THE BEST OF THE MARSHALL MEMO
Carefully chosen summaries to energize leadership, teaching, and learning
All-Faculty Discussion
Below are 25 article summaries that lend themselves to being discussed by a full faculty, live or online, at the elementary, middle, and high-school level. Here’s a suggested procedure for a 30-40-minute discussion:
• The leadership team decides on an article that addresses an issue of importance to the whole school.
• After a brief introduction of the purpose, the topic, and the protocol, everyone is given a hard (or soft) copy of the article summary.
• The faculty is divided into groups of 3 or 4 (or sent to breakout rooms of that size), grouped with colleagues with whom they don’t usually interact.
• Everyone reads the article summary silently, highlighting ideas and quotes that seem important.
[Why not ask people to read the summary before the meeting? Because inevitably, half of the group won’t have time to do so, and it’s important that everyone has the ideas top of mind for the discussion. Most Memo summaries can be read quite quickly.]
• After 5-10 minutes, each group discusses the article, going around to hear everyone's big takeaways, agreements, disagreements, and favorite quotes (groups might choose a facilitator who makes sure everyone participates).
• The faculty comes back together for a whole-group discussion addressing implications for the school.
• The leadership team follows up appropriately.
Below are summaries that lend themselves to all-faculty discussion, organized by this website's groupings and topics. If there are articles that you think should be added to the list, please e-mail Kim Marshall at [email protected].
EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
Emotional Intelligence
Managing Feelings, Values, and Expectations
STRENGTHENING TEACHING
Interviews and Hiring
Fixed and Growth Mindsets in Teacher Candidates
CLASSROOM NUTS and BOLTS
Planning Units and Lessons
A California High School Crafts Schoolwide Essential Questions
Positive Discipline
Predicting and Preventing Classroom Problems
When Educators Act in Ways That Increase Student Misbehavior
Teacher-Student Mediation in Action
Assessment for Learning
A Teacher Realizes What He Wasn’t Doing
Crafting Good “Hinge” Questions
Time-honored but suboptimal check for understanding
Grading Practices
Misconceptions Get in the Way of Better Grading
Pointed Questions About Grades
Preventing Cheating by Shaping Classroom Motivational Climate
PEDAGOGY that WORKS
Expert Teaching
Getting Every Student Thinking and Working
The Elements of Effective Feedback
Getting Students to Do the Heavy Lifting
Teaching Blind People to Use Canes and What It Can Teach Others
Making Learning Stick
Not Overloading Working Memory
Understanding Two Very Different Kinds of Memory
How Remembering Improves Remembering
Using Pretests to Improve Achievement
What Did You Learn in School Today?
Literacy
Five Principles of Good Writing
MINDSETS FOR LEARNING
Social-Emotional Development
What Parents and Teachers Can Do to Teach Self-Regulation
Fostering friendships among students
The Academic Power of Student Friendships
Partnering with Families
There are more all-faculty articles in the Memo archive at www.marshallmemo.com. To see this list, log in (type Best in the e-mail box and MarshallMemo in the password box), check the second box at the beginning of the Topics list, and click Search.