Final Post

Having failed to create neither a single conversation nor build a significant or growing audience, I must conclude that the time has come to curtail this work and look elsewhere to contribute to educaiton.  I continue to believe in the power of research to motivate insights in teaching.  It is only with educator willingness to change, and the inspiration to see how and where to change, that education can escape the traditional "teaching" practices within which it has been stuck for the past century.

Interruptions

Interruptions

Ever sit down in the afternoon to read a book or newspaper and soon after starting have the phone ring?  Sometimes I think my friends are on FaceTime, just waiting for me to sit down.  If that ever happens to you, watch what you do next.  Research says that you’ll return to the interrupted task with increased intensity.  You see, researchers have know for quite some time that, when we’re interrupted at a task, our brain treats that task as a goal and yearns to complete it.  So I got to thinking…

It might be worth the test for teachers to purposely interrupt students working on, say, math practice or perhaps a writing assignment.  The key would be to wait until the class was, for the most part, absorbed in the task.  That would both create the frustration that would intensify the goal of completing the task, and, it would make it more likely that students would look over what they had completed and refresh their approach to the task, also a proven strategy for enhancing the learning.  

I’m not saying that this is a proven technique.  What I’m saying is that research suggests that it “might” enhance learning.  How might one do that in the classroom?  One approach that make sense to me is to minimize the time for work completion after instruction so that students had time to plan and begin their work, but not enough time to complete it.  Then, later in the day, while the material is still relatively fresh in students’ minds, a “study hall” period could be planned where students completed catch up assignment with the teacher flowing around the classroom providing support.

If you try it, please let me know how it worked.

Interruptions

Interruptions

Ever sit down in the afternoon to read a book or newspaper and soon after starting have the phone ring?  Sometimes I think my friends are on FaceTime, just waiting for me to sit down.  If that ever happens to you, watch what you do next.  Research says that you’ll return to the interrupted task with increased intensity.  You see, researchers have know for quite some time that, when we’re interrupted at a task, our brain treats that task as a goal and yearns to complete it.  So I got to thinking…

It might be worth the test for teachers to purposely interrupt students working on, say, math practice or perhaps a writing assignment.  The key would be to wait until the class was, for the most part, absorbed in the task.  That would both create the frustration that would intensify the goal of completing the task, and, it would make it more likely that students would look over what they had completed and refresh their approach to the task, also a proven strategy for enhancing the learning.  

I’m not saying that this is a proven technique.  What I’m saying is that research suggests that it “might” enhance learning.  How might one do that in the classroom?  One approach that make sense to me is to minimize the time for work completion after instruction so that students had time to plan and begin their work, but not enough time to complete it.  Then, later in the day, while the material is still relatively fresh in students’ minds, a “study hall” period could be planned where students completed catch up assignment with the teacher flowing around the classroom providing support.

If you try it, please let me know how it worked.

Nature or Nurture?

Back in the “old days” when I still taught, I often felt dismayed that the last week of school was, for some teachers, a time for extra recess and a daily movie.  Occasionally, one of my students would challenge me with something like, “Mr. Howell, the other fourth graders get to watch movies this week.”  My response was always the same:  “I’m paid to give you 180 days of education, and I’m going to do my best to do just that.

We’re born with something like 100 billion brain cells, “neurons,” they’re called.  From shortly before birth until about age 2, we form an incredible number of connections between those neurons, perhaps 150 trillion connections, called “synapses.”  From age 2 until about 16, we “educate” those neurons and synapses.  At about age 16, the brain pares off about a third of its neurons.  While it’s not firmly established what determines which neurons stay and which go, many believe that the brain simply gets rid of the neurons and related synapses that are unused.  It appears that the initial structure of our neural network is the work of “nature,” and that the adult version of that brain reflects the effects of “nurture” on that initial structure.

As I’ve reported frequently, our adult brain relies heavily on the background knowledge and skills that we acquire between age 2 and 16 to continue to grow and learn.  This makes elementary education particularly valuable to the adult success of our students.  Within the 180 days that we’re given with our students, we bear a huge responsibility to put them in the position to learn the skills and knowledge that will take them through life.  Should we really trust that to Disney?

A Day in the Classroom

Recently, theory met practice:  I taught for a day in a friend’s classroom.  As is often the case for a substitute, not knowing the regular classroom teacher’s routines, chaos occasionally ensues when the sub, me, does something which “violates” normal classroom practice.  

Today, I ran across an article that I downloaded long ago, so long ago that I had no idea I even had it.  How I wish I had read it last week instead of today.  It described “The Teacher/Student Game.”

In short, the piece pointed out that positive reinforcement is far more effective than punishment.  Reinforced behaviors become habit.  Punished behaviors tend to be avoided mostly when the “punisher” is present, but are practiced with impunity when the fear of discovery is minimal.

