Marzano's Similarities and Differences
I am interested in ways to reinforce effort and provide feedback in my classroom. If anyone has any ideas, comments or resources, I would appreciate your feedback.
The materials I’ve read covered the following:
Comparing
Classifying
Creating Metaphors
Creating Analogies
Theory and Research in Brief
I keyed in on items he mentioned, like the detail in identifying similarities and differences were explicit in the process of comparing and critical to classifying.
Later in the same reading he referred to the three types of strategies for reasoning processes. They were Teacher-Directed Tasks, Student-Directed Tasks, and Graph Organizers.
• The Teacher-Directed information refers to the teacher providing the items for comparison and also the characteristics for comparison.
• The Student-Directed information refers to the teacher providing the items for comparison, but the students are asked to identify the characteristics for comparison.
• Graphic organizers are simply described as another method students can understand, visualize, and use whatever thinking process they are using at the time.
The first 2 Directed items include comparison tasks, matrixes’, metaphors, analogies (complete and incomplete) and the like.
In the teaching of Life and Zoology science class with high school students (freshman and sophomore) and reading levels running somewhere around 5th and 6th grade, I tend to stick with Venn diagrams, hierarchical flow charts and graphic organizers. Venn diagrams work at so many levels, and I’ve pretty much adopted Inspiration 7 as a better de facto software program. I’ve purchased a copy of version 8 for a number of other reasons, but in this economy (and all the soup lines), very few administrators want to create a visibility factor that demonstrates spending on the future is a good investment and it’s better to tread cautiously.
In the “Theory and Research in Brief” section of my readings, a pretty straightforward area, the best comment I could make on the topic of differences and similarities would be: The more the students are familiar with the subject, project or presentation, the better they will see the general patterns that exist within. This remains same, whether it’s a Venn diagram, Comparison matrix, Column format, Inspiration or web format, metaphor, analogies, et al.
I applied my version of this Friday of this week by instead of having the students observe the microscope and label same, I simply asked them to draw the microscope in front of them and create a list of their own naming scheme and label it with the names they have agreed upon. Next step migrate their words to those of the textbook. Hopefully, two things will happen, I will learn something by observing and they will spend some time observing and learn something.
The materials I’ve read covered the following:
Comparing
Classifying
Creating Metaphors
Creating Analogies
Theory and Research in Brief
I keyed in on items he mentioned, like the detail in identifying similarities and differences were explicit in the process of comparing and critical to classifying.
Later in the same reading he referred to the three types of strategies for reasoning processes. They were Teacher-Directed Tasks, Student-Directed Tasks, and Graph Organizers.
• The Teacher-Directed information refers to the teacher providing the items for comparison and also the characteristics for comparison.
• The Student-Directed information refers to the teacher providing the items for comparison, but the students are asked to identify the characteristics for comparison.
• Graphic organizers are simply described as another method students can understand, visualize, and use whatever thinking process they are using at the time.
The first 2 Directed items include comparison tasks, matrixes’, metaphors, analogies (complete and incomplete) and the like.
In the teaching of Life and Zoology science class with high school students (freshman and sophomore) and reading levels running somewhere around 5th and 6th grade, I tend to stick with Venn diagrams, hierarchical flow charts and graphic organizers. Venn diagrams work at so many levels, and I’ve pretty much adopted Inspiration 7 as a better de facto software program. I’ve purchased a copy of version 8 for a number of other reasons, but in this economy (and all the soup lines), very few administrators want to create a visibility factor that demonstrates spending on the future is a good investment and it’s better to tread cautiously.
In the “Theory and Research in Brief” section of my readings, a pretty straightforward area, the best comment I could make on the topic of differences and similarities would be: The more the students are familiar with the subject, project or presentation, the better they will see the general patterns that exist within. This remains same, whether it’s a Venn diagram, Comparison matrix, Column format, Inspiration or web format, metaphor, analogies, et al.
