 Processing New Information Learning Content in Digestible Bites

Organize Students (7) Preview (8) Content Chunk (9) Process (10) Elaborate (11) Record (12) Reflec t (13) Identify Critical Information (6)  Processing new information is one of several elements that students will work through when taking in new knowledge.  It is the first step in which students begin to own the learning of the new content.  All elements in this cycle work together to gradually release the knowledge from the teacher owning the knowledge to the student owning the knowledge.  This cycle could take multiple days to go through depending on the content.  All elements in this cycle should take place, but not necessarily in sequential order. It really depends on the learning experience you have designed for the students. Student Action Required

What is processing?  Processing is the act of keeping new information in the working memory long enough to act on it in a meaningful way before adding new information.-Marzano 2015  It’s how students make sense of what they are learning.  Visible Manifestations:  Talking  Sharing  Explaining  Writing  Summarizing  Paraphrasing  Questioning

Works best when…  Students are working in heterogeneously grouped cooperative dyads, triads, or quads  After every chunk of new critical information they hear, see or read  Can be as brief as 2-3 minutes or as long as 30 minutes depending on the difficulty of the chunk of content

Teacher Behaviors for Facilitation of Processing  Teach and model the technique/strategy you want students to use to process the information  Plan and provide many opportunities for students to process information during a unit of instruction.  Organize students to work in collaborative groups to process the information  Facilitate efficient and effective collaborative groups  Encourage and motivate students to persevere through the processing activity  Gradually release responsibility to students  Monitor for the desired effect throughout the activity

Monitoring for Desired Effect  Students can:  Explain or paraphrase what they just heard  Volunteer predictions about new information  Voluntarily ask clarifying questions  Actively discuss new information by asking/answering questions  Generate conclusions from new information  Verbally summarize new information  Write a response to the new information

Monitor and Reflect  The more teachers monitor their students and reflect on how they are progressing in the learning process, the better equipped they will be to adjust their instruction to meet student needs.

This should be our focus…

 What are the critical parts of this definition?  Teacher act  Checking evidence  Desired student learning of critical content  During instruction

Facilitation Grid for Monitoring  Use some sort of collection tool as you monitor student progress toward the understanding of critical content.  A facilitation grid is one method.  Write the student names down the left side.  Write the learning targets or criteria you are looking for as you monitor student learning across the top.  In this case it is what ever you expect to see the students writing, doing or saying as you walk around.  As you walk around and monitor student work, check off who has it and who does not.

Monitoring During Instruction  Teacher Observation:  Walk and listen to student conversations around critical content  Watch and listen to demonstrations, oral presentations, etc. of critical content  Spot check student work to determine progress  Ask probing questions to redirect or elevate thinking  Review student class work  Observe students as they work with manipulatives  Observe students as they respond by pointing to correct answers or represent the correct answer through body movement

Scaffold/Support-Adaptations  Use pictures, graphics, and diagrams  Provide sentence stems  Develop guiding/probing questions  Tell stories to illustrate examples  Regroup students to provide additional support  Show work samples or point out exemplars  Review reasoning behind responses before asking students to respond  Provide a brief overview of critical content  Post anchor charts, helpful lists, diagrams or techniques

Extension Adaptations  Students answer questions that stretch them just beyond the standard to deepen and extend their thinking.  Students categorize important terms and make generalizations based on those categories.  Students identify how each chunk of information or each activity relates to the learning targets.  Students identify similarities and differences between learning targets, and groups’ conclusions or solution methods.  Students create their own graphic organizer to share with the class.  Students identify strategies and techniques that were particularly useful to their knowledge gain.  Students create picture, graphics, and diagrams of previously learned skills or procedures to share with the class.

Connecting PLC Work - Monitoring  You are the content experts, so use each other’s experience and knowledge during your PLC time to:  Prioritize and problem solve around the most critical content students must learn.  Determine what mastery of the target/standard (s) looks like.  Analyze data in order to share successful strategies and meet the needs of all students.  Brainstorm scaffold/supports could be used to support student learning.  brainstorm extensions that could be used in the learning moment to extend student learning.

Processing Strategies  Collaborative Processing  Think-Pair-Share  Concept Attainment  Jigsaw  Reciprocal Teaching  Scripted Cooperative Dyads

Processing Handouts  In this module, you will see a:  Processing Handout  Description of Concept Attainment  Description for Thinking Hats  Download those for additional information and to use as resources

Processing Menus  Can be specifically designed to use for a particular content or can be general enough to be used for any situation.  Think about how long you want the students to spend processing when selecting the activities for the menu

Think-Pair-Share Card  Use the Kagan Think-Pair- Share Card to select a processing activity for your students.

Reflection Questions  How can you begin to incorporate some aspect of this element into your instruction?  How can you engage student groups into processing new information?  How will you monitor this?  How might you adapt and create new strategies to address unique needs of students?  What are you learning about your students as you adapt and create new strategies.

What would you do?  Scenario: Students have just watched a short video on the topic of changes that water goes through when heated and cooled.  How will you provide an opportunity for the students to process that information?  How will you monitor that learning?

Processing the Content on States of Water  Look at the desired effects for Element 10.  Look at the standard to determine what critical information the students need to glean from the video.  Create a graphic organizer for the students to fill in while watching the video keying them in on the critical content they need to focus on.  After the video, have students use their notes to illustrate the three states of water and be ready to share with a partner in 5-10 minutes.  As they are working on their illustrations, walk around with a facilitation grid to track who got the critical information from the video and who didn’t.  Have 2-3 elaboration questions ready on sticky notes to quietly give to quick finishers who are demonstrating understanding of the content.

Additional Resources  For additional information you can refer to the Essentials for Rigor Series-Processing New Information