The Importance of Retrieval Practice for Long-Term Memory

This week's article summary The Five Things to Know About Retrieval Practice is a follow up to last week's summary on how to make semantic memories stick in long-term memory.

When it comes to learning, people often focus on getting facts into their heads, yet experts recommend that to really make learning stick, we should focus more on practicing extracting information out of our heads, i.e., retrieval practice.

While the term ‘retrieval practice’ is currently in vogue in educational jargon, it simply means using teaching/studying strategies like brain dumps, summaries, and quizzes that ask learners to recall information without any cues, aids, or prompts like note cards. 

By recalling information frequently and over time, our brain establishes that this information is important and hence develops more synapses and further myelinates those synapses so they remain in long-term memory and can more easily and quickly be recalled and applied when needed. Like mastering a physical skill, memory is the result of frequent practice and repetition.

The article points out a number of classroom techniques to help students practice retrieving information and warns against popular but ineffective strategies like highlighting and re-reading material.

The bottom line is the more active, frequent, and unprompted retrieval practices can be, the more effective we are in storing information in long-term memory. 

Joe

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These types of active learning strategies are known as retrieval practice.

The rationale behind retrieval practice is three-fold. First, actively trying to remember something or perform some skill is a more effective way of learning than passively re-reading about it. Second, learning practice provides people with better ways of monitoring what they know. In other words, retrieval practices help engage metacognition. Finally, retrieval practice keeps people focused. The act of re-reading a textbook, for instance, often encourages mind wandering, but retrieval practice can keep individuals engaged in the task at hand.

Many studies have shown that when people attempt to recall or retrieve information, they are actually improving their memory. In this sense, the brain works like a muscle: recall exercises the brain to strengthen memory. Also, much like exercise, retrieval activities build habits that lead to long term learning.

Retrieval Practice Works: Retrieval practice is one of the most-well researched learning strategies. Research has established that repeated retrieval enhances learning with a wide range of materials, in a variety of settings and contexts, and with learners ranging from preschool ages into later adulthood.  “Spacing,” or pausing between retrieval exercises, allows for the brain to rest and forget some information. Self-testing after “spacing” increases information recall and promotes long-term learning.

Retrieval Practice Makes Learning Active: Not long ago, I was rereading my notes in an attempt to get ready for a speech. In a room by myself, I realized that I was using my notes like a warm blanket. They were there just there to keep me feeling confident about the speech. This is a weak approach to learning. It’s too passive, and I quickly realized I should be doing retrieval practice instead. It is a powerful strategy that boosts learning by pulling information out of students’ heads (e.g., quizzes, clickers, and flashcards), rather than cramming information into students’ heads (e.g., lectures). It’s a no-stakes learning opportunity that is flexible and quick, with a huge impact on long-term student achievement. One of the reasons that retrieval is so effective is that memories are not “fixed” objects. Instead, our brains can mold memories at any point in time. Thus, it is essential that newly learned information is given permanence. When practicing retrieving a memory, the brain can strengthen that memory by filling in the blanks with any missing information while also connecting the memory with new ideas. In this regard, retrieval practice takes the basic skeleton of a certain idea from past learning and allows it to be expanded upon, which helps the information stick into the mind long-term instead of just short-term. One of the easiest ways to incorporate retrieval practice into learning and teaching is via low-stakes tests or quizzes. According to learning scientist. The effect of bringing information to mind from memory is going to increase learning. Teachers need to view retrieval practice as a learning activity, not an assessment, i.e., keep it formative not summative. Also, retrieval practice is more effective when it occurs in short spurts versus one long study session. This allows learners to have time to forget some of the information and attempt to recall it, which helps the information stick. 

Retrieval Practice Encourages Knowing About Knowing: Generally, people tend to believe that they are more knowledgeable about specific topics than they actually are. Most people believe they are better looking than average. They also tend to think they are smarter and know more information than the average person. Participating in retrieval practice combats this sort of overconfidence. It allows learners to see exactly what they can remember and gives educators a chance to provide tips and feedback along the way. For example, some learners suffer because they are overconfident in what they believe they have retained, often having notes as a crutch. When convinced that they have all of the required knowledge on a certain subject, learners tend to become, well, lazy. They study less and don’t try to assess or correct themselves while learning. Retrieval practice helps prevent this sense of false security, which in turn allows learners to study efficiently, targeting the information they cannot recall. Retrieval practice causes learners to measure what they are familiar with against what they actually have learned. In other words, retrieval practice forces learners to think critically about what they have learned instead of simply repeating the first piece of information that comes to mind.

