The Art and Science of Teaching
Robert J. Marzano
Helping Students
Process Information
During the course of a typical esson or unit of study, teachers regularly present
students with new information.
Sometimes the information is
peripheral—even if students do not
understand it, they can still grasp
the overall goal of the lesson or
unit. However, sometimes the information is essential—without it,
students will have little chance of
comprehending the overall goal.
Five Avenues to Understanding
To help students process information that is
essential to understanding specific content,
teachers can use an effective strategy that
involves the following five elements.
Chunking
Chunking means presenting new information in
small, digestible bites. This requires carefully
examining the manner in which students will
experience new content. If the teacher intends to
present content in the form of a lecture, he or
she needs to determine the crucial points at
which to pause so students can interact with one
another about the new information.
For example, for a lecture on the topic of theoretical probability, the teacher might decide to
make her first stop after she has discussed some
basic differences between theoretical and experimental probability. If she’s using a videotape or a
video clip she’s downloaded from the Internet,
she might decide to stop the video about two
minutes into the discussion of how theoretical
probability is used in games of chance. This idea
of stopping so that students can digest the information also holds true for demonstrations, exhibitions, guest speakers, reading content in a textbook, and the like.
86 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP/OCTOBER 2009
Scaffolding
Whereas chunking involves the size of the bites
for new content, scaffolding involves the content
of the bites and their logical order. To illustrate,
let’s say that a teacher is showing students a
strategy for editing a composition for overall
organizational logic. The teacher might organize
the steps in that strategy into three chunks. The
first chunk would involve steps that deal with
determining whether the composition has good
transitions from paragraph to paragraph. The
Teachers must continually
read student engagement
levels and adjust the
pace accordingly.
second chunk would involve steps that deal with
determining whether the major sections of the
composition (that is, its beginning, middle, and
end) logically flow into one another. The third
chunk would involve steps that deal with determining whether the composition as a whole
sends a unified message. Each chunk logically
sets up the next chunk.
Interacting
Interacting refers to how students process the
information in each chunk. One common way to
facilitate processing is to organize students in
groups and ask each group to summarize the
content in the chunk, identify what was
confusing, try to clear up the confusion, and
predict what information might be found in the
next chunk.