The game is played by the teacher setting out the expectations/behaviors that he/she is looking for.  For example, for Math class, the teacher may want students to keep their eyes forward during instruction, try to do every practice problem, raise their hands to volunteer or ask questions (which includes no blurting out), and be helpful to their classmates.  The list should be  relatively short, and it’s a good idea for the teacher to keep a copy of the list close as hand as a visual reminder to “catch” students practicing those behaviors frequently.  Students get points on a tally chart it they’re “caught” demonstrating those behaviors, and the teacher gets points if students are “caught” failing to do so.  The authors of the article added that the teacher can make the “game” more fun by being dramatic almost to the point of being silly.

It’s important for the teacher to be vigilant in catching the requested behaviors.  Every time students earn a point, they are reinforced for that behavior.  The authors assert that the teacher need not be shy about awarding teacher points for students who forget, though, in general, student points should exceed teacher points.  I would guess that the first few times the game is played, the list of expected behaviors should be very short, maybe only one or two.  It the classroom I taught in this week, I’d start with raising hands and waiting to be called on before talking.

What are points worth?  If it was me, I’d total up the net (great way to teach net/gross concept) points daily and when students hit a magic number, the’d earn a class reward like extra recess, an art/craft activity, or something of their choosing as a goal.  To make the points relevant, I’d suggest that the point goal be achievable in no more than a week at first so that the points are meaningfully rewarding.  The point goal can be increased a bit when students have bought in to the premise of the game.

I’m quite confident that, had I played The Teacher/Student Game last week, the day would have gone quite peacefully.

Teaching for the Successful Life

Did you know that a better predictor of future health, wealth, and happiness for our students is not academic success?  There is research that says that it is “years in education”, more than grades or awards, that predicts what we’d generally call “success in life.”  And, it is most likely that it is in the 11-15-year age group (grades 5-9) that students decide if education is for them.  Think about that.

Based on this research, it seems paramount that students’ elementary education engage and reward them in ways such that they define learning and personal growth as a lifelong goal.  To do that, students must identify themselves as learners.  And how do we do that?

No doubt the answer to that question is complex and unique for each learner.  At its core, I suspect, is achievement, conscious achievement.  By “conscious achievement” I mean that students must spend a major amount of their time engaged in activities for which they can get a “score,” and that the score must typically be a good one.  We need to know we’re succeeding.

It is for that reason that I have regularly advocated the use of programs like Accelerated Reader (no, in spite of what it may appear, I own no stock in Advantage Learning).  I’ve supported A.R. in particular, because it challenges students with reading at their diagnosed reading level, provides them with a broad source of general knowledge, demonstrates to them over time that they are achieving, and reports scores along they way.  Not only is A.R. not alone in providing students with meaningful and rewarding feedback, I suspect that moving forward in our age of digital media, opportunities and refinements will continue to expand and be more personally adaptive.

The point here is that tasks need to be well chosen to accomplish two goals.  First, the task must be approachable by each student at their personal level of development.  Second, the task must provide clear and meaningful feedback which in some form, whether statistical or by teacher commentary, demonstrates what the student do well, how the student did that, and in what ways the student’s performance demonstrates that student’s learning.  Workbooks are typically not going to do that.

Change Hurts

I began this blog with the fundamental belief that education needed change and that the best way to create meaningful change was to apply what was known about how humans learn to the practice of education.  This all was begun with full recognition that humans don't like to change.  According to Daniel Willingham, we're not even built for change.  We're built to act primarily by habit.

Change in education is formidable.  We teach, in large part, the way we were taught.  There's a huge infrastructure which supports that as well.  University professors who teach pre-service teachers and consult on textbooks are invested in a system in which they were trained a quarter-century ago.  Teachers who have taught for a quarter-century are heavily invested in doing what they have done for most of their careers.  Junior teachers, even if they've been influenced by current research, are mentored by the old guard.  The apprentice system worked great for centuries, but I'm not so sure it's the best model for training those who educate children in the information age.

Daniel Willingham tells us that to be recognized as intelligent, capable, and creative, children need background knowledge that is "...a mile wide and an inch deep...," but we fail to do that.  Reading, lots of reading, is Willingham's primary nominee for providing that background knowledge.  Most classrooms "don't have time" for reading though.  The teacher's too busy teaching.  I believe it was Harry Wong who said that when you walk into a classroom, you can tell who's doing the learning by seeing who's doing the most work.  If the teacher's teaching, it's likely that student growth is minimal.  I'm still convinced that change will come when teachers teach less and student work more.

A Day in the Classroom

This past week, theory met practice:  I taught for a day in a friend’s classroom.  As is often the case for a substitute, not knowing the regular classroom teacher’s routines, chaos occasionally ensues when the sub, me, does something which “violates” normal classroom practice.  

