remarkablechatter's podcast
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How do you get learning to stick? That is the question on the minds of a number of educators I have visited with over the past few weeks…and an emerging body of educational research. Recently as I have worked with schools and educators, the term ‘sticky learning’ has surfaced on more than one occasion, along with a number of suggestions for making learning endure beyond the end of the school day.

 

‘Seemingly’ Less-Structured Activities

I was in an elementary school classroom last week where students were using cardboard, Play-do, and recyclables to make 3D maps of the geographical features of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Kids worked in groups to cut up toilet paper rolls for trees, used Play-do or blue frosting to mark bodies of water, and even created animals out of bottle caps and pipe cleaners. To help other students decode and navigate the features of their maps, each group also created a map key.

 

When I asked the teacher about the activity, she said simply… “There is a lot of important content in this unit. We want to make sure they learn it, and don’t forget it. We want it to stick.” But this activity seemed to go well beyond content mastery. I couldn’t help but notice that as these kids created their 3D landscapes, there was a significant amount of application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and creativity required.

 

Research published in a recent issue of Frontiers supports this type of approach. Jane Barker and four other researchers examined a variety of structured and less-structured learning environments. Their findings suggest that students who spend more time in seemingly less-structured activities allow students to develop self-direction and better executive functioning (Barker et al., 2014).

 

To me, the key seems to be this notion of ‘seemingly’ less-structure activities. This is not some ‘Lord of the Flies’ approach to learning where we dump materials in the center of the room and turn our students loose.   This teacher clearly knew what she wanted her students to be able to do. But to the students, the perception was that they had an extensive amount of control and choice over what materials they used and how they put them to use. Instead of quizzes and flashcards, their teacher made the content ‘stick’ by tying it to a design challenge that included a few clearly articulated expectations and parameters.

 

‘Getting Out of the Way’ of Student Learning

Another classroom I visited suggested the need for teachers to ‘get out of the way’ of student learning as often as possible. A couple of days ago, I watched a middle-schooler grow increasingly frustrated with a math problem she was working on. The teacher noticed this and came to her side. I fully expected him to coach the student through the problem using some form of algorithm or something similar. Instead, he asked the student to think out-loud a bit with him about what she had tried. He listened patiently, and when the student was finished, asked her why that didn’t seem to work and what else she could try.

 

She came up with a couple alternatives, and began trying those approaches out. Eventually, she worked out the problem.   After several minutes of students in the class going through this laborious struggle, the teacher presented them with a formula and asked them how it related to the problems they were trying to solve.

 

When I asked the teacher about it later on, I expressed a concern with how long the process took for the students to work it all out. He admitted that it would be much faster and less frustrating to just provide an algorithm or formula on the front end of the activity, but commented that he really wanted to develop kids who can think and solve problems, not kids who can plug numbers into formulas.

 

Effective teachers seem to do a great job using questions, rather than answers, to help students walk the fragile line between exploration and challenge. They make learning “desirably difficult” (Roediger & Pyc, 2012). Studies in high-poverty schools, for example, find that teachers of successful students ask five times as many higher-order thinking questions than less effective teachers (Taylor et al., 2003). They also find that effective teachers are much more likely to encourage collaborative discussions amongst their students.

 

An ‘Elementary’ Approach

No one seems to make learning stick better than elementary teachers, and… secondary teachers who adapt an ‘elementary’ approach. Last week I watched a five-year-old struggle with sounds made by some the letters he was looking at. When he came to letter ‘U,’ he paused, sang part of a quick song about Uncle Upton, and pointed to the ceiling before making the “uh” sound. He and his classmates are learning their letters, sounds, and other concepts through a multisensory approach. Students draw the letter, make the sound, sing a song, and act out motions related to the song.   As a result, the phonemes stick in their brains and are easily accessed later on.

 

But when I work with middle school and high school teachers, rarely do I see such an approach. Often, the use of music, movement, and other similar strategies is viewed as too ‘elementary’…in more than one sense of the word. First, multimodal instruction is perceived as being too basic or simplistic for more complex content and concepts. Second, it is often viewed as something babyish and better fitting in classrooms of younger students.

 

I find it interesting, though, that the teachers who scoff at getting students out of their chairs, singing, and dancing about molecular properties often seem to be the same teachers who complain that their students don’t seem to retain what is taught.

