Following up immediately on the previous post, and speaking of great science teachers…
Another lesson today was with Mr. Trombley and Mrs. Krieger (current gifted programming teacher and former science teacher). The three of us and another teacher are working together on our Professional Study Plans. We are in year 3 , which means we do some sort of study on improving learning. We have chosen to focus on the work of Robert Marzano and his Building Academic Vocabulary meta-research. This is a district initiative and we are using science (and math) classes to do our study.
Today was the first time to introduce the study to the students. We administered a pretest using the CPS “clickers,” followed by a lesson on learning vocabulary with the Marzano method, taught by Mrs. Krieger. Today’s group is the “focus” group and next Tuesday is the “control” group. We will evaluate the results of the unit test to see if there is any difference in scores based on how the vocabulary is taught. Throughout this year we will be rotating the focus and control groups so all the students in the class have the same opportunities.
Its really exciting to be able to work on projects such as this. It makes learning for everyone exciting!
Image citation:
“Little Girl Reading Book as Words Come off the Page.” Online image. PowerMediaPlus.com. 5 October 2007. <http://www.powermediaplus.com>