Today, I ran across an article which I downloaded so long ago that I had no idea I even had it.  How I wish I had read it last week instead of today.  It described “The Teacher/Student Game.”

In short, the piece pointed out that positive reinforcement is far more effective than punishment.  Reinforced behaviors become habit.  Punished behaviors tend to be avoided mostly when the “punisher” is present, but are practiced with relative impunity when the fear of discovery is minimal.

The game is played by the teacher setting out the expectations/behaviors that he/she is looking for.  For example, for Math class, the teacher may want students to (1) keep their eyes forward during instruction, (2) attempt to solve every practice problem, (3) raise their hands to volunteer or ask questions, and (4) be helpful to their classmates.  The list should be relatively short, and it’s a good idea for the teacher to keep a copy of the list close as hand as a visual reminder to frequently “catch” students practicing those behaviors.  Students get points on a tally chart it they’re “caught” demonstrating those behaviors, and the teacher gets points if students are “caught” failing to do so.  The authors of the article added that the teacher can make the “game” more fun by being dramatic almost to the point of being silly.

It’s important for the teacher to be vigilant in catching the requested behaviors and name the behavior being rewarded.  Every time students earn a point, they are reinforced for that behavior.  The authors assert that the teacher need not be shy about awarding teacher points for students who forget, though, in general, student points should exceed teacher points.  I would guess that the first few times the game is played, the list of expected behaviors should be very short, maybe only one or two.  In the classroom I taught in this week, I’d start with raising hands and waiting to be called on before talking.

What are points worth?  If it was my class, I’d total up the net (great way to teach net/gross concept) points daily and when students hit a magic number, they’d earn a class reward like extra recess, an art/craft activity, or something of their choosing as a goal.  To make the points relevant, I’d suggest that the point goal be achievable in no more than a week at first so that the points are meaningfully rewarding.  The point goal could likely be increased a bit when students have bought in to the premise of the game.

I’m quite confident that, had I played The Teacher/Student Game last week, confusion could have been reduced and helpful behaviors prevailed.

Learning Styles Revisited

Recently, I reported that there is virtually no comprehensive research that supports the “learning styles” theory.  Actually, there are a huge variety of learning style theories which posit varying numbers of styles across an equally varying number of domains.  Brown, et al., in Make It Stick, being good scientists, qualify their assessment of these theories to say that there is no credible evidence for the theories, they admit that there are so many theories that few have been rigorously tested.  They do, however, offer us a terrific insight into what does have support.

Instruction that matches the mode of the subject with the mode of instruction does have a positive effect on learning.  Visual instruction for geometry, geography, or art history, for example  is most appropriate.  Verbal instruction in language arts would be the preferred mode.  It’s hard to imagine teaching any sport without having participants actually engage in that sport.  Research shows that all learners benefit by matching the mode of instruction to the topic taught.  That is a powerful piece of knowledge for the teacher. 

Ditch the Textbook?

Taken together, my posts point in at least one obvious direction:  it is abundantly clear in the literature of cognitive science that learners need to read - a lot!  Reading gives learners fluency which shows up in their speech and writing as well as oral reading.  When I direct students in musicals, it is the enthusiastic readers who typically earn the major parts.  They understand characters.  As I’ve reported before, readers, particularly those who’ve been encouraged or directed to read a variety of genres, build far greater background knowledge which they can then bring to a multitude of tasks both in and out of school.  I’ve even read that there is research that suggests a positive relationship between reading and improved math skills.

All that said, I find it altogether too common that classrooms don’t have time for reading.  There’s time for teaching reading, but little for reading.  Reading, I’ve been told, is what students are supposed to do when they go home;  there isn’t time in school for reading.  It is my fundamental conviction that once the code has been taught, most likely by the end of second grade at the latest, the foundation of reading in school should be reading, not instruction.  This is where the title of this post comes in.  If teachers are masters of their craft, then they know what’s taught in the reading curriculum and they can teach it, when it’s most appropriate, when students are engaged with their reading.

There is a popular blogger whose blog is titled “Ditch the Textbook.”  I borrowed my title from him, not because I wholly endorse eliminating textbooks, but because I think that textbook work can be trimmed - a lot - in favor of students practicing the fundamental skills that they need.  I’ve mentioned before the Accelerated Reader routine of “status of the class” where the teacher visits each child during the reading period and interacts with each student about their reading.  The interaction is, in a manner of speaking, a coaching session.  Progress and effort are noted.  The student’s current book is discussed and “teaching” takes place during the conversation.  New books are suggested or required.  It’s instruction, assessment on the fly, and warm personal contact on a daily basis.  Never did I have a class that did not, on a whole class basis, average a growth of less than two reading levels in a school year.  Students wanted to read and the classroom supported all student reading levels with hundreds of books in the classroom library.  They read books that they wanted to read, quite often within parameters set by me.  And, most became independent, enthusiastic readers who needed very little direction to maintain their reading both at school and at home.

