learning sciences international (lsi) - a practical … · 2017-03-29 · the essentials for...

THE ESSENTIALS FOR STANDARDS-DRIVEN

CLASSROOMS

A PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL FOR EVERY STUDENT TO

ACHIEVE RIGOR

©2017 by Learning S

ciences International. All rights reserved.

THE ESSENTIALS FOR STANDARDS-DRIVEN

CLASSROOMS

A PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL FOR EVERY STUDENT TO

ACHIEVE RIGOR

Carla Moore, Michael D. Toth, and Robert J. Marzano

with Libby H. Garst and Deana Senn

MARZANOC E N T E R



Copyright © 2017 by Learning Sciences International

Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may reproduce only those pages marked as “reproducible.” Otherwise, no part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or displayed in any form or by any means (photocopying, digital or electronic transmittal, electronic or mechanical display, or other means) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

1400 Centrepark Blvd., Ste. 1000 West Palm Beach, FL 33401 717.845.6300 email: [email protected] learningsciences.com

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Publisher's Cataloging-in-Publication Dataprovided by Five Rainbows Cataloging Services

Names: Moore, Carla. | Toth, Michael. | Marzano, Robert J.

Title: The essentials for standards-driven classrooms : a practical instructional model for every student to achieve rigor / Carla Moore, Michael D. Toth, Robert J. Marzano.

Description: West Palm Beach, FL : Learning Sciences, 2017. | Series: Essentials for achieving rigor. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-943920-15-0 (pbk.) | ISBN 978-1-943920-16-7 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Teaching--Methodology. | Student-centered learning. | Education--Standards. | Effective teaching. | Learning, Psychology of. | Learning strategies. | BISAC: EDUCATION / Teaching Methods & Materials / General. | EDUCATION / Professional Development. | EDUCATION / Standards.

Classification: LCC LB1025.3 .M65 2017 (print) | LCC LB1025.3 (ebook) | DDC 371.102--dc23.



v

Other books in the series:

Identifying Critical Content: Classroom Techniques to Help Students Know

What Is Important

Examining Reasoning: Classroom Techniques to Help Students Produce and

Defend Claims

Recording & Representing Knowledge: Classroom Techniques to Help Stu-

dents Accurately Organize and Summarize Content

Examining Similarities & Differences: Classroom Techniques to Help Students

Deepen Their Understanding

Processing New Information: Classroom Techniques to Help Students

Engage With Content

Revising Knowledge: Classroom Techniques to Help Students Examine Their

Deeper Understanding

Practicing Skills, Strategies & Processes: Classroom Techniques to Help Stu-

dents Develop Proficiency

Engaging in Cognitively Complex Tasks: Classroom Techniques to Help Stu-

dents Generate & Test Hypotheses Across Disciplines

Creating & Using Learning Targets & Performance Scales: How Teachers

Make Better Instructional Decisions

Organizing for Learning: Classroom Techniques to Help Students Interact

Within Small Groups

Monitoring the Learning Environment: Classroom Techniques for Creating

the Conditions for Rigor



Visit www.learningsciences.com/bookresources

to download reproducibles from this book.



vii

Dedication

To all the teachers and leaders in the Demonstration

Schools for Rigor, my deep admiration and respect for

your perseverance and courage to blaze the trail for

new learning. Special thanks to fourth-grade teacher

Lisa Roman at Acreage Pines Elementary, whose

classroom has become a learning laboratory for demon-

strating constant learning, reflection, and humility.

