I recently had to find some state standards to justify teaching a unit about Indigenous Peoples' history.  I read every single state standard for my state from 3rd grade to 8th and found 19.  Of them, only 3 or 4 dealt with Indigenous Peoples pre-Columbian contact.  The vast majority of the remainder only addressed the Indigenous population as something that stood in the way of America's westward expansion/conquest - something to be conquered.  Based on information I learned at the National Council for Social Studies Conference in Chicago a few years ago, this is all too common.

This is wrong.  We must do better.

I have recently become passionate about how Indigenous Peoples' history is taught, or, rather, (in most schools) not taught.  This summer, I read an incredible book by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz called An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States that was both breath taking and eye-opening.  The book is a re-telling of American history from the perspective of Indigenous Peoples focusing on how European contact had (and continues to have) a devastating impact on Indigenous Peoples' culture and heritage.  I highly recommend it.

One of the obstacles to teaching about Indigenous Peoples' culture is a general lack of resources; especially the lack of resources that respectfully examine pre-contact Indigenous history in a way that is accessible to students and affordable to teachers.  To help fill that gap in resources, I have created a number of them linked below that teach about Indigenous Peoples that are middle school appropriate, engaging and affordable.  If you are interested, please take a look and see if they are right for you.

• Differentiated Reading Passages
  • Native America Differentiated Readings (Traditional & Print Versions)
  • Native American Regions Individual Differentiated Reading Passage
  • Native American Lifestyle Individual Differentiated Reading Passage
  • Native Americans Today Individual Differentiated Reading Passage
• Lifestyle & Environment Activities
  • Eastern Woodlands Region
  • Southeast Woodlands Region
  • Great Plains Region
  • Southwest Region
  • Pacific/Mountain Region
  • 5-Resource Bundle of All Regions
• Inquiry Activities
  • Native America Artifact Interpretation Activity
  • Maya, Aztec & Inca Triple Venn Diagram Activity
• Map Activity
  • Who Were the Moundbuilders?

A few weeks ago, I gave an overview of how to create a Marzano scale from a standard.  I received a comment from a follower whose district is just "starting to dabble in Marzano" who wondered if I could provide a step-by-step example with an actual state standard.  So, acting on the age old teaching principle of "if one person asks a question, lots of others are probably wondering the same thing", this week I'll show you how I break an actual state standard into Marzano aligned scales that can be used to guide daily instruction.

First, we need a sample standard.  I'm from Michigan, so I'll use on of ours:

• F1.1: Describe the ideas, experiences and interactions that influenced the colonists decisions to declare independence by analyzing
  • colonial ideas about government (e.g. limited government, republicanism, protecting individual rights and promoting the common good, representative government, natural rights)
  • experiences with self-government (e.g. House of Burgesses and town meetings)
  • changing interactions with the royal government of Great Britain after the French and Indian War

Quick side note: Michigan's social studies standards are notoriously packed with a TON of information and are usually unwieldly.  I believe more work should have been done at the state level to break them down into more teacher and student-friendly chunks, but I digress.

​Actually, the more content in a particular standard, the easier it is to break down.  If there are bullet points (like the one above has), the first step for me is to turn the main part of the standard (F1.1...) into a student-friendly "I can" statement.  This will become my level three or "mastery" level.  This standard turns into, "I can describe why the colonists chose to declare their independence from Britain."

Next, I turn my attention to the bullet points themselves; these are the things students will need to be able to do to master the standard.  In this standard, I would sequence the bullet points into a logical path that would lead to the colonists declaring independence.  This will help with both creating the standard, and in using the standard to create your lesson plans later.  It makes sense to me to sequence them like this:

1. Colonial ideas about self-government
2. Colonial experiences with self-government while under British rule
3. How their relationship with Britain was changed by the French and Indian War

Once these building blocks have been identified, I apply them to my "mastery statement" and wind up with this:

• "I can describe why the colonists chose to declare their independence from Britain by analyzing colonial ideas of self-government, their experiences with self-government and how the French and Indian war changed everything."