ZPD: A Heuristic With Merit

"On any list of differences that matter most for learning, the level of language fluency and reading ability will be at or near the top. While some kinds of difficulties that require increased cognitive effort can strengthen learning, not all difficulties we face have that effect. If the additional effort required to overcome the deficit does not contribute to more robust learning, it’s not desirable. An example is the poor reader who cannot hold onto the thread of a text while deciphering individual words in a sentence."

Brown, Peter C. (2014-04-14). Make It Stick (p. 141). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Reading the passage above reminded me of one of the central concepts in the Accelerated Reader “system”:  “zone of proximal development,” or ZPD.  A.R. urges teachers to carefully supervise student reading so that students read in range which allows for lots of practice at a comfortable level and a moderate and well-controlled amount of challenge.  If a child’s ability to read and remember text  is limited to, say, Magic Treehouse books, a Harry Potter book would not be a successful read, educationally speaking, no matter how much the child wanted to be like her peers and read the longer book.  

Throughout my career in the classroom, I kept the ZPD concept close at hand for all tasks.  No matter what the lesson of the day was in the math book, students who didn’t firmly understand its antecedents was not going to understand today’s lesson.  It’s one of classroom teaching’s greatest challenges:  how do you teach to the group when part of the group isn’t ready for what you’re teaching?

While I don’t have the answer to the question, I can urge teachers to keep the ZPD concept firmly in mind and to look for ways to individualize instruction whenever and wherever possible.  Brown follows the above passage with a discussion of identifying the strengths of individuals who are struggling and helping the learner define and rely on those strengths.  For example, research has shown that dyslexics, while struggling with the nuts and bolts of text, are often quite adept at understanding the big picture, that is, major concepts.  It becomes our mission, therefore, to identify what a child can do, build on it, and affirm it.  It will be that child’s strength throughout life.

Teaching or Learning?

A recent conversation with an educator got me thinking about how my role as an educator both in the classroom and as a frequent volunteer “felt” different than the way this teacher articulated her role.  As close as I can come to what I’m feeling is that to one degree or another, teachers differ on a dimension which I will call teaching/learning.

There are those whose focus is primarily on teaching.  They deliver lessons, they demonstrate, they assign, and they assess, which usually means assigning a grade.  Those who focus on learning, assess, assign, may give mini-lessons, and give information sparingly.  The learning focused ask many questions and, rather than giving answers, give key bits of information.

Of course, no teacher is all “teaching oriented”, nor all “learning oriented.”  It’s something of a continuum.  What I see as key here is the placement of assessment.  Is an assessment as summary judgement or is it an exploration of the frontiers of a child’s world?  Is education curriculum centric or is it learning centric?

Bulletin: Learning Styles

Although well-entrenched in the “lore” of education, and in quarters like the business world as well, there is no comprehensive research that supports the idea that people have learning styles which determine the best way for them to learn new skills or material.  Rather, individuals may well have learning preferences, possibly the result of prior learning and experience or genetic factors which make certain forms of sensory input more comfortable or desirable.  The degree or balance of nurture and nature affecting preferences notwithstanding, acquiring new knowledge or skills is far more dependent on prior knowledge and experience than preference.  For the teacher this means that new learning must build on what the student already knows and can do, not on the mode in which new instruction is delivered.  See Make it Stick, p. 141.

Does It Stick?

We all embrace habits.   That is, we do today what we did yesterday, and the day before that, and the year before that.   We feel consistent, comfortable, content that what we’re doing is the best way to do it.  It’s called the “illusion of knowing” and it’s abundantly clear this political season.  Read the letters to the editor in your local newspaper.  Folks are convinced that they know the “absolute truth” and that anyone who think differently is hopelessly deluded.  It’s almost comical.  Yet we, as teachers, have pretty strong habits in the classroom.  

It is a well-documented fact that our brains are organized, first and foremost, to repeat over-learned tasks with great proficiency.  Thinking is hard, and changing habits or creating new ones is painfully difficult.  It’s why I’m having so much trouble getting rid of that “last 10 pounds” that I so want to burn off.  If I’m good at anything, snacking has to be at the top of my list.

Over the course of my recent blog entries, I hope I’ve given you cause to rethink some of your favorite routines.  Do you need to change?  Probably not.  Would you benefit from change?  Quite likely.  Have you changed any routines? Have you created any new and different assignments?  Have you oriented your teaching to be more “student thinking” directed with less of a “correct answer”  orientation?  Are your students reading more?

