Identifying Critical Content: Classroom Techniques to Help Students Know What is Important. Deana Senn
Cue Critical Content
Use Storytelling to Cue Critical Content
Use What Students Already Know to Cue Critical Content
About the Authors
DEANA SENN, MSSE, is an expert in instructional strategies and classroom assessments. She is the Lead Content Developer and a Senior Staff Developer for Learning Sciences Marzano Center. Ms. Senn’s curriculum, instruction, and assessment experience spans the United States and Canada. Ms. Senn has been a teacher and leader in school, district, regional, and provincial roles in both rural and urban settings. She is a graduate of Texas A&M University and received her master’s degree from Montana State University. With her extensive experience focusing on teaching and learning, Ms. Senn offers a unique perspective for improving instructional practice.
AMBER C. RUTHERFORD, MSEd, works closely with Dr. Robert J. Marzano in designing content for professional development for an international audience with a particular focus on Common Core State Standards and teacher evaluation. She is a notable speaker and leads professional development throughout the nation in districts that are implementing Marzano evaluation models. Ms. Rutherford received her Master of Science in Education from Fitchburg State College and has been a successful teacher, coach, public school administrator, and certified observer in the Marzano models. As a PLC consultant, she developed PLC implementation plans that significantly raised student achievement. Her experience and commitment as a practitioner and leader in public schools guides her research in educator development for diverse populations. Amber is married to her college sweetheart, Jared, and has three rambunctious boys under the age of 5: Brayden, Jackson, and Landon.
ROBERT J. MARZANO is CEO of Marzano Research Laboratory and executive director of the Learning Sciences Marzano Center for Teacher and Leader Evaluation. A leading researcher in education, he is a speaker, trainer, and author of more than 150 articles on topics such as instruction, assessment, writing and implementing standards, cognition, effective leadership, and school intervention. He has authored over 30 books, including The Art and Science of Teaching (ASCD, 2007) and Teacher Evaluation That Makes a Difference (ASCD, 2013).
Introduction
This guide, Identifying Critical Content: Classroom Techniques to Help Students Know What Is Important, is intended as a resource for improving a specific element of instructional practice—identifying critical content. Your motivation to incorporate this strategy into your instructional toolbox may have come from a personal desire to improve your instructional practice through the implementation of a research-based set of strategies (such as those found in the Marzano teacher evaluation framework) or a desire to increase the rigor of the instructional strategies you implement in your class so that students meet the expectations of demanding standards such as the Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards, or state standards based on or influenced by College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards.
This guide will help teachers of all grade levels and subjects improve their performance of a specific instructional strategy: identifying critical content. Narrowing your focus on a specific skill, such as identifying critical content, allows you to concentrate on the nuances of this instructional strategy in order to deliberately improve it. This allows you to intentionally plan, implement, monitor, adapt, and reflect on this single element of your instructional practice. A person seeking to become an expert displays distinctive behaviors, as explained by Marzano and Toth (2013):
• breaks down the specific skills required to be an expert
• focuses on improving those particular critical skill chunks (as opposed to easy tasks) during practice or day-to-day activities
• receives immediate, specific, and actionable feedback, particularly from a more experienced coach
• continually practices each critical skill at more challenging levels with the intention of mastering it, giving far less time to skills already mastered
This series of guides will support each of the above-listed behaviors, with a focus on breaking down the specific skills required to be an expert and giving day-to-day practical suggestions to enhance these skills.
Building on the Marzano Instructional Framework
This series is based on the Marzano instructional framework, which is grounded in research and provides educators with the tools they need to connect instructional practice to student achievement. The series uses key terms that are specific to the Marzano model of instruction. Table 1 provides a glossary of these key terms.
Table 1. Glossary of Key Terms
| Term | Definition |
| CCSS | Common Core State Standards is the official name of the standards documents developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI), the goal of which is to prepare America’s students for college and career. |
| CCR | College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards are broad statements that incorporate individual standards for various grade levels and specific content areas. |
| Desired result | The intended result for the student(s) due to the implementation of a specific strategy. |
| Monitoring | The act of checking for evidence of the desired result of a specific strategy while the strategy is being implemented. |
| Instructional strategy | A category of techniques used for classroom instruction that has been proven to have a high probability of enhancing student achievement. |
| Instructional technique | The method used to teach and deepen understanding of knowledge and skills. |
| Content | The knowledge and skills necessary for students to demonstrate standards. |
| Scaffolding | A purposeful progression of support that targets cognitive complexity and student autonomy to reach rigor. |
| Extending | Activities that move students who have already demonstrated the desired result to a higher level of understanding. |
The educational pendulum swings widely from decade to decade. Educators move back and forth between prescriptive checklists and step-by-step lesson plans to approaches that encourage instructional autonomy with minimal regard for the science of teaching and need for accountability. Two practices are often missing in both of these approaches