 

In the few secondary classes where I do see multimodality being employed, students seem to move faster through the required content allowing time for deeper learning activities. This makes sense. Research repeatedly points towards the need to use movement, music, and other forms of multisensory instruction in order to give students’ brains a chance to do and experience learning (Ostroff, 2012).

 

So just how do we get learning to stick? Research and classroom practice offer up a number of different suggestions. But the consensus (and key) seems to be to use a variety of approaches…all of which tend to look a bit different than the learning that you or I likely experienced as students. The bottom line—maybe instead of giving students information and things to do, we should explore ways to help students do and experience the information. Only then will student learning endure. Only then will content and concepts really ‘stick’ with our students.

 

References

Barker, J. E., Semenov, A. D., Michaelson, L., Provan, L. S., Snyder, H. R., & Munakata, Y. (2014). Less-structured time in children’s daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning. Name: Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 593.

Ostroff, W. L. (2012). Understanding how young children learn: bringing the science of child development to the classroom. Ascd.

Roediger III, H. L., & Pyc, M. A. (2012). Inexpensive techniques to improve education: Applying cognitive psychology to enhance educational practice. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 1(4), 242-248.

Steinwald, M., Harding, M. A., & Piacentini, R. V. (2014). Multisensory Engagement with Real Nature Relevant to Real Life. The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, 45.

Taylor, B. M., Pearson, P. D., Peterson, D. S., & Rodriguez, M. C. (2003). Reading growth in high-poverty classrooms: The influence of teacher practices that encourage cognitive engagement in literacy learning. The Elementary School Journal, 3-28.

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In this podcast, we finish our visit with author Alfie Kohn.  Alfie insists on the need to for educators to move beyond the ‘menus and ladders’ approach in the classroom.  Instead, he insists that schools must seek to offer students real choice and control by seeking their input regarding content, learning activities, and even assessment.

 

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One of the most effective ways to improve student engagement and student learning is to extend students a bit of control and choice in the classroom. In this podcast, we examine how choice and control are employed by video game designers to ensure that players persist in difficult challenges. 

We also visit with Alfie Kohn.  Alfie writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. He has authored thirteen books and scores of articles. Kohn's criticisms of competition and rewards have been widely discussed and debated, and he has been described in Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores."  Alfie shares his thoughts on the need for teachers to extend control and choice to students.  He also provides several practical recommendations to educators who want to work WITH—rather than AGAINST—their students.

 

 

 

References

 

 

 

Kohn, A. (2014). The myth of the spoiled child: Challenging the conventional wisdom about children and parenting.

 

 

 

Kohn, A. (2010). " EJ" in Focus: How to Create Nonreaders: Reflections on Motivation, Learning, and Sharing Power. English journal, 16-22.

 

 

 

http://www.alfiekohn.org/index.php

 

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My wife is a vegetable ninja.  You see, over the years, she has secretly employed a handful of tricks to ensure that our four sons (and their father) develop healthy eating habits. From the time our boys were old enough to speak, she would offer them a choice. She would say something like, “Would you like broccoli or carrots to eat?”  As they grew a bit older, she began ask them to suggest what vegetables should be part of our meals.   It wasn’t until several years into our marriage that I realized the same techniques were being used on me.  The results were inevitable—slowly and steadily, each of us learned to use our own agency to make healthy food choices on our own.  

 

 

 

As I have watched my wife work with our own kids and with hundreds of other elementary students in school where she teaches, I have come to understand what I believe all educators need to understand—that early opportunities for good decision-making are likely to result in better decision making later on.   As a vegetable ninja, my wife’s objective wasn’t just to get us to eat our vegetables.  Ultimately, she wanted to increase the likelihood that we would make healthy food choices with…or without her around.

 

 

 

Sadly, today’s students are often portrayed in the media as passive consumers of media, rather than active agents and mediators of their own learning.  But our young people are not the digital-zombies they society makes them out to be.  In fact, educational research actually shows that students are very capable of engaging with technology in increasingly complex ways, and that they regularly discover new, unexpected uses for the tools that they select (Czerniewicz, Williams, & Brown, 2009).

 

 

 

In my recent visits to school districts, I have observed a number of classrooms where teachers are working strategically to create decision-making opportunities for their students.  Most often, these opportunities are manifest in the form of control and choice regarding (1) what students learn, (2) how they learn, and (3) how they demonstrate understanding.