Retrieval Practice Encourages Higher-Order Learning: Research shows that we gain expertise by producing what we have learned. Retrieval practice creates higher-order learning, which leads to long-term retention. Learning is a generative activity. First, people need to pinpoint what exactly they’re going to learn—like psychology for example. Then people need to create some type of mental connection between their current knowledge and the new information they have yet to absorb. The power of “mentally doing” (creating value in an area of expertise) is clear in basic memory tasks. Trying to remember the Spanish word for “door”, or “la puerta?” It’s easier to recall the word if a letter is missing from it. For example, “p_erta” creates an activity to engage in. When someone has to add the “u,” they’re completing the word. It is the act of finishing the thought—and this strengthens learning, in turn, making it more meaningful. This idea also branches into more complex cognitive tasks such as problem-solving. Encouraging yourself to overcome difficult obstacles or dissect complex issues helps the brain retain more information in the long run. This is because practicing your ability to solve problems teaches you to apply the knowledge already in your brain that is waiting to be put to use, thus aiding in its permanence. The research on learning as a type of “mental doing” has altered the wisdom surrounding how people retain knowledge. For example, studies show that highlighting is an ineffective means of learning new information. This act does not push people enough mentally to influence any meaningful learning. Re-reading text is not very beneficial either. The activity doesn’t spark enough “mental doing,” which means the brain needs more stimulation. The most effective techniques are the ones that require more effort, self-quizzing, or self-explaining for example. This is a fundamental feature of how our minds work. To learn, we can’t just copy the information. We need to make sense out of facts.

How to Encourage Retrieval: Retrieval practice makes learning a bit of a struggle, but it also makes learning more effective. Here are some examples: 

• “Brain Dumps” are useful for exercising retrieval practice. In this exercise, learners write down everything they can think of on a topic to test their knowledge. 
• Concept maps are another useful tool. A learner may fill out a concept map to encourage retrieval. They are beneficial since they allow a person to see the bigger picture instead of just individual pieces of a puzzle. Concept maps also allow learners to group important information together and establish meaningful connections
• Flashcards. One of the most familiar ways of using retrieval practice is through flashcards. These can be very effective if used the right way. Students should keep cards in their deck until they have retrieved the information at least three times. They should also consciously and vocally recall the information before turning the card over to review the answer.
• “Repeat backs” are also great, and the next time a person gives you a set of detailed instructions, take time to repeat the instructions back to them. When you repeat back everything in your own words, you’re taking steps to generate knowledge, and you’ll be far more likely to remember the information long-term.
• The “Think-Pair-Share” exercise can be powerful. In this approach, learners think about a topic, jot down what they have learned, and share it with a partner. Learners should be allowed to think independently before exchanging information. 

How to Optimize Our Students Remembering (and Hence Learning)

 This week's article summary is Why Do Students Remember Everything That's on Television and Forget Everything I Say?

An article summary from last year focused on the different ways episodic (more emotional) and semantic (more repetitive) experiences get stored in long-term memory.

Emotional experiences are placed in our long-term memory because our brain is stimulated in a variety of ways. Our brain stores big, emotional events (like weddings, births, UGA football winning this year’s college football championship) because our brains experience them via many senses. We don’t have to do any studying, reviewing, or thinking about these emotional experiences: they naturally get placed in our memories because they are so unique and dramatic.

Learning in school, on the other hand, primarily results from semantic experiences. To store in long-term memory what we experience in school, we must intentionally and frequently think about them, reflect on them, and review them. Just because you may not be able to remember much about your third grade classroom doesn’t mean you didn’t learn a lot that year. It’s just not stored in your brain as an episodic experience.