—Carla Moore



ix

Acknowledgments

Learning Sciences International would like to thank the following reviewers:

Melissa S. Collins

2014 West Tennessee Teacher of the Year

Memphis, Tennessee

Tiffany Richard

2012 Kansas Teacher of the Year

Olathe, Kansas

Aaron Sitze

2013 Illinois Teacher of the Year finalist

Oregon, Illinois



xi

Table of Contents

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1

The Big Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 2

Standards-Based Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Chapter 3

The Path to Rigor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Chapter 4

Building Standards-Based Professional Learning Communities . . . . 61

Chapter 5

Leading a Schoolwide Culture of Standards-Based Learning . . . . . . . . 77

Appendix A

Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Appendix B

Resources for the Essentials for Achieving Rigor Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103



xiii

About the Authors

CARLA MOORE, MSEd, is an experienced professional

developer, literacy coach, teacher, and administrator. She

oversees product and content development for Learn-

ing Sciences International, with a special emphasis on

teacher and administrator effectiveness. She is nationally

recognized for her commitment to K–12 education. In

her current role as a thought leader at Learning Sciences

International, she is coauthor with Dr. Robert J. Marzano

of Creating & Using Learning Targets & Performance Scales: How Teachers

Make Better Instructional Decisions and a number of research papers.

MICHAEL D. TOTH is founder and chief executive officer

of Learning Sciences International. Formerly the president

of the National Center for the Profession of Teaching, a

university faculty member, and director of research and

development grants, Mr. Toth transformed his university

research and development team into a company that is

focused on leadership, teacher professional growth, and

instructional effectiveness correlated to student achievement gains.

Mr. Toth is actively involved in research and development, gives public pre-

sentations, and advises education leaders on issues of leadership and teacher

effectiveness, school improvement, and professional development systems.

He is coauthor, with Robert J. Marzano, of Teacher Evaluation That Makes a

Difference: A New Model for Teacher Growth and Student Achievement and,

with Beverly Carbaugh and Robert Marzano, of School Leadership for Results:

Shifting the Focus of Leader Evaluation. His most recent book is Who Moved

My Standards? Joyful Teaching in an Age of Change: A SOARing Tale.



The Essentials for Standards-Driven Classrooms

xiv

ROBERT J. MARZANO, PhD, is a nationally recognized edu-

cation researcher, speaker, trainer, and author of more than

thirty books and 150 articles on topics such as instruction,

assessment, writing and implementing standards, cog-

nition, effective leadership, and school intervention. His

practical translations of the most current research and

theory into classroom strategies are widely practiced inter-

nationally by both teachers and administrators.

Dr. Marzano codeveloped the Learning Sciences Marzano Center Essen-

tials for Achieving Rigor, a model of instruction that fosters essential teaching

skills and strategies to support college and career readiness standards. Dr.

Marzano has also partnered with Learning Sciences International to offer the

Marzano Teacher Evaluation model, the Marzano School Leadership Evalua-

tion model, and the Marzano District Leader Evaluation model.

Dr. Marzano received his doctorate from the University of Washington.

Learn more about his research, as well as his products and services, at the

Learning Sciences Marzano Center, www.marzanocenter.com.

LIBBY H. GARST, MSEd, enjoyed a successful business career for more than

fifteen years before turning to teaching. She spent nearly fifteen years in

education as a middle school classroom teacher and an elementary instruc-

tional math coach. Today she brings together both of her backgrounds to offer

teachers, schools, and districts a truly unique perspective. Ms. Garst earned

her master’s degree at the University of Virginia.

DEANA SENN, MS, is an expert in instructional strategies and classroom

assessments with more than fifteen years of education experience. Her cur-

riculum and instruction experience spans the United States and Canada, in

both rural and urban districts, from the school level to the regional level. She

develops content with the Marzano Center team and trains nationwide. She

is a graduate of Texas A&M University and received her master’s degree from

Montana State University.



1

Introduction

We wrote this guide to give classroom teachers a big-picture view of the

Essentials for Achieving Rigor instructional model for standards-based class-

rooms. For some readers, this book will be an introduction to the Essentials

model; other readers may have read additional books in our Essentials for

Achieving Rigor series devoted to specific teaching and planning strategies.

Our intention here is, first, to give the big overview of how the model works,

and second, to answer both the “how” and the “why” questions that will help

you be successful as you begin to practice your planning and teaching in

rigorous, standards-based classrooms.