 

WHAT Students Learn

 

One way for teachers to afford students more control over learning is offer them choices about the content they will learn.  In a science class for example, two very similar assignments could be constructed for separate informational texts of comparable difficulty, one on nebulas and another on black holes.  Students could then be encouraged to choose between topics, while still completing the same learning objectives as their classmates.

 

In a number of schools, I have also seen students who are encouraged to choose topics of personal interest and to devote time each week to researching and exploration of the topic.  These students prove quite capable of utilizing digital tools and plug-ins such as Museum Box,  Evernote, Scrible, and ScrapBook to help collect information and to organize images, videos, texts, audio clips, and links to other resources on their chosen subject.

 

HOW Students Learn

 

Today’s students are also adept at selecting and integrating tools to accomplish their own learning objectives.  For example, I recently visited with a fifth grader who was using a free app called Lego Movie Maker to turn a book project he had been assigned in one of his classes into an entertaining, stop-motion animation.  He insisted that the app was simple enough to use, but expressed frustration with its inability to add narration over the video that he had already worked so hard on. 

 

Immediately, the student began tinkering with combinations of different tools and apps in order to solve the problem.  First, he tried recording his own narration using  Audacity and Garageband.  But after a few attempts, he was unable to import his voiceover into Lego Movie Maker.  So instead, he exported the video he had made, and then opened it up in another app called Videoshop where he re-recorded the narration and combined it with the animation.  It took him less than twenty minutes to develop and execute a successful solution to the problem. 

 

Over the past several months, I have watched a number of teachers who are seeking to capitalize on students’ ability to exert control over the terms and conditions of their own learning.  For example, I recently observed a ninth grade math teacher who started class by asking her students to help her determine how many stars exist in the known universe. She explained that before looking at any formulas or equations used by other mathematicians, she wanted to hear how her students might go about solving the problem and insisted that there were likely several valid approaches. Students were given the option of working alone or with others, and then they spent time formulating responses. The class period was spent sharing, evaluating, and revising various approaches created by students.

 

The following day, students were asked to self-select a station where they could review the theories of accomplished scientists either by listening to podcasts, watching interviews, or reading excerpts of commentaries by various astronomers and mathematicians. Students then worked at their stations to discuss and critique the various theoretical approaches.

 

You and I might not be math teachers, but a similar approach can be taken in any of our classrooms or content areas.  We too can seek to create opportunities for our students to reflect on learning, to develop strategies, and to select learning styles appropriate to specific learning tasks (Coffield, Moseley, Hall, Ecclestone, & Hall, 2004).

 

How Students DEMONSTRATE UNDERSTANDING

 

Choice can also be extended to students when as we ask them to demonstrate their understanding of subject matter. For example, students can be asked to choose between a performance assessment, a portfolio, or other more traditional formats. As a result, our role as the instructor becomes more facilitative and permits the learner to exert more control over learning outcomes (Reynolds & Trehan, 2000).

 

Since students are often more familiar with emerging digital tools than their teachers are, it makes sense for educators to ask students for their input on how understanding might be demonstrated.  Some of the most inventive and insightful student work I have ever seen has resulted from formats and tools suggested by students. 

 

For example, in class we have moved some of our classroom discussions online using TodaysMeet and TweetDeck.   Student final projects have taken the form of Audioboo podcasts, Vocabulary Shorts, and Paperslides.   Students have also suggested a number of free and inexpensive options for 3D design projects such as Legobuild, TinkerCAD, and Minecraft.  But regardless of what tool students select to demonstrate their understanding, the fact remains that learners are more likely to take risks and try out new skills and strategies when they are able to make choices and exercise control (Harvey & Goudvis, 2000).

 

Today’s students are hardly the digital zombies they are so often portrayed to be.  True…our young people are adept at consuming media, but their true capacity lies in their ability to create and to contribute.  Today’s classrooms must become training grounds for students’ digital agency.   If we as educators truly wish to transform our students into capable decision makers, we must create multiple opportunities for them to choose…opportunities for them to utilize their own tools and to take control of what they learn, how they learn, and how they demonstrate understanding.

 



 

References

 

 

 

Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E., Ecclestone, K., & Hall, E. (2004). Learning styles and pedagogy: A systematic and critical review. London, England: Learning and Skills Research Council.

 

 

 

 

 

Czerniewicz, L., Williams, K., & Brown, C. (2009). Students make a plan: understanding student agency in constraining conditions. Research in Learning Technology, 17(2).