Once, a very long time ago, I knew a real estate agent who frequently said, “Let’s throw it agains the wall and see if it sticks.”  I loved the idea.  Why not give a new idea a test and see what happens?  Worst case scenario:  “…never do that again.”  Interestingly, most new ideas are not complete failures.  Seldom are they unqualified successes either.  Success or failure (relatively speaking), wisdom is the by-product.  I”m confident that, like your students, you’ll learn more from your relative failures than you ever could from your familiar routines.

The Curse of Knowing

Recently, I suggested that teachers need to teach less and listen more.  Skill is to some extent unique and idiosyncratic.  That is, the mental models that we use to solve problems are the sum of our experiences in solving similar problems, combined with the unique background knowledge the makes up our personal experience.  Our students, having neither those specific experiences and widely different background knowledge will, eventually, come to own similar skills, but with different mental models.  For our purposes, though, as teachers, we simply need to understand that it’s not our wisdom in solving that type of problem that will guide the student to learn the new skill, it’s our understanding of what they know and don’t yet know that will define their path to success.

Classroom questioning too often is aimed at getting the “right” answer to a knowledge question.  I think that the nature of the questions must change.  Since it’s difficult for a teacher to go back in time and accurately remember learning a skill, the questions must focus on what the child knows and what the child can guess about how to solve a problem.  They must be real and focused in present tense.  Questions like, “How is this problem like something else you’ve run into before?” or “How do you think you might solve this?” or “What do you know about the problem so far?” are all questions which can guide the student to develop strategies for solving the problem and gaining skill.  Another tack might be to find a student who can solve the problem and ask them how they have solved it, not, to find a “canned” solution that other students can memorize, but as a window to the level of sophistication on which other students are operating.

Teaching is a full-contact sport.

Who’s Doing the Learning?

Quite a long time ago in my career, I head a speaker, I think it was Harry Wong, say that when you walked into the classroom, you could tell who was doing the most learning by who was doing the most talking.  I thought of that  often in my classroom and did my best to give tasks and then flow around the room coaching students as they dealt with their work.

Today, I read a blog entry on Linkedin-Plus which reminded me of this bit of wisdom.  The article made the point that if you want the very best thinking and creativity from your employees (students) that you have to become a listener, not a “leader.”  It made me think about how much a teacher can learn by giving up on the “…so much to teach…” mindset and adopting one of becoming proficient at hearing what students know and what they need to know.

As I’ve mentioned before, background knowledge is the foundation of learning.  As teachers, we know somewhere in out psyche that our students don’t always have all the background to accomplish that next task on our lesson plans.  If they did, they either wouldn’t need us or our lesson is specious.  But picture looking out at your class.  They have different needs.  If you buy into the picture I’m painting, you see that “teaching” in the traditional sense is like shooting a shotgun in the dark.  It might hit something, but a lot of the shot is going to fall to the ground spent.  Think instead of asking a struggling student:  “Why do you think that?”  The answer to that question is your clue to the student’s missing background knowledge.  Fill in that puzzle piece and the student can unite their current knowledge with the task at hand.

Becoming a “listening teacher” can accomplish two goals.  First, the teacher, by listening, can provide that critical piece of background knowledge at precisely that time when a student really needs it, at the time when it MAKES the connection for that student.  Second, the teacher, by listening, learns the kinds of gaps students have in learning a new concept or skill and hones incredibly valuable instructional skills for the future.

It’s my theory that all too often we all make the incorrect assumption that the way we understand something is the way our students will understand it.  But with each of us having different and quite unique knowledge “gaps,” the path to understanding is personal and unique.  If a teacher can explore an individual student’s path, the teacher can remove the stress of not knowing and facilitate the joy of “getting it.”

More On Testing

I’m currently reading Make It Stick by Peter Brown.  Perhaps you read “Teaching With the Test” a few posts back.  I’m very excited about the potential for quizzing as a tool for teaching, but continue to wrestle with the mechanics of how one does it and still preserves instructional time.  After all, we already feel as if there’s too much to teach for the time available as it is.  How do we ADD testing to that?

One legitimate argument might be that if our instructional organization is more effective, we will pick up time with efficiency.  I think that’s likely.  Although I considered it a point of pride each year to make sure I made it through the reading and math texts, I was aware that many did not.  And, I have little proof that “making it through” resulted in better learning.  That said, it may be okay to come up short on breadth to improve the quality of student retention of the material that was taught.

I’ve already revised my idea of a 4-5 item quiz at the end of math period.  What I now advocate is a 2 problem quiz at the beginning of the period, and a single problem at the end.  The first quiz would probe recent material, the latter would be a check on the day’s work.  Checking could be done by classmates, or quickly on a white board by the student herself.  The early quizzes could likely be scanned during class and errors often quickly addressed during class.  Or, again, the “quiz” could be a series of problems given to students working on white boards.  A teacher moving around the room could address some review difficulties and note, when the students raise their boards, any students with needs.  The single problem could be scanned when convenient.  It turns out that immediate feedback is not the ideal way to address errors.  A short space of time between the error and it’s correction improves learning, though researchers are not quite sure why.  The thought is that immediate feedback diminishes personal responsibility for the effort.