The Essentials model draws on instructional strategies grounded in

research documented in Marzano’s (2007) The Art and Science of Teaching

and also Learning Sciences International’s own research and pilot projects,

conducted in large and small districts across the United States. Evidence

showed us that teachers lacked a focused model that would explicitly guide

them to make the shifts necessary to meet rigorous standards. As Learning

Sciences Marzano Center developed the Essentials model, we drew on our

own primary research, conducted in districts like Pinellas County, Florida,

that utilized experimental and control schools1 to correlate teacher practice to

student value-added metrics. The developers also honed the model based on

feedback from hundreds of teachers and administrators. Coaches and staff

developers conducted rounds throughout the United States to observe the

strategies in action. They wanted to ensure that research and theory were

translating into an effective model for standards-based teaching and that

teachers were getting the right results from their students.

1 For a full report on the Pinellas County pilot project, visit www.learningsciences.com /services/pinellas-county-pilot.




2

About Standards-Based Instruction

When we talk about standards-based instruction, the key dis-

tinction to remember is that in a standards-based classroom,

students are expected to meet a defined standard for profi-

ciency. In other words, teachers ensure that the content they

are teaching and their methods of teaching it enable students

to learn both the skills and the concepts defined in the stan-

dard for that grade level and to demonstrate evidence of their

learning.

Table I.1 provides a glossary of key terms. Many of these concepts and

terms will be explored in depth in later chapters.

Table I.1: Key Concepts and Terms

Academic standard

A statement generated at the national, state, or local level that designates the approved educational benchmarks and conveys what students are expected to learn at a specified grade level or content area.

CCSS Common Core State Standards is the official name of the standards documents developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI), the goal of which is to prepare students in the United States for college and career.

CCR College and career readiness anchor standards are broad statements that incorporate individual standards for various grade levels and specific content areas.

Desired result

The intended result for the student(s) due to the implementation of a specific strategy.

Monitoring The act of checking for evidence of the desired result of a specific strategy while the strategy is being implemented.

Formative assessment

The ongoing, continuous monitoring of student evidence for learning, including both formal and informal means of measuring student results.

Instructional strategy

A category of techniques used for classroom instruction that has been demonstrated to have a high probability of enhancing student achievement.



3

Introduction

Instructional content technique

The method used to teach and deepen understanding of knowledge and skills.

Content The knowledge and skills necessary for students to demonstrate standards.

Scaffolding A purposeful progression of support that targets cognitive complexity and student autonomy to reach rigor.

Extending Activities that move students who have already demonstrated the desired result to a higher level of understanding.

Performance scales

A continuum that articulates distinct levels of knowledge and skills relative to a specific standard or related standards.

Learning targets

Generic targets made up of short descriptive phrases typically bulleted or outlined in a performance scale that detail the knowledge and skills students must understand and be able to perform to demonstrate understanding of an academic standard.

Taxonomy An organization or categorization system that details levels of cognitive performance. The Marzano taxonomy of educational objectives contains four levels of processing: retrieval, comprehension, analysis, and knowledge utilization.

Professional learning community (PLC)

Grade-level or subject-area teacher teams who meet regularly to create learning targets and performance scales and to examine current instructional practices and evidence of student learning to improve student outcomes.

Rigor Classroom instruction that demands a high level of cognitive complexity undertaken with an equally high level of student autonomy.

The guide you are reading is the capstone in the Essentials for Achieving

Rigor book series; it provides a broad overview of the Essentials model’s pur-

pose and its use in your classrooms. In the remaining books in this series,

we have rigorously explored the components of the model and the research-

based strategies embedded in each component. The series as a whole details

essential classroom strategies to support the complex shifts in teaching that

we need to make to create academic rigor for all students. Each guide in the

series focuses on just one strategy. The exception is this book, which puts

all the pieces of the model together as a whole so that you as a reader and

educator can understand the larger picture of how the strategies support and

complement each other in a unified system of instruction. The primary pur-

pose of the model is to help teachers develop the expertise to teach rigorous




4

lessons with both the creativity (the art) and the research-based knowledge

(the science) needed to ensure success for all students. We hope that exploring

the Essentials model, and using it in your classrooms, will further inspire your

passion and purpose as an educator, as the model has for so many others.



