Afterword

The author concludes that the most powerful resource for change in a school is the teacher who wants to work toward substantive change.  That is one of my goals...but my idea of substantive change is to improve education instead of dumbing it down.  In my world of education, standardized tests would not be for minimum competency, students would be held to higher standards, and teachers would be allowed to be creative once again in their classrooms. 

Audiotape assessments

Using audiotapes to assess students seems to save time for the teacher in the long run since they tell each student individually how to improve their work.  However, the most important part of an audiotape assessment is that the students may actually listen to what the teacher has to say.  When I hand out graded papers, even though I go over the correct answers, the students are only interested in the grade on the front.  For the most part, they don't bother to look at their errors and learn from them.  I would like to possibly use my DVR for a goal next year in supplying audio assessments for my students.  I am going to have to give this more thought, though, because this could get very expensive buying CDs to burn.  I like that the teacher mentioned in Marzano's book got cassette players for each of her students to listen to their audio assessments.  Now, all I have to figure out is how to apply that to the newer technology of digital voice recorders. 

Massed and distributed practice

Massed practice is many small practices close together.  Distributed practice is spreading out the practice over longer intervals.  It is my belief that both are needed, but true learning only occurs if distributed practice is used and students truly learn the material, not just memorize it to take a specific assessment.  Many years ago, I taught at a Christian school that used the Abeka curriculum.  I have never since used a curriculum that was so targeted for distributed practice as effective as this curriculum.  Kudos to a great Christian curriculum that got it right the first time!

Vocabulary Instruction

Since I teach vocabulary constantly in my foreign language classroom, the chapter about techniques that work was interesting and validated some of the things that I have been doing for years.  For example, I always present vocabulary in context and the students always practice at least 8-10 different times before they are quizzed on new words.  It is also interesting that the author states that associating images with words helps students to recall them.  The textbook series that I use provides many visuals that assist me to include images in presentations and practices.  Nice to know that sometimes we get things right in the classroom!