It’s important that as many students
as possible respond. Teachers can
increase the response rate to questions
in several ways. One technique, response
chaining, involves having students
respond to the answers of other
students. Students can agree with,
disagree with, or add to a response.
Another technique is to use the voting
technologies that frequently come with
interactive white boards. These allow
students to electronically cast their vote
regarding the correct answer to a question. Their responses are immediately
displayed on a pie chart or bar graph,
enabling teacher and students to discuss
the different perceptions of the correct
answer. If voting technologies are not
available, students can record their
responses on inexpensive slates.
Marzano, 2007; Mayer, 2003). Simply
executing the strategy in the basic
sequence described is effective in and of
itself. However, research studies I
conducted in 85 elementary, middle
school, and high school classrooms,
each of which was videotaped and
to questions about the new content, the
teacher should have a good sense of the
entire class’s level of understanding.
4. Teachers cannot easily predetermine their pacing. Rather, they must
continually read student engagement
levels and adjust the pace accordingly.
Teachers can increase the response note
to questions by having students respond
to the answers of other students.
Pacing
As its name implies, pacing involves the
extent to which a teacher moves
through chunks at an appropriate
pace—not too fast and not too slow.
The teacher will need to slow down if
students do not understand the content
in a particular chunk or speed up when
student engagement in a chunk begins
to wane.
Monitoring
Monitoring involves continually
checking for student understanding. If
students do not understand the content
in a particular chunk, the teacher
revisits or reteaches that information
before moving on to another chunk.
What Teacher Research Found
This information-processing strategy
comprises a set of component strategies,
each of which has its own research
support (Good & Brophy, 2003;
analyzed regarding the relationship
between teacher behaviors and student
achievement (Marzano & Haystead,
2009), reveals nuances regarding how
best to use this strategy:
1. Scaffolding is the keystone of the
entire process. If the content of the
chunks does not follow a logical
progression to a clear goal, the rest of
the process is not as effective in
enhancing student learning.
2. A necessary component of interacting is keeping the student response
rate high. By the time a class period
ends, all students should have
responded to multiple questions or been
asked to explain their summaries of the
content. Students should discuss all
answers and summaries as opposed to
just moving on in response to a correct
answer.
3. Monitoring should be a natural
outcome of effective interaction. If the
teacher asks many students to report on
how they summarized, cleared up
confusions, and so on, he or she should
have a good sense of how well students
understand the new content. Likewise,
if a number of students have responded
When executed well, this process
dramatically increases students’ understanding of new information across
content areas and at every grade level,
which makes it a strategy that all
teachers can use to great benefit. EL
References
Good, T. L., & Brophy, J. E. (2003). Looking
in classrooms (9th ed.). Boston: Allyn and
Bacon.
Marzano, R. J. (2007). The art and science of
teaching: A comprehensive framework for
effective teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Marzano, R. J., & Haystead, M. (2009). Final
report on the evaluation of the Promethean
technology. Englewood, CO: Marzano
Research Laboratory.
Mayer, R. E. (2003). Learning and instruction.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill, Prentice
Hall.
Robert J. Marzano is Cofounder and
CEO of Marzano Research Laboratory in
Denver, Colorado. He is the author of The
Art and Science of Teaching (ASCD,
2007) and coauthor, with Mark W.
Haystead, of Making Standards Useful in
the Classroom (ASCD, 2008). To contact
Marzano or participate in a study
regarding a specific instructional strategy,
visit www.marzanoresearch.com.
