[MOSAIC] Marzano Strategies and MOT strategies

[Ellin Keene]

Hi everyone;

I just wanted to add what I hope will be a bit of clarity on the discussion
about Marzano's strategies and MOT strategies. I think the word strategy is
overused to the point where it almost loses all meaning.  I've found it
useful to think about strategies in 3 categories: 

Cognitive Strategies (the proficient reader strategies you refer to as MOT
strategies), 

Learning strategies (which would include several of Marzano's strategies
such as note-taking, but really are designed to enhance what students retain
and reapply - we could add double entry journals, book clubs, artistic
depictions and other ways to help children make their thinking public and
retain and reapply what they have learned), and

Teaching Strategies (Thinking aloud, Modeling, Demonstrating, Conferring,
etc.).

The unique element that proficient reader strategies brought to the
conversation is that they are cognitive strategies - we had always had
learning to learn strategies such as SQ3R (anyone remember 7th grade Study
Skills class?!?!?!?), but these strategies are almost wholly invisible,
unless the learner chooses to make them visible.  I think this distinction
(between cognitive and learning strategies) can be useful for students.
They will probably find themselves combining strategies as Gina suggested in
her post, but the cognitive strategies become woven into the habitual work
of the mind and become so subtle in their application that often, they are
executed sub-consciously.  That will never be true for a learning strategy
and accounts, I suspect, for the potency many of us have discovered when
kids begin to adopt them. 

 

Hope that's helpful. . . 

best,

ellin

 

 

>Marzano and Pickering suggest a use of what they call high yield strategies
(considering you only have so many hours in a day these are strategies worth
teaching because they get long term results)  Summarizing, Note-Taking,
Non-linguistic rep., vocabulary, Comparison and contrast are some.

 

 

MOT and Marzano over-lap in places, as well  as offer pieces the other
leaves out.  For example note-taking is a Marzano strategy that needs to be
taught but I would use MOT strategies to lead kids to this  (determining
importance).  I don't know that I did a lot of comparison and contrast with
my MOT strategy instruction, but I do more of that now because our district
as adopted Marzano.

 

I haven't found a lot of ideas from Marzano on clear ways to teach all of
their strategies, more the need to do so.  I like MOT because it gives more
consistent guidance to a team of teachers.

_________________________________________________________________