernote works on computers, phones, and tablets and allows you to create and organize documents, pictures, lists, and more. You have the option to add recordings right into the notes as well as photos. Its optical character recognition ability allows you to search via keywords pictures that contain text. I love the fact that you can create notebooks to house your notes and share with others, all in the cloud. Truly, anytime, anywhere access.

Twitter - Utilizing the platform of 140 characters, challenge your students to create summarizes that are Twitter friendly. You don't even have to have a Twitter account. While perusing Pinterest, we found an idea from a teacher who is using sentence strips as "tweets" for exit slips. What a great display idea while telling others what your students are learning. You could also use a class Twitter account to create tweets to your parents about what students did in school that day.  This would be a great end of day closing activity where you write the tweet together and then you post as the teacher.

Classroom Strategies That Work: Identifying Similarities and Differences

As educators, we are probably all familiar with Robert Marzano and his work with Classroom Strategies that Work. In the book, Marzano presents nine strategies for teachers to use in the classroom to improve student achievement in dramatic ways. When you look at the results from using the strategies as seen in the table below, you may ask yourself, "Why use technology?"

That would be a good question to ask. According to research, when applied effectively, technology implementation not only increases student learning, understanding, and achievement, but also provides motivation to learn, encourages collaboration, and supports the development of critical thinking and problem solving skills. (Schacter & Fagnano, 1999)

So you may be wondering what technologies can I use for these strategies to improve the initial percentile gains?

Jason Mammano and I presented a session at Gaston County Schools Teaching & Learning Conference on this very topic. I hope to share some ideas on the strategies over the next several posts on this blog.

Today, I want to cover the strategy of "identifying similarities and differences." There are four processes that can be utilized with this strategy: compare/contrast, classify, creating metaphors, and creating analogies. Graphic Organizers are the easiest way to help students with these processes. In my previous county, we used the same mind maps or graphic organizers from K--12. Of course, the early grades focused on teaching students the thought processes behind each map and how to know which map to choose, but by the time the students got to third grade, it became second nature.

Students love technology and by combining the use of free programs, the four processes for identifying similarities and differences will become second nature to them as well.

What programs can you use? I have written about mind maps before, but I have added a couple new ones here.

Mindmeister is a free online mind mapping tool that basically walks you through creating the graphic organizer. You do not even have to sign it to use unless you wish to save the creation. It also has an app for your Android or Apple device.

Bubbl.us is another free online mind mapping tool that works better for upper grades than elementary. Again you do not need to create an account unless you want to save the map.

Linoit is a digital corkboard for sharing ideas using digital sticky notes.  What we like about Lino.it is that you can upload documents, pictures, and even, video. Although you do not have to have an account to use, you can use your Google log in for the account.

I just learned about MindMaple recently. They have a pay version, but they also have a Lite Version that is free. This is a program that you download to your computer. The interface reminds me of Microsoft Word, so it would be pretty easy for your students to use. They are also have an IOS app in which you can view the maps, and are moving toward creating the ability to edit within the app.

Popplet is the final online mind mapping tool that I am going to share, but it is definitely not the last one available. However, it is super easy to use. It literally walks you through how to use it and provides the ability to upload files. There is also an IOS app for that!

When students understand the how things are similar and how they are different, it allows them to use that knowledge in other ways and move up in the higher order thinking skills. There is so much information at our fingertips today due to the technology we have, let's teach our students how to map the information so it is easily assimilated and used.

Let me know which tools you like and don't forget to check out Jason's blog for lots of great information.