Students' Taking Ownership

I will not know for another week or so if another strategy from Marzano has actually worked with my students. I really liked the idea of having not only the objectives from the teacher's point of view listed at the beginning of a unit, but also the objectives from the student's point of view listed as well (147-149). Since I do use handouts containing my learning objectives, expectations, and requirements to earn an 'A', 'B', or a 'C', it was easy to add a section below my objectives anad expectations for my students to individually, on their own handout, list their objectives and expectations. First, they just stared at me. When they caught on to what they were to do, they started to think seriously about what they wanted (or were willing) to accomplish in the unit. I should mention here that I had just built this two week unit plan that included Washington Irving, "Rip Van Winkle," writing assignments on the time period, the poem "Rip Van Winkle," and an clay animation of the story on DVD. Students really worked on the background research and will be presenting powerpoint presentations tomorrow. When we are finished with those presentations (each team had a different topic), have read the story and the poem and have viewed the DVD, the teams will each be given a large wall-size sheet of paper with three interlocking circles on it. There, they will be comparing and contrasting the story, the poem, and the video.