What does teaching look like?

Classroom Instruction that Works

Robert Marzano and team identified 9 instructional strategies that impact student learning:

1. Identifying Similarities and Differences
2. Summarizing and Note taking
3. Reinforcing Efforts and Providing Recognition
4. Homework and Practice
5. Cooperative Learning
6. Nonlinguistic Representations
7. Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
8. Generating and Testing Hypotheses
9. Cue, Questions and Advanced Organizers

Data tells us we are spending more time with Ques and Practice than anything else.... Perhaps a product of high-stakes testing.

Is this what we are doing in our online classrooms?  Or, are our students truly moving beyond the understanding level of taxonomy and truly applying that information in new and meaningful ways.  Are we encouraging our students to collaborate through the use of wikis, Google Docs and social networks?

I challenge even online teachers to turn the virtual classroom "upside down" through quality instruction using a variety of tools.

I invite teachers and students to respond to this post with examples of how students "personalize" the content and take ownership of their learning.

Better yet, if you don't feel this is happening in your educational experiences....

What are the barriers?

What should be our top priorities?

What is the "low-hanging fruit" that might encourage these strategies to bloom?

Recognizing One's True Potential...

I am wondering if, as parents, we sometimes hamstring our children's true potential. Do we try to protect them to a degree that we remove the valuable learning associated with failure? I see this all too often in schools - but perhaps I should turn my lens inward.

Perhaps the "Mama Bear" syndrome has taken over as I try to support my own daughter through the grief associated with losing her horse and opening her heart to love another.... and my son through his broken heart.

I never considered myself to be a "helicopter mom"... but when I see the pain in my own children some primal instinct boils to the surface that makes me want to heal their wounds.

And with that, I recognize that the greatest medicine is love - simple, unconditional, non-judgemental LOVE!