 

 

 

 

 

Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2000). Strategies that work: Teaching comprehension to enhance understanding. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

 

 

 

 

 

Reynolds, M., & Trehan, K. (2000). Assessment: A critical perspective. Studies in Higher Education, 25(3), 267-278.

 

 

 

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Timely Feedback

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'Effective Feedback'

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Improving the Use of Feedback in Schools

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What Can Teachers Do to Improve Feedback?

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Video Games as a Model of Feedback

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A World of Feedback

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My wife and I have four boys—four squirrely boys.  They aren’t what we would consider belligerent or even really disruptive.  But each parent teacher-conference we have ever had goes about the same.  We come in, sit down, and after a bit of courteous chit-chat, the teachers inevitably say something like…

 

 

 

‘You know, we spend a lot of time trying to get your son(s) to still and be quite so that other kids can learn.’

 

 

 

As an educator and researcher with some interest in classroom management, I tended to empathize with the teacher.  But after a while, it occurred to me that these were four different boys--each with different personalities.  They varied in age, interest, attention span…you name it.  Yet, it was always the same concern—that their teachers couldn’t get them to sit still.

 

 

 

One time, instead nodding and playing along, I asked one of my boy’s teachers a question.  Actually, it was just a single word…

 

 

 

‘Why?’

 

 

 



 

References

 


Glenberg, A. (2014, July 22). How Acting Out in School Boosts Learning. Scientific American Global RSS. Retrieved July 28, 2014, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-acting-out-in-school-boosts-learning/

 

 

 

Jensen, E. (2008). Teaching with the brain in mind. Alexandria (Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I’m not an art-therapist by any means, but it is incredible how much insight can be gained by doing a little drawing activity with your students. When visiting school districts, as often as I can, I ask students to illustrate what a classroom looks like at their school. Regardless of the location or demographic of the school, it is alarming just how similar many of the student drawings are. The majority of illustrations seem to show some version of a teacher talking at the front of the room. The students sit in neat, orderly rows with vacant expressions or appear to be sleeping.

 
 

Such a wide-spread perspective of classroom learning as a passive, disengaged activity should cause us great alarm, especially in the wake of so much recent focus on the need for differentiation (e.g., Benjamin, 2014; Tomlinson, 2013), brain-compatible learning (e.g., Siemens, 2014; Sprenger, 2010), and the theory of multiple intelligences (e.g., Armstrong, 2003, Gardner, 1993). The educational giants of the past such as Aristotle, Dewey, Whitehead, and Montessori have all encouraged the need for activity and movement to promote learning (Stacey, 2008). The greatest insight on human development wasn’t developed at a desk, but on Thoreau’s two-year walk through the woods and around a pond. So why do kids still seem to be spending so much time in chairs?

 

The reality is that, as educators, we tend to do what is done to us. By that I mean that, as students, many of us experienced classroom learning that was largely teacher-centered—permeated by lecture and other forms of direct instruction. Now that we are teachers, many of us continue to perpetuate this traditional approach to the classroom. On occasion, we play a review game with students, have a class discussion or attempt to do something problem or project-based...but for the most part, our classroom largely resembles—and runs like—an 18th century, one-room school house.

 

This is really odd, because most of us would never try such an approach outside of our classroom.   For example, recently while I was on vacation, my mother got her first smart-phone and asked if I could help her learn to use it. I didn’t drive her to a school, sit her down in a chair, and start to lecture her. Nor did I require her to read the 182-page user manual and give her a stack of worksheets to complete. I did what any decent son (or teacher) would do when the stakes are high. I sought to make learning more active, participatory, and learner-centered. I showed my mother a few video tutorials on Youtube and demonstrated how to navigate some of the phone’s basic features and functions. She fiddled, practiced, asked several questions, downloaded a few recipe apps, and then went into the garage to show my dad all the cool things she could do. Now he wants a new phone as well. There was no lecture…just learning.

 

But it’s not just moms and smartphones. Recently, Mike Wesch, an innovative professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, posted a video of his students outside of the classroom, running around campus, playing a marshmallow war game. In collaboration with his students, Dr. Wesch created the simulation to help his students explore world history, global economy, sustainability, international relations, culture change, and structural power. These concepts could have been covered in the lecture hall, but were better experienced away from a desk. I would be interested to see what his students would draw if asked to create an illustration of what a classroom looks like.

