Book Review April 13, 2008
Posted by Debbie Stafford in : Check this out! , add a commentThis week while on spring break I took advantage of down time to read. One title I heard about while at a conference was at the top of the list. So, this post is essentially a book review. The book in question isn’t really about school libraries or information literacy but still found much that school librarians can ponder.
Marzano, Robert J., Debra H. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock. Classroom Instruction That Works. Alexandria Virginia: ASCD, 2001.
Another different version with some of the same content is available on the McRel (Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning)
Marzano, Robert J., What works in Classroom Instruction McRel
http://www.mcrel.org/PDF/Instruction/5992TG_What_Works.pdf (April 11, 2008)
Marzano and the other authors used a research technique Meta Analysis to find the effect of teaching strategies on achievement. The results are presented in terms of “effect size”. defined as “increase or decrease in achievement of the experimental group compared with that of the control group”. In other words, what strategies give more bang for the buck.
Outlined are nine specific strategies. All of them we do in collaboration with classroom teachers. However some of these strategies strike me as areas where we as school library media specialists excel, specifically these two strategies: Identifying similarities and differences and Non linguistic representations. Through author studies, book talks, read-alouds, library displays both of the above are done daily. Under the first item the authors place classification, another activity we do often with both non-fiction and fiction genres.
Three other strategies: Summarizing and note taking, Reinforcing effort and providing recognition, Homework and practice and not as central to our program, still we do them frequently. Many of us teach note-taking skills as part of the research process. We provide materials daily for reading practice and we provide recognition with reading incentive programs. One caveat, the book does make a differentiation between recognition and awards with the first having a bigger effect size.
The rest of the strategies listed are; Cooperative learning, Setting objectives and providing feedback, Generating and testing hypotheses, Questions, cues, and advance organizers. Since all of us need to advocate for our programs, and look for ways to show how school libraries promote student achievement, reading though this publication and taking a close look at the strategies and suggestions might be useful.