Using Marzano To Lesson Plan

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.