Marzano Chapter 6: Nonlinguistic Representations

Ironically, think I had to come up with a nonlinguistic representation of my own in order to grasp the concept of what a "nonlinguistic representation" is. The mental picture that comes to my mind is a person who is trying to teach a concept by acting it out rather than talking (charades, anyone?), although I know it can be expressed in many other ways. In keeping with this example however, I do try to get my students "kinesthetically involved" in their learning once in a while. For example, I was trying to get my students to comprehend the idea of sea floor spreading to build some background knowledge about how and why the earth's plates move around and result in earthquakes and volcanoes. To demonstrate the point, I had a few volunteers stand in the front of the room and pretend to be plates that were being forced underneath other plates (i.e., nearby tables) as molten lava (me) poured out of the mid-ocean ridge. I think (hope?) that it helped them to gain a better mental image of what is going on with our earth in extreme fast-forward. If they don't remember this example because of the kinesthetic experience, they will at least remember the basic idea because they got a good laugh when I accidentally referred to myself as "a big crack in the bottom." Um, yeah...I was too slow to add " . . . of the ocean" before it was too late. So, now I guess there will be a group of students in the world who will forever nonlinguistically link me to seafloor spreading. Whatever works!