 

I am not saying that every teacher needs to develop large-scale games for their students to play, but each of us is likely to get just a bit more out of our students if we providee more frequent time for play, discussion, problem-based challenges, collaboration...anything designed to make learning a bit more active. The first step seems to be for each of us to lecture just a bit less, hand out fewer worksheets, and try to design deeper learning that gets students away from their desks.

 

 

 

References

 

Armstrong, T. (2003). The multiple intelligences of reading and writing: Making the words come alive. ASCD.

 

Benjamin, A. (2014). Differentiated instruction: A guide for middle and high school teachers. Routledge.

 

Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice. Basic books.

 

Siemens, G. (2014). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age.

 

Sprenger, M. (2010). Brain-Based Teaching in the Digital Age. ASCD. 1703 North Beauregard Street, Alexandria, VA 22311-1714.

 

Stacey, N. (2008). Movement and dance in the inclusive classroom. Teaching Exceptional Children Plus, 4(6), 2.

 

Tomlinson, C. A. (2013). Differentiated instruction. Fundamentals of gifted education: Considering multiple perspectives.

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While much of education acknowledges the need for us to focus on literacy and numeracy, not everyone realizes that the paramount importance of listening and spoken language skills.   For example, I remember that when my wife and I were first married we arrived at home about the same time one evening.  We were both a bit worn-out, and feeling somewhat indecisive about what we should make for dinner.  At some point she asked me, “Well, what do you think we should have for dinner?”

 

It seemed like a simple enough question.  I took a few seconds, thought, and then confidently replied—“lasagna.”  To my surprise, she then looked at me, paused, and said…”no.”  At that point, I thought again and with a bit less confidence offered another suggestion…”spaghetti.”  Again she paused and then replied… “Nope.”   Confused, I offered up one final idea.  This time, though, it was in the form of a question.  “Want to go out?”  Her face changed, she smiled, and replied, “Sure.”

 

It was only afterwards as we were sitting down to enjoy our meal at the restaurant that I figured out what had happened.  You see, I thought my wife was actually asking me what it was that I wanted for dinner. But what she really wanted was for me to guess what it was that she wanted for dinner.

 

Many such misunderstandings at home, in the community, and in the workplace can be attributed directly or indirectly to some degrees of misunderstanding and miscommunication.  Sometimes the speaker is to blame.  Sometimes it is the person listening.  Most of the time it is a bit of both.  But in nearly every situation, effective listening and oral communication make it possible for us to understand and…to be understood...

References

 

Copeland, M. (2005). Socratic circles: Fostering critical and creative thinking in middle and high school. Portland, Me: Stenhouse Publishers.

Direct download: Lasagna_Santa_and_Other_Listening_and_Speaking_Lessons.mp3
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Category:education -- posted at: 3:52pm CDT

There has been a lot of talk lately on how we might improve student learning and student engagement.   One widely accepted notion is that improving student engagement is likely to result in improved student learning.  But there hasn’t been nearly as much conversation—if any—about teacher engagement. 

 

Now, what do we mean by teacher engagement?  A handful of scholars and researchers have begun to draw attention to this very notion.  Cathie West (2013), for example, in her book The 6 Keys to Teacher Engagement asks…

 

What does teacher engagement look like?  Highly engaged teachers demonstrate best practice teaching, use data to verify instructional effectiveness, make changes in their teaching approach when student performance falters, and dialogue openly about their successes and failures.  These highly engaged teachers are professionally on fire and get solid results.

 

If I am understanding this correctly, that means that teachers who sit attentively at meetings and complete their reports on time may not be highly engaged professionally.  Instead, we would all do well to look at other indicators demonstrated by teachers—their conversations, actions, results, commitment to students, and intense desire to improve their practice (McEwan, 2005). 

 

I recently had a chance to visit with Dr. Jim Parson’s of the University of Alberta.  Dr. Parson’s has authored a number of articles…and over 20 books on learning and engagement.  He was also the director of the School Improvement Initiative in Alberta.  His latest research focuses on this emerging idea of improving student outcomes and engagement by focusing instead on the teacher…and…on teacher engagement. 

 

References

 

McEwan, E. K. (Ed.). (2005). How to deal with teachers who are angry, troubled, exhausted, or just plain confused. SAGE.

 

West, C. (2013). The 6 Keys to Teacher Engagement: Unlocking the Doors to Top Teacher Performance. Routledge.

Direct download: teacher_engagement.mp3
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