5

Chapter 1

THE BIG PICTURE

Why a New Model of Instruction?When you start out on a journey, the first decision is your destination. You

pull out a map or plug in your GPS to figure out how to get there. As new stan-

dards are implemented across the nation, educators know their destination

(the standards), but they’re often uncertain about how to get there (the strat-

egy). We need an “instructional GPS” to guide us to rigor.

The Essentials for Achieving Rigor model has been designed to help you

re-envision what teaching can be in a standards-based classroom. In our

work with schools across the country, we have seen teachers rediscover their

energy, purpose, and joy of teaching. It’s important to understand that this

model is not a prescriptive set of rules, not a list of to-dos that can simply

be checked off in any lesson. Instead, it’s a set of interconnected strategies

designed to scaffold student learning in lessons aligned to standards, orga-

nize your students for complex tasks, measure their incremental progress, and

draw on the shared experience of your colleagues as you continue to plan and

revise your teaching.

State standards were developed to address college and career readiness.

But for the most part, we have rarely been called upon to organize students to

engage in highly complex learning—which is one of many shifts new stan-

dards call for. The Essentials model addresses exactly these issues. Learning

Sciences Marzano Center designed the Essentials for Achieving Rigor model

as a road map to help teachers take the fastest and most effective route to

standards-based classrooms. We know how hard educators work and how

genuinely they want their students to achieve. The Essentials model will help

them—you—succeed.




6

The Research Base for the Essentials ModelThe Essentials model (figure 1.1) shows teachers how to plan and teach in

standards-based classrooms and foster the collaborative culture that will sup-

port that important planning and teaching.

Figure 1.1: The Essentials model.

The planning and teaching strategies that make up the Essentials model

have a long history of testing and refinement. Robert Marzano developed

the Art and Science of Teaching framework based on a meta-analysis of

thousands of studies conducted over many decades on classroom teach-

ing strategies that have been shown to correlate with increases in academic

achievement. Marzano has reported on more than 300 experimental/control

studies with practicing teachers on a number of these strategies, stud-

ies designed to establish a direct link between the strategies and student

achievement (Marzano, 2007).

Learning Sciences has taken this research a step further in pilot projects

across the country, where teachers’ application of the strategies in the Essen-

tials model were correlated with student value-added metrics. We have honed



The Big Picture

7

the model based on feedback from hundreds of teachers and administrators,

and we continue to compile data from more than two dozen Demonstration

Schools for Rigor and targeted district initiatives throughout the United States

that are currently implementing the Essentials for Achieving Rigor model.

We want to be sure that research and theory are translating into an effec-

tive model for standards-based teaching and that teachers are getting the

planned-for results from their students.

The need for the model has been verified by Learning Sciences’ own

research. Our researchers have analyzed more than two million data points

from across the nation to see how frequently teachers use specific class-

room strategies. Figure 1.2 shows how often classroom lessons were devoted

to helping students learn and practice new content. As you can see, a large

majority of lessons (94 percent) was devoted to activities that require relatively

little complex thinking and autonomy (interacting with new content, practice,

and deepening), while a mere 6 percent were devoted to lessons that demand

a high level of cognitive complexity and autonomy, such as generating and

testing hypotheses.

Figure 1.2: Six percent of observed lessons were devoted to cognitively complex tasks.

Interacting with new content

Practicing and deepening new content

Cognitively complex tasks involving generating and testing hypotheses

Lesson Types

6%

58%

36%




8

As schools implement new standards, we should be seeing much more

evidence that teachers gradually scaffold student learning to help them reach

the highest levels of cognitive complexity. Students should be developing

high-level cognitive skills—this is an important goal of revised state standards.

