Module 2 EDU 6526
For a beginning teacher like myself, I feel that it is not good just to put me into a classroom without any tools. In his book Classroom Instruction That Works, Marzano (2001) presented nine strategies for effective classroom instruction. I have already used some of those strategies in my student teaching last year and now hope to use them when I find full time employment. After thinking about application of these strategies and considering that “the strategies presented in this book are certainly good tools, the should not be expected to work equally well in all situations”(Marzano, 2001, p. 8). With that in mind, I believe that in my experience in teaching music these strategies are most appropriate:
- Identifying Similarities and Differences
- Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition
- Homework and Practice
- Nonlinguistic Representations
- Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
Traditionally, music educators tend to rely solely on Reinforcing Effort and Providing Regcognition and Homework and Practice. I had the opportunity to observe many very successful music educators last year and one used Nonlinguistic Representations often and all of them used Identifying Similarities and Differences every single day. Specifically they used auditory cues for identifying similarities and differences but it was very effective. I have tried comparing and contrasting several times when I’ve substituted in music classrooms and it is the most effective strategy I’ve found for music and the research supports that. According to Marzano (2001), the average effect sizes range from .88-1.76 with the average effect size being 1.61 overall.
