I Read Banned Books

Education guru Robert Marzano researched what helps students learn and devised the following 9 High Yield Strategies for educators in his book Classroom Instruction That Works. I believe that these broad teaching strategies can be used and applied in all walks of life, to various types of people, in many professions.

1. Identifying similarities and differences
2. Summarizing and note taking
3. Reinforcing effort and providing recognition
4. Homework and practice
5. Nonlinguistic representations
6. Cooperative learning
7. Setting objectives and providing feedback
8. Generating and testing hypotheses
9. Questions, Cues, and Advance Organizers

Let us apply Marzano to potty training in honor of my good friends, the W’s, who are attempting to train their adorable son, AMRW, to go pee-pee in the pot-ty.

1. Mom and Dad: Use new art easel to draw a Venn diagram comparing potty training to watching Donkey over and over again. Practice makes perfect.
2. Mom and Dad: “If you pee in the potty, diaper bills will go away.”
3. Mom and Dad: “You did a fabulous job sitting on the potty without your diaper today.”
4. Mom creates and sings jingle to the tune of “Camptown Races”: “You pee-peed in the pot-ty! Doo-dah! Doo-dah!” Dad: Run water in background and provide percussion with hand clapping.
5. Mom and Dad: Encourage AMRW to help water the plants.
6. Mom and Dad: Make it a family affair. (It works for the animals.)
7. Mom and Dad: “Do you want to wear a diaper or pull-ups today? If you wear pull-ups. you have to use the potty.”
8. AMRW: “If I pee in the potty, Mom and Dad are very happy.”
9. AMRW: “Does this peeing-in-the-potty-thing mean that I’m a big boy now?”