For the first time, standards are not just about the what; they implicitly direct

the pedagogy. As we have visited classrooms across the United States, we have

unfortunately had to conclude that rigorous instruction is still relatively rare

in most classrooms. The Essentials for Achieving Rigor model was designed

to help make this shift in pedagogy. Think of it as a road map for rigor. Let’s

turn now to a discussion of how the model works.

Component 1: Standards-Based Planning

Figure 1.3: Standards-Based Planning component of the Essentials model.

Standards-based planning influences all the other components of the model.

Planning lessons and units that are built on standards and creating aligned

assessments that measure student progress toward standards is the crucial

first step teachers must take to help their students reach success.



The Big Picture

9

Why is standards-based planning so essential? Clearly, if we have expec-

tations for student learning that is rigorous, independent, and applicable in

the real world, teachers need to be able to plan instruction that will help their

students meet those goals. This is the broad rationale for standards-based

planning. It is also a shift from basing plans on curricula or resources that

reflect state standards to true standards-based lesson planning.

What might this shift look like in the classroom? To help teachers clearly

understand how their lesson plans and instruction would change, Learning

Sciences consultants often asked them to do what appeared to be a simple

exercise. Teachers chose a state standard that they had taught before, then

mapped out the smaller learning targets they would use to get students to

meet that standard. Consultants also asked the teachers to write down, on

separate sheets of paper, all the activities they normally used when teaching

lessons associated with the standard.

The teachers spread out on the floor and lined up their learning targets.

Consultants asked them to place each classroom activity under the learning

target it was aligned to and to place any activities that didn’t align to any tar-

gets in a separate pile.

Can you guess what happened? Some learning targets had no aligned

activities at all while the “doesn’t align” piles of activities grew large. Teach-

ers were shocked to see how much classroom time they had spent on drills,

games, and holiday activities that had little to do with the standards they were

supposed to be preparing their students to meet.

Obviously, most states have had standards for some time, and some have

even had rigorous standards. But teachers had rarely been using their state

standards to directly plan their lessons. Instead they often relied on the cur-

riculum and other resources to do the planning for them, assuming that those

resources aligned. The truth, many found to their chagrin, was that resources

and curriculum aligned only partially in many cases, missing the full intent

of the standard.

As we shall see, the mental shift required for standards-based plan-

ning motivates teachers to develop criteria for success aligned to standards,

create standards-based instruction in their classrooms, and set conditions




10

for success; this allows them to take action based on their standards-based

assessment data and provides a clear structure and focus for their collabora-

tive teamwork. Standards-based planning touches all the other components

of the Essentials model.

Component 2: Criteria for Success

Figure 1.4: Criteria for Success component of the Essentials model.

The second step on the pathway to rigor takes a three-pronged approach that

guides teachers to move students along to the required levels of complex crit-

ical thinking. Teachers work together to create common, standards-based

scales for their lessons. A performance scale is a continuum that articulates

distinct levels of knowledge and skills relative to a specific standard. This will

allow teachers to use minute-by-minute, day-by-day formative assessment

strategies to track individual student progress and to adjust and differentiate

instruction. And they prioritize feedback and celebrate learning progress when

they have evidence of it.



The Big Picture

11

Creating Common, Standards-Based Scales

Teachers learn that learning targets and performance scales are tools that

function like a frequently consulted road map or GPS, a tool that will lead

them, and their students, on a journey culminating in the attainment of a

challenging standard. Performance scales also function as a daily organizer

that keeps everyone focused in a transparent way on how each lesson is

progressing. In other words, using performance scales allows teachers and

students to identify what they need to know and where they will end up (their

final goal for meeting or exceeding the standard) according to a clear pro-

gression of learning targets. Performance scales also allow students to track

their own progress, which encourages them to buy into, and be responsible

for, their own learning.

At Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida, Assistant Prin-

cipal Corey Ferrera summed up both the stretch and the benefits for teachers

using scales: “Creating learning scales has been the most difficult, and the

hardest pill to swallow when it comes to what we’re implementing here. Why

the heck do we need scales in the first place? The important takeaway is this:

We need to be able to give our students something that defines quality. The

second thing is that, in most of our classes, we have a wide range of students

in terms of what they are bringing in with them. The scale puts all the kids on

an even playing field, because it makes our expectations very clear. The scale

has the ability to close the achievement gap. And finally, the scale defines what

the students need to know and what they will be able to do. I hope that we are

all beginning to see that the scale is a powerful tool.”