​Now, to fill in the lower levels (1 &2) of the scales, you add the building blocks.  I would do it like this:

The last step is to identify something that goes beyond mastery to fill out the "Beyond Mastery" level of the scale (level four).  In this case, I would provide my students with an opportunity to evaluate the things that led the colonists to declare their independence.  My level four would be, "I can select the one thing that I think most led the colonists to declare their independence and explain my reasoning." 

This particular scale is far too big, and too full of information to be a single lesson, so to make it more usable, I would treat the things in level two as separate standards and create scales and lessons around them.  When these lessons are put together, I am left with a lesson plan for about a week of instruction.  These scales are as follow:

I know this all seems like a lot, but you will find that as you begin to create scales, it gets easier and easier resulting in faster and faster work.  It will become second-nature to you, and you will begin to think of all of your content in terms of levels of mastery and how your students can demonstrate it.  This mindset shift will lead to lessons more closely tailored to standards, better student performance on assessments and great evaluations for you!

​Before I close, I want to thank the follower who submitted the request for this topic.  If you have any questions about this post, or anything relating to Marzano, scales or socials studies, please leave them in the comments below.  Your comments really help me find topics to blog about, and for great social studies resources, don't forget to visit and follow my TpT store.

One of the things I have come to love about Marzano aligned teaching and planning is that as I have gotten more and more comfortable with it, my students have gotten better and better at assessments and I have gotten better and better evaluations.  This blog post will give you some tips and tricks to get a good evaluation using Marzano!

To get a great evaluation, it's a really good idea to begin by understanding the tool your evaluator will be rating you with (see, that's Marzano right there - identify your learning targets and rate your progress toward them!).  It's like knowing the strike zone in baseball. 

If your school is a "Marzano school" it is probably using the teacher evaluation tool created by Marzano.  If not, effectively using Marzano strategies will still help you get better evaluations because you will be using best practices and creating great lesson plans when you go through the steps I laid out in a previous post called Lesson Planning With Marzano.

If you are a "Marzano school" that uses the Marzano evaluation tool, this is where things start to get really easy!

• The tool is sort of a checklist of domains and strategies that evaluators simply check off and comment on, so, just be sure you clearly label which strategies you will be using in your lesson and either give your evaluator a copy or briefly speak with them beforehand.
  • This does a couple of things for you.  First, it communicates to your evaluator that you're prepared.  Second, it gives you a better chance of getting a score on the elements you want to get a score on.
• As you are teaching, especially if you do this with your students anyway, you might want to call out or have labeled on projected Google Slides the name or number of the elements you are using.  This serves the same purposes as the first step.
• Make sure you show you are monitoring the strategies you use for their desired effect.  When I overtly started doing this throughout instruction rather than just at the end during evaluations, my scores really started to soar.
• Lastly, after the observation, when it is time to meet with your administrator, be ready to explain not just which strategies you chose, but why you chose them and how you determined if they were effective or not.
  • Doing this cements in your evaluator's mind that you are a very reflective, knowledgeable teacher and will usually get you the benefit of the doubt and bump up your scores in certain areas they were not planning to.
    

The thing an evaluator wants to see more than anything is that you know what you are doing, why you are doing it and that your students are learning and engaged.  Using the strategies on the Marzano placemat ensure that you are using best practices and highlighting those practices should ensure a very positive evaluation! 

As I mentioned in my last post about lesson planning with Marzano, the first step in effective instruction is providing clear goals and to monitor student progress toward those goals.  But how?

With scales!  Marzano scales are based on the concept of "Mastery".  According to Marzano, mastery is being able to answer at least 80% of questions about a topic correctly.  A Marzano scale goes from 0-4 with each level as follows:

• 0 = Even with help, I cannot understand the content.  Or, in student friendly language, "I just don't get it."
• 1 = With a lot of teacher support, I can understand a minimal amount of the content.  Or, in student friendly language, "I get it, but only if you talk me through it every time."
• 2 = With a little teacher support, I can understand most of the content.  Or, in student friendly language, "I get it, but will need some help."
• 3 = Mastery!  I can demonstrate understanding of the content at least 80% of the time.  Or, in student friendly language, "I get it!"
• 4 + Beyond Mastery.  The student can apply the content beyond what is asked of them.  Or, in student friendly language, "I get it, and look what I can do with it!"

