Bloom and Marzano

This week's activities have encouraged me to add more theory behind my lesson planning and instruction.  The first area I need to improve in is catering more to the visual learners.  A long time ago I had a supervisor who liked flow charts and I had to create one for every major work process we had using Visio.  A challenge to this was that I was the only one with the Visio software so I printed them for the supervisor to see.  I don't need to see things to understand them, so I provided these charts to my trainees but I didn't attach too much importance to them.  Perhaps in addition to these charts, or maybe as a replacement for them, I will provide different types of graphic organizers for my trainees to enhance their understanding of accounting concepts.  For example, using Marzano's first strategy, Identifying Similarities and Differences, I could have the students compare different account types.  This way they would learn what is meant by zero-balance accounts (the accounts we need to keep at zero) versus normal balance accounts (those that can have either a debit or credit balance).

Note-taking, another of Marzano's strategies is another concept I need to explore in greater detail.  I have seen several trainees take note after note only to not be able to find what they are looking for.  I've mentioned to a couple of them that they have too many different places they are taking notes in--the same notes are being entered over and over again.  It seems like the majority of students don't refer back to their notes, which I find extremely irritating.  I don't understand why one would bother to take notes if they won't be consulted.  There are several times when I tell trainees not to take notes, I want them to concentrate on the overall picture and watch me perform a task several times instead of trying to copy down everything I say (which Marzano says is the least effective way to take notes anyway).

I put a lot of effort into creating new learning activities for another assignment this week because I really do see them as an opportunity to make my instruction better and I'm looking forward to getting a new group of trainees soon so I can try them out!