“The scale has the ability to close the achievement gap.”

Using Formative Assessment to Track Student Progress

If the student learning scale sets the criteria for success, then formative

assessment is the way teachers measure that success. We conceptualize for-

mative assessment very specifically in the Essentials model as the ongoing,

continuous monitoring for student evidence of learning. Formative assess-

ment should be ongoing throughout all lessons, and it includes both formal

and informal means of measuring student results.




12

This understanding of formative assessment emphasizes continuous

gathering of data on student progress. Teachers can assess student knowl-

edge and thought by listening to the conversations of students working in

pairs or groups; they can scan whiteboards held up in the air; they can collect

exit tickets; they can ask students to track their own progress in notebooks

and reflection journals; and they can employ a large variety of questioning

techniques. Teachers become highly attuned to eliciting student evidence

for every step of learning—there is no assuming that students have acquired

knowledge unless teachers have student evidence of learning.

Why is formative assessment so important in the shift to rigor? Ongo-

ing formative assessment is tightly aligned to the imperative to track student

learning to standards—and to adjust instruction as necessary while there is

still time to help students who are falling through the cracks. Formative assess-

ment allows a teacher to keep a sharp focus on progress toward standards.

Thus, there are no end-of-unit or end-of-year surprises for either teachers or

students.

Celebrating Student Progress

If scales and criteria for success are in place, and teachers track student

progress using those criteria, then the third element of the Criteria for Success

component, celebrating student progress, is a logical and necessary capstone.

This is where teachers provide feedback to students about their progress

toward the targets or standard.

Celebrating student progress is more than ensuring time for a pat on the

back or leading a group cheer. This strategy is at the heart of getting students’

buy-in for their own learning. The desired outcome of having ways to cele-

brate student progress is for students to feel proud of their accomplishments,

to recognize that they aren’t stuck on a plateau, and to feel motivated to keep

moving ahead. This strategy also focuses teachers, who are continuously

monitoring student work, on providing regular, formal, and informal feedback

that helps students continue to improve.



The Big Picture

13

Component 3: Instruction

Figure 1.5: The Instruction component of the Essentials model.

Thirteen instructional strategies comprise the model’s third component.

These thirteen strategies have been identified by Learning Sciences Mar-

zano Center as the research-based pedagogical strategies most essential for

scaffolding lessons to rigor. When planning lessons, teachers analyze the cog-

nitive complexity of the activities necessary to reach learning targets as well as

the amount of student autonomy. The Essentials model scaffolds instruction

through the taxonomy from the beginning level, “retrieval” (or recognizing,

recalling, and executing information), to the highest level, “knowledge utili-

zation,” which focuses on decision making, problem solving, experimenting,

and investigating, often in real-world scenarios.

In figure 1.6 (page 14), the thirteen strategies begin with teaching foun-

dational learning (which usually requires greater teacher support), moving

students to deeper thinking with less teacher support and more student inde-

pendence, and ultimately to strategies for complex thinking, where students

are producing, not consuming, knowledge.




14

Figure 1.6: The thirteen instructional strategies of the Essentials for Achieving Rigor model.

