The Handbook for the New Art and Science of Teaching. Robert J. Marzano
a script, no deeper understanding of the content is taking place. Teachers must budget time in class for students to explain the explicit connections between their enactments and the content they represent. Consider the following tips for effective dramatic enactments.
• Students must have a strong understanding of the content before performing a dramatic enactment. While students can engage in research and more extensive investigation of a topic before performing a dramatic enactment, if this is a new strategy in the classroom, it may be beneficial to directly teach key information. Creating dramatic enactments can also help clarify and distinguish content for students, but only if they have the requisite background knowledge.
• Dramatic enactments should engage students’ creativity and critical thinking skills. Dramatic enactments often ask students to reimagine content as something else or create a metaphor between content and movement. This concept might be challenging for students at first, so provide several examples for students to watch or help them map out a plan for their enactment before practicing it. If possible, save recordings of previous years’ enactments or find a similar activity online that students can reference while working on their project.
• Students should be able to describe the choices they made in their dramatic enactments. Teachers can ask students to write a short summary of why they chose to structure their enactment the way they did or have students explain their reasoning verbally for the class.
• Dramatic enactments should encourage students to explore different perspectives, cultures, time periods, and characters. Dramatic enactments can be particularly useful to help students put themselves in someone else’s shoes. Teachers can have students create short dramatic enactments that explore unique perspectives and then ask students how the dramatic enactment helped them better understand that perspective.
• Dramatic enactments should not focus on students’ acting or performance abilities. Not all students will feel comfortable with the idea of performing in front of their peers. Teachers should encourage students to present clearly and confidently but remind them that the enactment is primarily about engaging with the content and learning from their own as well as their classmates’ performances.
Mnemonic Devices
A teacher can use mnemonic devices to help students remember, record, and represent critical content. Mnemonic devices often link content to symbols, imagery, or patterns of sound to strengthen the memory of the user. A teacher can lead students in the use of mnemonic devices to encourage their continued engagement with content. Following are examples of mnemonic devices.
• Acronym mnemonics: Probably the most common acronym mnemonic is ROY G BIV, which represents the spectrum of colors found in the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Students can create their own acronym mnemonic by using the first letters from a series of words to create a new word. Acronym mnemonics can be helpful when trying to remember items that belong to a category or steps in a process or procedure.
• Music mnemonic: Music has long been a useful mnemonic device; many students learn the alphabet or the quadratic equation using a melody. Advertisers also frequently take advantage of this mnemonic by setting their slogans to catchy melodies. For best use of this strategy, set a list of steps or facts to a song or melody that most students will be familiar with. Students can create their own music mnemonics by using the melody of a nursery rhyme, pop song, or common folk song to help them remember facts, dates, processes, and other lists of information. Extend this activity by having students create a short music video to accompany their music mnemonic.
• Image mnemonic: Unlike pictorial notes, an image mnemonic may not represent a fact or concept directly but may instead capitalize on the sound or other qualities of the concept to create a memorable, often silly, image. Students draw an image to help them remember content. For example, in order to remember that pi is the ratio of the circle’s circumference to its diameter, a student might draw a whole pie balancing on top of half a pie. In this kind of mnemonic, while it is important to create a memorable image, it is equally important that the student is able to link the image to the fact or concept to remember, so it is essential that the connection between the image and content is not too tenuous.
• Spelling mnemonic: Students can create their own spelling mnemonics to help them remember the spelling of words that they often forget. This activity works well for distinguishing between two words that are very similar in spelling or sound. Teachers and students can use images, pithy phrases, or other devices to design a spelling mnemonic. One example of a spelling mnemonic, “you always want two desserts, but you only want one desert,” helps students remember that dessert has two of the letter s and desert only has one.
Rhyming Pegwords
Students use this strategy to remember a list of facts or information. The method uses a set of concrete images that rhyme with the numbers one through ten, such as the following.
One is a bun.
Two is a shoe.
Three is a tree.
Four is a door.
Five is a hive.
Six is a stack of sticks.
Seven is heaven.
Eight is a gate.
Nine is a line.
Ten is a hen.
To remember a fact or piece of information, a student associates it with one of the concrete images. For example, a student might want to remember the following list of information about ancient Egyptian civilization.
1. Egyptian civilization developed along the Nile River in Africa.
2. The Egyptians used a system of writing called hieroglyphics.
3. The Egyptians built the pyramids as burial places for their pharaohs.
To remember these facts, the student might connect the first item to the image for the number one, a bun. He or she might picture a hot dog bun with the Nile River flowing through the center of it. The second item would be connected to the image for the number two, a shoe—perhaps a shoe with hieroglyphs written on the side of it. The third item in the list would be connected to the image of a tree, for the number three. The student might imagine a tree whose leaves and branches had been trimmed to create a pyramid shape. These images help the student ensure that he or she has remembered all the items in the list. This strategy is especially helpful with long lists of facts or lists that must be recalled in a certain order.
Link Strategies
Students use this strategy to remember facts or information by first creating symbols or substitutes for important ideas and then linking those symbols or substitutes together in a narrative. A symbol is an image that reminds one of important information, like a rainbow to represent the concept of an arc. A substitute is a word that is easy to picture and sounds like the information one is trying to remember, like the word ark to remember the concept of the arc of a circle.
For example, consider the scientific process. There are generally six steps in the process: (1) ask a question, (2) do background research, (3) construct a hypothesis, (4) test the hypothesis by doing an experiment, (5) analyze the data and draw a conclusion, and (6) report the results. The link strategy might produce the following narrative and symbols.
Prince Science went on a quest with his handy magnifying glass to look for the magic hippo. He went through many perils but trusted his horse, Dart, to draw him to the hippo’s conclave. Afterward, the hippo and the prince developed quite the rapport.
• Quest: Quest sounds like question and stands in for the first step of the scientific process.
• Magnifying glass: Magnifying glass stands in as a symbol for research.
• Hippo: Hippo is a substitute for the word hypothesis.
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