In reading class, quizzing needs to reflect the structure of the lesson.  If it is whole-class, written questioning is better, though this might be best achieved by the class doing a bit of reading, 1-4 paragraphs, say, and then a written answer to a question about the text.  For small group instruction, oral questioning might be sufficient to insure continued student effort.  Effort is key.  Regardless of group size, a short quiz at the end of the period or the beginning of the next will likely help retention.  In one research study, a final, larger quiz the day before the “test” was used with high success.  Understand that the material on the quiz and the material on the test can differ.  The quizzes work to solidify the learning as a whole, not just isolate a few facts.

THE Low-Cost Airline

Herb Kelleher was the driving force behind Southwest Airlines back when it was growing from a fringe regional air carrier to the powerhouse that it has become today.  I read once that when one of his employees suggested that they could add a particular service to their operation, he asked,  “How will that help us be THE low-cost airline?”  You see, he insisted that above everything else, Southwest was “THE low-cost airline.”  It worked pretty well for him and for Southwest.

Have you ever read your school’s mission statement?  I’ve read a few in my time.  To be honest, I can’t begin to recite even a part of one that I’ve read.  No doubt, they’re the product of great discussion, full of wonderful ideas and ideals.  But, I think, they may be lacking the singleminded imperative, and thus the driving force, that Herb Kelleher’s mission statement expresses.

What I’m suggesting is that every school, at every level, should have a short, relatively inflexible, mission statement.  It should be so clear that every decision could be evaluated against it and the direction would be clear.  Take a statement like, “Our purpose is to teach every student to be a learner.”  I chose my example because of my recent study of what’s known about learning from the cognitive sciences.  When I ran the idea by a teacher-friend, he said that he liked, “We make every student feel successful.”

With “Our purpose is to teach every student to be a learner…”  as a mission statement, we’d ask of any subject, program, or activity, “…how does it make our students better learners?”  New curriculum, old favorites, and external programs would have to pass the filter of the school’s mission statement.  It might mean that some old favorites would have to be rewritten in such a way that not only content was being taught, but it was being taught in a way that taught learners how to learn as well.  Or, if that wasn’t possible then the old favorite would have to be abandoned, not because it wasn’t in some way a positive for kids, but because it just didn’t fit the mission of the school.

Understand that I’m not saying that schools should rush to embrace “my” mission statement.  What I am saying is that a mission statement should be short and abundantly clear.  All members of the school community should buy in. Then, all members should be willing to make sure that everything that is taught clearly passes the scrutiny of the school’s mission.  Every member should be able to both recite the mission statement, to explain it, and to justify any curriculum within the dictates of that statement.  That would truly change education.

Mental Models

Mental Models

On several occasions, I’ve mentioned “effortful retrieval” as key to longterm learning.  I think that if I were to criticize myself  as a classroom teacher, I’d have to say that failure to review was a primary weakness in my teaching repertoire.  The key is too allow enough time to pass between study sessions that some forgetting has taken place, but not so much that competing memories have completely obliterated the retrieval routes to a learning.  Take a math fact.  Taught today, it should be reviewed tomorrow or the next day, then after about 5 days, then 10, then about 20 days, and after that, at random.  For the “average” person, this would be adequate for making the memory of a math fact or vocabulary word, reasonably permanent.

Repeated retrieval causes the brain to strengthen the routes of recovery, making them more resilient.  As we retrieve learning, we also improve it by reconsolidating it.  That is, we combine that knowledge or skill with newer information and skills, literally remaking the memory into a richer and stronger understanding.  Bit by bit, as we revisit memories we not only reconsolidate that specific memory, but we develop mental models.

Mental models, as distinct from a reconsolidated memory, might be thought of as clusters of memories.  A simple example might be related to driving a car.  When we learn to drive, individual skills like breaking or shifting become reconsolidated as we do them repeatedly and gain sophistication with their use, applying the skills to new and slightly different situations.  At some point, we move from “breaking” or “steering” or “shifting” to “driving a car.”  At that point, we’ve developed a mental model of driving a car and it contains all the separate skills necessary for driving.  With that model, we can move from vehicle to vehicle, applying our model with great skill.

So it is with learning.  It’s why we try to get students to recall things “like” what we’re introducing in class.  The attempt is to see the new information within the model students have already developed.  Research says that if we probe students for “What is it like?” rather than telling them what it’s like, the effort that they expend identifying the model will strengthen the learning and make it more resilient.

