Alex Burrall

TED 467
2/7/15
Reading Reflection 1 (Ch. 1-2)
Marzano and authors begin by giving the reader an understanding of why the books
contents can be deemed valuable for educators. The content deals with instructional strategies
for teachers and how those strategies can be implemented in daily practices. But before diving
into these diverse methods, the authors offer a clear and concise backdrop of the research
methods used to prove that these methods actually work. In Chapter 1 we learn about the way
students are grouped into performance brackets, how their progress can be tracked through
percentile gain or loss, and how their rate of learning can be compared with peers in similar
academic standings. Many of these students are exposed to the same lessons but with different
instructional methods, and then assessed to find how much they learned compared to their peer
counterparts. The findings in Chapter 1 suggest that good teaching strategies produce a much
greater learning rate and much greater performance among students. This still however raises the
question of how we would know that certain instructional methods are directly linked to higher
student performance. Arent there a multitude of factors that play into this?
Chapter 2 explores the strategy of identifying similarities and differences as a learning
device. According to the authors this skill-based exercise is vital to learning and developing
mental processes. There are 4 basic ways to conduct this strategy in a class: comparing,
classifying, creating metaphors and creating analogies. Within these four ways there is the
choice to execute the process in a teacher driven manner and in a student driven manner. It
appears as though both are highly effective strategies. As a teacher I find this method of teaching
highly effective because it can generate higher level thinking, illicit a wide range of student
responses and promote active participation across the class. I can apply this strategy to different
aspects of the novel my class is currently reading, such as in the comparison of characters or
societal norms among different societies. I would agree with Marzano that this method of
teaching is effective for a productive learning environment where all students are active learners.