Mo

nito

ring

for L

ea

rnin

g

with

Stu

den

t Ev

iden

ceInstruction

zz Identifying Critical Content

zz Previewing New Content

zz Organizing Students to Interact with Content

zz Helping Students Process Content

zz Helping Students Elaborate on Content

zz Helping Students Record and Represent Knowledge

zz Managing Response Rates with Question Sequence Techniques

zz Reviewing Content

zz Helping Students Practice Skills, Strategies, and Processes

zz Helping Students Examine Similarities and Differences

zz Helping Students Examine Their Reasoning

zz Helping Students Revise Knowledge

zz Helping Students Engage in Cognitively Complex Tasks

Fo

un

dat

ion

al L

ea

rnin

gD

eep

er T

hin

kin

gC

om

ple

x

Th

ink

ing

We reemphasize, however, that the more cognitively complex strategies

are not inherently more rigorous if student autonomy is low. We will discuss

the path to rigor in much more detail in chapter 3. It’s important to emphasize

here that both complexity and autonomy need to be present in the cognitive

demand—and the student results—for students to be considered proficient in

the standard (see figure 1.7).



The Big Picture

15

Figure 1.7: Rigor in a standards-based classroom must contain high levels of both cognitive complexity and student autonomy. The dot marks the sweet spot where rigor lives.

Scaffolding to Rigor

Complexity

Rigor

Autonomy

These thirteen instructional strategies are drawn from the research-based

content strategies of the Art and Science of Teaching framework (Marzano,

2007). The list of strategies is not intended to be a road map of implementa-

tion. Rather, the teacher determines which strategies will help students learn,

deepen, and utilize content. Even though they are listed in linear form, teach-

ers may choose to use any strategy in any phase of instruction, from building

foundational content to deepening content to utilizing knowledge and skills

to engaging in complex tasks, depending on the needs of students. There are

times when a teacher may move back and forth with purpose from high to

low cognitive demand and student autonomy even within one lesson. Con-

sidered and implemented as a set, these strategies represent a dramatic shift

from traditional classroom pedagogy to more student-centered learning, and

they align directly with the goals of college and career readiness standards

(Marzano & Toth, 2014). (See additional books in the Essentials for Achieving

Rigor series for in-depth discussion of the thirteen instructional strategies.)




16

Component 4: Conditions for Learning

Figure 1.8: The Conditions component of the Essentials model.

While we know that the classroom teacher is the single most important factor

influencing student achievement (within the school’s locus of control), other

factors contribute to student learning. Certain conditions must be in place

for students to truly benefit from instruction, and the teacher’s expertise in

creating these conditions is key. In fact, if the conditions for learning are

flawed, inconsistent, or absent, extensive research tells us that students will

be less likely to learn the content (see Ericsson, Prietula, & Cokely, 2007; Glass,

Holyoak, & Santa, 1979; and Weinstein, 1979; among others). Because these

conditions are so important, and at the same time so elusive for some teach-

ers, any issues with classroom conditions should be among the first things

mentors and administrators monitor and provide feedback on. Once the con-

ditions have been established, teachers do not need to continue to emphasize

them. After a minimal level of desired student behavior has been established,

the teacher’s time is better spent improving his or her instructional practice.

Establishing this learning environment will allow students to work with both

autonomy and complexity.



The Big Picture

17

In the Essentials for Achieving Rigor model, we have identified five con-

ditions for learning:

1. Establishing rules and procedures

2. Recognizing adherence and lack of adherence to rules and procedures

3. Using engagement strategies when students are not engaged

4. Establishing and maintaining effective relationships

5. Communicating high expectations for all students

These conditions, or preconditions for learning, are based in a cognitive

psychology theory of mental states that students “must be in or have acquired in

order for effective learning of content to take place” (Marzano, Toth, et al., 2015).

These mental states include a sense of safety and order, acceptance, attention,

and a sense of efficacy and success. There is a direct connection between each

mental state and the conditions for learning included in this model.

Component 5: Using Formative Assessment Data for Instructional Decisions

Figure 1.9: The Using Formative Assessment Data for Instructional Decisions component of the Essentials model.




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We live in an era of data. We take advantage of electronic collection, aggre-

gation, and dissemination capabilities of so many kinds of data that we are

easily overwhelmed. The Essentials model focuses and personalizes the way

teachers use data to reflect on their practice and take action. Teachers observe

the impact of certain instructional practices and strategies on student learn-

ing, understand each student’s academic status and progress, and adapt and

personalize their instruction to best meet the unique needs of each student.