“You become a winner because you’re good at losing.” - Seth Godin

You know that “Ah-ha moment?”  It was an epiphany for me.  Upon reading it I instantly recognized that we’re all losers.  We lose all the time.  To be human is to make mistakes, lots of mistakes, little ones and big ones.  But if we’re good at losing, if we pay attention when we fail, we learn and make progress toward being a winner.  And, of course, the descriptors “winner” and “loser” are misnomers to begin with.  More appropriate would be terms like “progressors” and “quitters,” recognizing the on-going nature of effort.

What can we do with this thought?  Surely we’ve all exhorted our students to persist with their learning… or have we, really.  If we test and give a score which recognizes only relative success and failure, are we not sending another message?  So what if we do the opposite?  Suppose we thank kids for their effort on the test and openly point out what “we still need to work on”  and then set about working on it.

In no way am I trivializing the difficulty of doing this.  Most typically, students’ performance on any task distributes like the bell curve.  Some do very well, some do very poorly, most to an adequate job, but show signs of minor need.

I think that this underscores the need to create tasks that, whenever possible, challenge kids at their ability level.  While particularly difficult in math, it is not so difficult in other subjects.  Writing prompts can be given so that students may bring current skills and knowledge to bear on the task.  I’ve written often about the Accelerated Reader’s ability to challenge students at their current ability level.  Even when working from a basal, questions that tap the “What do you think?” and “Why do you think that?” domains challenge kids to bring what they already possess “to the table” in examining reading selections and yet be challenged to go a bit further.

Without a doubt, the final piece of the puzzle is the teacher.  To personalize the learning experience and support growth, the teacher must find the means to interact with each student, making sure that the student is challenged to do just a bit more, to go just a bit farther.  And, if this challenging mentality is displayed publicly in the classroom, the example will be set for all.

Learning Math Facts

As I continue my investigation into cognitive science, I continue to run into the concept of “distributed practice,” sometimes called “spaced” practice.  One of my passions for a long time has been helping students learn their math facts.  Over the years, I’ve tried several approaches to teaching students their facts, with mixed results.  What follows is a suggestion based both on my recent experiences and my readings in cognitive science.

This will be a whole-class activity.  Begin with a numbered set of math fact drill cards (I have a homemade set to offer. See below).  Select 5 cards, one for each day of the week.  On Monday, present the first fact card and ask students to repeat the fact both ways (6+5=11 and 5+6=11).  After this introduction, find 5 or 6 opportunities on Monday to quiz the class on the first fact.  On Tuesday, present a new fact.  On Tuesday, your 5 or 6 later quizzes should include both Monday’s and Tuesday’s facts.  Repeat Wednesday through Friday.  In like manner, keep introducing the “fact of the day” through the next week.  At this point you will have introduced 10 facts and will be quizzing 10 facts.  On the second Friday, give an assessment to see which of the 10 facts have been learned.  Learned facts go into a separate stack to be randomly quizzed from time to time (perhaps once a week), just to keep students “sharp.”  

Keep adding daily cards to the “quiz stack” until you reach 10 facts.  You now have 3 stacks:  1.  new cards; 2. quiz stack; 3.  mastered cards.  Avoid letting the quiz stack get beyond about 12 cards.  Stop introducing until you can reduce the quiz stack to less than 10 cards.  Stop introducing if you can’t transfer cards from the quiz stack to the mastered stack.  An easy assessment would be done orally, giving just 10-20 problems combining recently added facts and those previously mastered- no fancy form needed.  Just use lined paper.

Because the introductions and daily quizzing would be very quick, it’d make a good transition activity.  I’ve written the above as succinctly as possible, so if anything is not clear, feel free to contact me:  rhowell46@sbcglobal.net

Also, if you’d like a set of homemade flash card masters for addition and multiplication, send me an email and I’ll send you .pdf format masters.  They include numbered back-to-back masters which can be copied on to 8.5x11 cardstock to make serviceable flash cards for this activity.  If you’d like, of course, you could copy off additional sets for students who want them.

Again, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

More Neuroscience

This would be my normal end-of-the-week post.  I'm headed out of town for some fishing and won't be home 'til the weekend.

I am not a neuroscientist.  I am, nonetheless, fascinated by what neuroscientists have learned about our brains and how they learn.  Currently, I’m reading Make It Stick, by Peter C. Brown.  The aim of the book is to apply what is known in neuroscience to the domain of education.  it’s already had a huge impact on me.

No doubt you know the old Chinese saying:  “Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he'll feed himself for the rest of his life.”  Make it Stick lays a huge emphasis on the importance of self-testing as a technique for learning new material.  Depending on the material, self-testing can take many forms.  If learning materials, let’s say a textbook, offer study aids like key concepts or chapter questions, students who want to learn the material need to define those concepts and answer those questions - from memory first, then study after.  Doing so will allow the student to consolidate what they know and accurately assess what they don’t.  While there is no fault in taking notes as one reads, it’s a fallacy to read through notes and assume that one is learning the material.  Because the notes are familiar, the student is more likely to think that the material is learned, however, research has shown that memory from this study approach diminishes to 10%-20% in as little as two weeks.  Notes, tied to prior knowledge will have a greater likelihood of consolidating new learning.

