Marzano Academies

WRITING TO WIN AND MARZANO ACADEMIES

Three routines with reading and writing
together

We are honored to partner with Marzano Academies as their model for using writing to support their competency-based approach to teaching and learning. The academies are becoming an exemplary educational network of learning centers and the clear leader in competency-based learning.

Its flagship school, Flynn Marzano Academy, employs Applied Grammar in print with literacy levels 1-5 and online to levels 6-8. Their learning leaders see the need for using writing in other content areas with a routine like Applied Vocabulary. When they see that their school’s new reading-writing series needs to be supplemented, they have Paired Texts Packets in the queue (literacy levels 4-8).

Here’s how Dr. Kosena led his team to insert the power of Writing to Win ’s systematic writing into their competency-based learning environment.

“When we understood what strengths and weaknesses were within our literacy resource, we looked at the Writing to Win suite and understood how it supplemented our resource.”

Dr. Brian Kosena, Learning Leader
Flynn Marzano Academy, Westminster, CO

In our partnership with Marzano Academies, we support the competency- based learning environment. Few literacy programs have proficiency levels built into them from their inception like …

Applied Grammar – The 10 levels present the vocabulary and language skills of grades 1-10. Each level has reoccurring grammatical patterns like complex sentences with noun clauses. Teachers may assign students additional practice with core patterns beneath or above their grade levels.

Applied Vocabulary – Seven critical-thinking writing strategies include a proficiency scale of responses to a writing prompt using that strategy. Each scale charts students’ written responses from no understanding of the task (Level 0) to strong understanding with mention of a similar idea from another source (Level 4).

Paired Texts Packets – Each packet helps students guide each other through four levels of reading comprehension – literal, inferential, evaluative, and applied. Repeated experience with the four levels 2-3 times a year …

1. Builds student confidence in comprehending content-rich texts
2. Allows teachers to track students’ progress through the four levels
3. Shows administrators evidence of increased rigor in learning
4. Affirms that that all students are pre-wired to meet and enjoy reading texts at increasingly deeper levels of knowledge.

Pacing Calendar for 3 Writing to Win Routines