Why Does Teacher Talk Still Dominate the Classroom

This week’s article summary is Why Does Teacher Talk Still Dominate High School Classrooms?

Although the article was written by a high school teacher, the points he brings up pertain to elementary school as well.

Research shows that learning information/knowledge, i.e., storing and being able to quickly retrieve it from long-term memory, is enhanced when we are actively trying to make sense of it for ourselves and connecting it to our prior knowledge/understanding.

So the more students talk and share about information and the more multi-sensory the experiences, the more it will stick in the brain and be learned by students.

Still, many of us (myself included) still fall back on teacher talk/explanation/lecture to teach content (skills, concepts, procedures). Why? Because when we watch our students grapple with new information, it seems inefficient and ineffective. “Let me just explain it to them, already!”

Teachers and parents too often come to our kids’ rescue by providing the answer/direction/explanation when they struggle to understand. The bias we all have is we think our explanation is helping when more often it only guarantees new information fleeting resides in a child’s working memory and not transferred to long-term memory.

I know it’s hard but we need to remind ourselves that learning ultimately requires more internal effort. It can seem inefficient but it’s the grappling that enables knowledge to be stored and remembered in our brains.

Joe

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In high schools, where I work, teacher talk still dominates classrooms.

While we know learning occurs in the time when students make sense of something for themselves, we persist in telling students things for most of the class period, then get frustrated when the new information is not absorbed. 

Brain research tell us direct instruction for grades 9-12 should not exceed 15 minutes, so half a period of teacher talk is largely wasted.

There are some common reasons why teachers wind up talking for long periods, and some alternatives that are better for encouraging a generative learning process.

I talk so my students have all the information they need to do the process or task: Working memory is very finite and more details are being forgotten the longer someone other than the learner is doing the talking and thinking. Consider talking just long enough to demonstrate or highlight key details (under five minutes) or breaking up the information into small chunks with student practice in between. If you have more information than you can easily summarize, it is too much for one lesson, anyway. Consider a step-by-step sheet or a how-to video if you want students to remember more than three details. Giving them a written version of the steps reduces cognitive load.

I talk so my students have all the key information about what I am teaching: Presentations, even ones that are scaffolded and chunked, are a great way to ensure student only "get the gist." Even with good notetaking strategies for summarizing and tools like graphic organizers for content enhancement, only some information is remembered long enough to even be recorded.  In addition, everyone has difficulty retrieving and working with information that was encountered once and not utilized. If you care enough about something to bother to teach it, then you want students to be able to remember and use it. Before explaining a new concept, help students connect to prior knowledge so the new learning has something to attach itself to.  If you describe something, stop in the description in under five minutes and ask your students to do three things: summarize in their own words, state why the information is useful, describe when they will need the information. Engaging in these sense-making activities ensures the information is being understood, but that alone is not enough. Students needed to apply the information minutes after they summarize it in order to be able to use it later. Activities to practice or apply information are essential because they are generative learning processes. Processes with gradual release of responsibility are particularly effective in helping students use and cement new learning.

I talk to be sure my students don't misunderstand: The act of explaining something does provide greater clarity. It also usually results in misconceptions. After every important or difficult concept in a lesson, you need to do a quick check to ensure everyone has understood the key idea and can actually build new knowledge on it. The check should: require everyone to demonstrate what you just explained, be quick, allow you to see any misconceptions at a glance, so you know what to reteach. Doing quick checks for understanding at regular intervals in a lesson is essential to ensure new information is understood correctly, and that misconceptions are not rehearsed into the brain. Tools like hinge questions, mini-white boards, quick games, and sorting activities are especially helpful in giving you good information about what you might need to re-teach. Getting feedback from your students about success of your explanation is a critical step in becoming an expert teacher, because the best teachers welcome and use errors. 

Simple changes to how long teachers talk can have a profound influence on the effectiveness of their instruction. Replacing chunks of your direct instruction with generative processes, formative assessment, and written step-by-steps is an easy way to make a big difference in your students' learning.