I would guess that students would need to be guided over and over to embrace this technique.  I would also guess that a teacher must make very explicit to students that they are learning a study technique which has been shown by research to be more effective than simple re-reading or reading one’s notes.  It is the repeated retrieval of information from memory that strengthens both the memory, it’s relationship to other known information, and the neural pathways to that information.  So, I’d ask students to answer questions.  What they can’t answer, I’d ask for them to go back to the material and find the answer.  Then, several days later, I’d ask them to answer the questions again.  It’s likely that, bit by bit, they’d really LEARN the material.  And, over time, with persistence of perhaps several teacher at succeeding grades, students would embrace a study skill that will feed them for the rest of their lives.

By the way, I’ve discovered that the above information about studying is not just for our students.  It’s making a profound and immediate impact on my ability to understand and assimilate all the new material I’m reading.  I suspect it might do the same for you.  Besides, we teach best what we know best.

Brain Apps.

This entry is a "bonus."  Thanks to the rainy weather, I'm reading a lot and getting inspired as I do:

I’m loving my reading of Make It Stick, by Peter Brown, and I encourage every educator to read it.  Understand, it’s not a warm and fuzzy read.  It is literally what I call, “…two feet on the floor, at the kitchen table…” reading.  It’s been fun for me, though, because with it, I’m practicing what science tells me is good learning:  I’m drafting review questions, studying it in spaced sessions, returning to what I’ve done previously, tying what I’m learning to what I already know, and, here, writing about what I’m learning.  No doubt, the book will spawn many blog entries.

Brown says that the result of deep and purposeful learning is what he typifies as “brain apps.”  His example is driving a car, but driving a golf ball would apply as well.  At first, all the many skills of driving are nearly overwhelming.  Perhaps this is why young drivers have a comparatively poor record with insurance companies.  But, with thousands of hours of actually driving a car, skills like speed control, lane placement, awareness of dangers, and braking become semi-automatic.  I’ve driven cars and trucks with a manual transmissions for fifty years and I seldom think about what gear I’m in or how to manage a clutch.   But, it’s recently become obvious to me that an automatic transmission is a challenge to me because, for someone who’s used to a stick shift, an automatic is NOT automatic.

Think of what this means for classroom education.  So many of the skills that seems so obviously “easy” to us are, to young students,  like the 16 year-old learning to keep a car in the center of the lane.  Even when they “get” a skill like “borrowing” in subtraction, it is, at first, an isolated and uncomfortable operation, not the seamlessly integrated part of a more general “Subtraction Brain App” that it will someday become.  In time, countless subtraction situations, practice with operations, and the arithmetic facts that support the computations, will coalesce into the “idea” of subtraction which will be more like the refined skill which we attempt to teach.

My point?  I think we need to patiently disaggregate our understanding of the things we teach, attempting to remember how we arrived at our present skill.  Regardless of any pressure we feel to show that our kids are meeting the current set of standards that some political or administrative entity has drafted for us, it’s important to understand how learning takes place.   We can provided distributed practice.  We can look for simple links to students’ lives and experiences to tie current learning to their prior knowledge.  Most importantly, we can provided reassurance that learning is long range, not immediate.

Any attempts to hurry up the process or learning are likely to lead to some short-term successes - think “cramming” for the test - but long-term failures when, without measured repetition, the learning never achieves the status of “Brain App.” 

Administrators!

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit with a school administrator.  Understand at the outset, I was never the darling of the administrators that I worked under.  So, it comes as no surprise to me that the conversation did nothing to change my opinion of administrators.

The topic of our conversation was one of the school’s programs that I felt was being poorly implemented because of lack of training.  I had every confidence in the program itself if teachers simply had sufficient background in the procedures of the program, their purpose, and the research that supported the materials and routines.

The administrator’s response was predictable.  Staff was “studying” all the school’s programs to see which programs teachers supported.  After due study teachers would recommend which programs should be continued and which abandoned.  Nowhere did I hear of any research into the effectiveness of the programs.  Nothing was said about contacting experts, training, reading supporting research, or asking for presentations from representatives.  To my credit, I remained passive.

Teachers are very busy people and so mired down in the “day to day” that it is the natural way of most programs over time that they get reduced to their “manageable” bare bones.  Teachers seldom have time to read the research supporting new or even adopted programs. Over my years in the classroom, I’ve seen this time and again, particularly with math and science programs. And yet, it is precisely those materials which make clear the purpose of the prescript routines, their research bases, and the assumptions which underlie their choice.