I have this rating system posted in my classroom and my students use it every day to rate their understanding both prior to and after instruction.  If you would like a FREE digital copy of if, CLICK HERE.

You might be thinking, "Great, but how can I make the scale they rate themselves on?"  You begin with the standard.  Most standards (at least in Social Studies) are large and complicated things that seem cobbled together like Frankenstein's monster.  The first step is to break the monster standard into smaller chunks.  These chunks become your daily lessons.  

Next, take a chunk and ask yourself, "What would a student need to be able to do to demonstrate mastery of this chunk?" Once you have your answer, that is both your daily learning target and the level 3 on your scale!  Level 4 is something beyond that, so ask yourself, "How could my students apply this knowledge another way?"

Level 0 is always the same - "Even with help, I still don't get it."  

This leaves level 1 and 2 to worry about.  The easiest way to fill these is to go back to what you came up with for level 3 and try to think of three or four things students would need to be able to do to call themselves a 3.  Once you have these, put the simpler one(s) in level 1 and the simpler and more difficult ones in level 2.  Once you've done that, you have a Marzano aligned scale for your lesson!

A few final thoughts.

• First, I have found it most effective to phrase the overall target and each of the levels as "I can" statements.  In my opinion, this helps students internalize their learning - it makes it more real to them.
• Second, while some people support creating and using scales for entire units or topics of study, I advocate (and do) making them for each individual lesson.  It helps students feel more immediately successful, helps me focus my lesson planning, and also helps both me and my students identify content that wasn't mastered in a much quicker timeframe. 

Okay, so you've seen the Marzano placemat and know how it's organized.  Now what?  The chart and language used can be very overwhelming, especially if your school or district basically says, "Here, use this," without any high quality training.  But don't worry.  In fact, there's nothing new on it!

So, if it's just old stuff (or new names for old stuff), why bother, right?  It's just a fad that will go away.

First, it's not a fad.  It's an organized list of best practices.  And second, it actually saves time and makes lesson planning easier.

ORGANIZED

• ​Like I shared in my last blog post, the Marzano placemat breaks best practices into three categories: 1) Goal Setting and Monitoring, 2) Planned Learning Activities, and, 3) Enacted On the Spot Strategies.  One of my biggest ah-ha moments with Marzano was that these three categories translated to my three steps of lesson planning which I will share below:

LESSON PLANNING​

1. I always start by asking myself this question, "What do I want my students to know, and how will I know when they learned it?"  this question is category #1 in a nutshell.
2. Once I am satisfied with my answer to the first question, I craft a scale for that lesson, then turn my attention to my second lesson planning question, "What are the best strategies or techniques to help the greatest number of my students reach mastery, and how will I help the rest?"  A wide range of possible strategies are listed in the second category of the Marzano placemat to chose from.  I tend to keep in mind the question of best strategies and balance it with repetition - I try to avoid student boredom by selecting a variety of activities and approaches within each week or unit of study.
3. The last step is probably the easiest.  I ask myself, "How will I keep them engaged and excited throughout?"  Which, of course, is the third category on the Marzano placemat - those "unplanned, enacted on the spot" things that are really pre-planned and well thought out in most cases.  I decide what quick games or thought provoking questions I can sprinkle in or play at the end to both keep students engaged and solidify their learning.  Another thing I like to do on this step is to find funny (or what I consider funny - my students might (and probably would) disagree) on topic "dad jokes" to tell.

And that's it.  If you go through these three questions and use the placemat as a guide for selecting categories, you can't help but to create a well thought out Marzano aligned lesson plan.