Cranium CoRE and teaching frameworks

Marzano's Art and Science of Teaching organizes classroom practice around design questions: how will I help students interact with new knowledge, practice and deepen it, generate and test hypotheses, and stay engaged? The Cranium CoRE guide on this page walks the elements of the original Domain 1. Since 2017 many districts have moved to the Focused Teacher Evaluation Model, which condenses the same practice into 23 elements across four domains: Standards-Based Planning, Standards-Based Instruction, Conditions for Learning and Professional Responsibilities. The evidence an observer looks for is the same, and a Cranium CoRE game produces it in a single class period.

Evidence an observer can write down

• Identifying critical content: the question on the screen names the passage that matters, and the host's follow-up ("show me from the text why that was correct") names it again.
• Helping students examine their reasoning: discuss and defend is nothing else. A team explains why it chose B, and the room examines whether the evidence supports it.
• Helping students engage in cognitively complex tasks: hypothetical, compare-and-contrast and author's-purpose questions during play; students writing their own game afterward.
• Organizing students to interact with content: teams of three to five, one device per team, so every student has to interact with teammates before the team can answer.
• Using engagement strategies: a timer, a scoreboard, a game-show screen and animated discussion when a team finds the line.
• Using formative assessment to track progress: the host sees which questions every team missed and can stop the clock to reteach on the spot.
• Communicating high expectations for each student: every team answers every question, and the host asks why, not just what.

Observers rate what they see. A host standing among the teams rather than behind a desk, with every student looking at the screen and then into the book, gives them something to see.

Questioning and discussion are the only instructional strategies the Framework for Teaching names as components in their own right. Component 3b, Using Questioning and Discussion Techniques, and 3c, Engaging Students in Learning, are where many observed lessons are won or lost, and they are the two components a Cranium CoRE game is built to light up.

The 2022 edition of the framework renamed Domain 3 from "Instruction" to "Learning Experiences" and Domain 2 from "The Classroom Environment" to "Learning Environments." The component letters did not change, so the Cranium CoRE guide on this page, written against the earlier edition, maps straight across.

What the observer sees

• Questions of high cognitive challenge, on the screen for everyone: inferential, hypothetical, compare-and-contrast, author's purpose, with four answers that all look plausible until you open the book.
• Questions formulated by students as well as the teacher: the writing step, where teams write the next game.
• The teacher steps out of the central role: during discuss and defend the host asks one question ("show me where") and the teams do the rest.
• High participation: every team answers every question, every team member weighs in before the one device is touched, and the spokesperson role rotates.
• Collaboration and teamwork as the structure, not an add-on: one device per team makes it impossible to play alone.
• Instructional materials that are the actual books, open on the desks, used as evidence in real time.
• Time for thinking and reflection: the host can stop the clock on any question and pause the game for discussion.

The short version: students are the ones working, and the teacher is the host, not the lecturer.