I applied my version of this Friday of this week by instead of having the students observe the microscope and label same, I simply asked them to draw the microscope in front of them and create a list of their own naming scheme and label it with the names they have agreed upon. Next step migrate their words to those of the textbook. Hopefully, two things will happen, I will learn something by observing and they will spend some time observing and learn something.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on
-
John,
One tool for classification and comparisons that you didn't mention by name are spreadsheets. I have created a number of classification activities for primary students using the spreadsheet. A popular one is called the Colors of Humans, which is part of the Zman projects http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/projects/Zman with the Colors of Humans story page with link to the spreadsheet templat on http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/projects/Zman/ZMAN-ColorHumans.... ... or you can just look at the spreadsheet at http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/science/Biology/excel/ColorHuma... ... the template introduces bar graphs so they are included on the template.
I have a simple classification spreadsheet for plants and animals at http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/science/Biology/BIO-PlantAnimal... which contains a link to the spreadsheet. Even lower technology is used with the Predator and Prey sort activities involving the Predator and Prey tiles: http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/science/Biology/BIO-Tiles-PredP... .... Matching is done with the domino game and the card games: http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/science/Biology/BIO-PredPrey-Do... and http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/science/Biology/BIO-PredPrey-Ca... ... an interesting matching game was developed for the Predator and Prey unit for a special ed class Are You My Dinner http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/science/Biology/BIO-PredPrey-Di...
Children are expected to do their own research to find the physical properties of all the elements (or as many as you choose to have them do on http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/science/CHEM-Elements-Physical.... .... in the same vein, the electron configurations are provided for all the elements on http://www.educationalsynthesiss.org/science/Chem-Elements-Electron... and students would be expected to use whatever materials present themselves to make models of some of the elements .... There is also a three dimensional sort in low tech for shapes, colors and sizes available by printing out the tiles and letting the kids sort the tiles on desk or table. You will find that at http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/science/SORT-ColorShape.html
These are some examples of things that you can do with your goals using spreadsheets, which are usually provided on all computers. Many of my activities are intended for elementary level students, but you should be able to adapt them easily to the subjects objectives with your older students.
Anne
-
-
Oh, I forgot a good one ---- using a spreadsheet to collect weather data for a week or longer, perhaps at diverse times of the day. Set up a column for temperature in the sun, temperature in the shade, pressure and humidity. Take a portable weather station outdoors morning, noon, and late afternoon, record the data, and bring back to enter in the spreadsheet (unless you have a portable laptop). Ideally, you would do this for a week or two. You may want to include a column for precipitation at the time the recording is done. I did this with summer school fourth graders, and they really got into noticing the differences in the temperature, as well as the other variables.
After a week, you can have the spreadsheet show the maximum, minimum, mean and medial and mode. It may be fun to do a week of it in the fall, a week in the winter, and a week in the spring, and let the students compare the results for the seasons.
-
Permalink Reply by John Moloney on
-
Anne,
Thank you from Nebraska! The link are great, although I had a few errors on a couple, but you've given me the needed infusion of brain food I needed. It was a busy day and I have been banging away on this keyboard for the last 3.5 hours. Phew! Your absolutely correct when you said these can be adapted to older students and strangley enough they no doubt have some of the same stuggles your students have. Life is about having to practice the same thing over and over...not until you get it right...just until you get as good as you can.
I've been trying to work more spreedsheets into my curriculum and have more of less adopted InspireData as my software program of choice. I drives my studetns nuts to have to plot all that "stuff." They don't seem to mind typing the information in, but get frustrated with the plot. The beauty of that program being a graphic organizer is simply you add the fields, information and numbers and when you click on the graph of your choice viola! The general satisfaction in amazing.
I'm a bit of a newbie in the blog area and appreciate you patience and help in this area. What an an area for educators to say in touch.
Report
Win at School
Commercial Policy
If you are representing a commercial entity, please see the specific guidelines on your participation.
Badge
Follow
Awards:
© 2024 Created by Steve Hargadon.
Powered by