To do this, teachers need to draw on their evidence of learning within

lessons—formative assessment results, student work artifacts, and anecdotal

recordkeeping. Using evidence from what students do, say, make, or write, we

can infer what they understand, know, feel, or think.2

There is value in summative data such as end-of-course or state tests and

other long-cycle assessments. These are types of lagging data that measure

past learning, not current learning. By the time the teacher receives the data,

her students have moved on in their learning. More immediate value comes

from looking at leading or formative data—data that teachers can take action

on the next day, or even the next minute. When teachers begin to monitor stu-

dents’ progress toward standards using leading data on a minute-to-minute

basis, this leading data will cumulatively impact the lagging data.

Data collection and reflection are an integral part of each component of the

Essentials model, as they are in any continuous improvement cycle. A teacher

reflecting on formative assessment data will be asking questions like these:

zz What do my students know already?

zz How effective was the strategy?

zz What is a typical response rate during a class discussion?

zz How many students met the target? How many boys? How many girls?

zz Which strategy gets better results?

zz What sorts of mistakes are my students making? How many

missed #6?

zz How did groups of students do?

2 See Patrick Griffin, “The comfort of competence and the uncertainty of assessment,” 2007.



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zz How do I know who knows what?

zz What student data do I have as evidence of learning?

When teachers collect and reflect on data on a daily basis, in a formative

way, their next steps are likely to be true and powerful. Data collection is a

way to get good student feedback, and planning instruction based on that

data is a way to continue the feedback loop. Teachers take action to correct

misunderstandings, provide additional clarity, and extend student learning.

They move ahead or revisit. They change tactics or stay the course, all based

on evidence. This is the kind of instructional decision making where data are

the driver.

Component 6: Collaboration

Figure 1.10: The Collaboration component of the Essentials model.

Collaboration isn’t so much a unique component as it is the oxygen in which

the other components thrive. Highly collaborative school communities have

found that in such a collaborative climate, the five other components of the

Essentials model are implemented faithfully and sustainably. Teachers and




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administrators often tell us that the Essentials model’s emphasis on creating

collaborative structures and practices has been the most important driver of

their development.

Collaboration doesn’t only help lighten the load on individual teachers.

The multiple perspectives it fosters also lend themselves to multiple insights.

We’ll discuss collaboration in detail in chapter 4. Collegial collaboration creates

more opportunities for deeper planning and reflecting than most teachers

have ever been exposed to. It helps ensure calibration of consistent expec-

tations across the school—a boon for administrators. Each step of the way,

school leaders need to make sure that structures and norms for collaboration

are in place.

Common planning, along with data review of assessments, has long been

a staple of professional learning communities (PLCs), but the Essentials model

takes collaboration to a new level. In this model, PLCs are tightly focused on

creating standards-based performance scales and learning targets and using

those as drivers to plan instruction for individual lessons and units. Teachers

return to their PLC planning time (ideally weekly) with evidence of student

learning to share, along with a willingness to evaluate how lessons could be

adjusted to help more students reach the learning targets.

ConclusionDistricts implementing the Essentials for Achieving Rigor model often find

that the essential vision, and the emphasis on rigor, can have profound and

far-reaching effects. The growth mindset the model fosters impacts not just

students and staff, but school board members, parents, and the community.

Principals and teachers have told us time and again that implementing the

model has reignited their love of learning.

Julia Espe, superintendent of Princeton School District in Minnesota, has

implemented the model in her entire school district with excellent results.

Espe believes the Essentials model has been crucial for helping teachers move

to standards-based instruction in Princeton’s classrooms. “We are making

progress this year that I have never seen in my whole career,” Espe says. “I’ve

been in many districts and seen many programs, but I cannot believe what I

have seen this year with this instructional model.”



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It takes courage, openness to growth, and persistence to shift an entire

school or district to a new way of understanding classroom instruction and

student learning. In chapter 2, we’ll take a deeper look into how teachers use

standards-based planning to drive rigorous instruction in their classrooms.



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