Many teachers send examples for the "A" or Access Prior Knowledge part of the GANAG lesson to find out if it is a "good one."  A simple and, I believe, neurologically sound way to think about an APK is to consider the phrase:  recruiting neurons.  Does the cue recruit neurons that will connect the new information in a meaningful way?

Two confusions seem to exist when a teacher plans the beginning of the lesson.  One issue is that the teacher simply and sincerely tries to conform to the schema by adding a task at the beginning of the lesson.  Unfortunately, sometimes that task becomes a task itself, takes a bit too much time, and does not really do the efficient job of "recruiting neurons" needed to attach to the new information.

Secondly, because the idea of accessing prior student knowledge is tied directly to reading research, it seems that sometimes teachers find the that they end up trying to "build background knowledge" rather than cue during the first couple of minutes of the lesson.

So, to remind us of the importance of creating a brief cue before teaching the new information of the lesson, it appears to be useful to take the neurological language of "recruting neurons."  In both One Teacher at a Time and One Principal at a Time, there are various examples of ways a teacher can fire those neurons.

Principal Layne Parmenter (Improving Student Learning One Principal at a Time principal voice) and I talked today about the classroom lessons we observed this week and one of the topics was student engagement in a lesson.  We both acknowledged that many teachers use tactics that may or may not work; I was reminded of a phrase that Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers) used in his New Yorker article in December when he identified characteristics for successful teaching/teachers.  "Regard for student perspective," he writes, "is a teacher's knack for allowing students  some flexibility in how they become engaged. 

Taken a step further, "regard for student perspective," is more than simply using better feedback strategies.  It implies that the teacher truly wants to know, needs to know, how the student is connecting or interpreting the information.

By analogy -- "A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song." (Chinese proverb).  A student responds not only because he or she has an answer, but because he or she has made a connection, an opinion, an original interpretation. 

Often a teacher or supervisor asks me to share some strategies for giving better feedback to learners, as Ron Maniglia from New Jersey did this morning.  Attaching the response to the research chapters seems a useful and practical way to answer:

Feedback Strategies

(clearing up misinformation, expanding knowledge, retention)

1. Know targets (chapter 2, OTT; chapters 5 and 11, CITW)

2. Know that effort works (CITW, chapter 4)

3. Know how to ask questions (chapter 10, CITW)

(student learns to solicit feedback specific to needs - writes questions, uses prompts)

4. Learn from peers (chapter 7, CITW)

(cooperative learning - pair/share)

5. Reflect personally - respond to prompts (chapters 3, 6 and 10, CITW)

(self-evaluation and correction)

6. Use thinking skills (chapters 2, 9, 10, CITW)

(robust strategy - reflection, correction by others, and unsolicited gains)

7. Track performance to see patterns (chapter 5, OTT)


 

Sources:
Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

 Pollock, J. E. (2007). Improving student learning one teacher at a time. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

 Pollock, J. E. & Ford, Sharon M. (2009). Improving student learning one principal at a time. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.