As the article below attests, for semantic experiences to stick, kids need to think over and over again about the material, what it means, and, most importantly, practice retrieving and using it. It’s basically what metacognition is: having kids think about their thinking, why the information matters, and how it connects to prior knowledge. The article provides a number of ways teachers can help guide students to think, reflect, retrieve, and remember. 

Joe

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Memory is mysterious. You may lose a memory created 15 seconds earlier, such as when you find yourself standing in your kitchen trying to remember what you came there to fetch. Other seemingly trivial memories (for example, advertisements) may last a lifetime. What makes something stick in memory, and what is likely to slip away?

We can’t store everything we experience in memory. Too much happens. So what should the memory system tuck away? 

Your memory system lays its bets this way: if you think about something carefully, you’ll probably have to think about it again, so it should be stored. Thus, your memory is not a product of what you want to remember or what you try to remember; it’s a product of what you think about.

The cognitive principle that guides this article is memory is the residue of thought. To teach well, consider what an assignment will actually make students think about (not what you hope they will think about), because that is what they will remember.

We all know that students won’t learn if they aren’t paying attention. What’s more mysterious is why, when they are paying attention, they sometimes learn and sometimes don’t. What else is needed besides attention?

A reasonable guess is that we remember things that bring about some emotional reaction. Aren’t you likely to remember really happy moments, such as a wedding? You are, and in fact if you ask people to name their most vivid memories, they often relate events that probably had some emotional content.

If memory depended on emotion, we would remember little of what we encounter in school. So the answer Things go into long-term memory if they create an emotional reaction is not quite right. It’s more accurate to say, Things that create an emotional reaction will be better remembered, but emotion is not necessary for learning.

Repetition is another obvious candidate for what makes learning work. Repetition is very important, but not just any repetition will do. Material may be repeated almost indefinitely and still not stick in your memory.

It’s equally clear that wanting to remember something is not the magic ingredient. How marvelous it would be if memory did work that way. Students would sit down with a book, say to themselves, “I want to remember this,” and they would! You’d remember the names of people you’ve met, and you’d always know where your car keys are. Sadly, memory doesn’t work that way.

Your brain lays its bets this way: If you don’t think about something very much, then you probably won’t want to think about it again, so it need not be stored. If you do think about something, then it’s likely that you’ll want to think about it in the same way in the future.

There are a couple of subtleties to this obvious conclusion that we need to draw out. First, when we’re talking about school, we usually want students to remember what things mean.

The second subtlety (again, obvious once it’s made explicit) is that there can be different aspects of meaning for the same material. For example, the word piano has lots of meaning-based characteristics. You could think about the fact that it makes music, or about the fact that it’s expensive, or that it’s really heavy, or that it’s made from fine-quality wood, and so on. 

The obvious implication for teachers is that they must design lessons that will ensure that students are thinking about the meaning of the material. A striking example of an assignment that didn’t work for this reason came from my nephew’s sixth-grade teacher. He was to draw a plot diagram of a book he had recently finished. The point of the plot diagram was to get him to think about the story elements and how they related to one another. The teacher’s goal was to encourage her students to think of novels as having structure, but the teacher thought that it would be useful to integrate art into this project, so she asked her students to draw pictures to represent the plot elements. That meant that my nephew thought very little about the relation between different plot elements and a great deal about how to draw a good castle. 

Now you may be thinking, “OK, so cognitive psychologists can explain why students have to think about what material means—but I really already knew they should think about that. Can you tell me how to make sure that students think about meaning?” 

When we think of good teachers, we tend to focus on personality and on the way the teachers present themselves. But that’s only half of good teaching. The jokes, the stories, and the warm manner all generate goodwill and get students to pay attention. But then how do we make sure they think about meaning? That is where the second property of being a good teacher comes in—organizing the ideas in a lesson plan in a coherent way so that students will understand and remember.

The human mind seems exquisitely tuned to understand and remember stories—so much so that psychologists sometimes refer to stories as “psychologically privileged,” meaning that they are treated differently in memory than other types of material. I’m going to suggest that organizing a lesson plan like a story is an effective way to help students comprehend and remember.

Before we can talk about how a story structure could apply to a classroom, we must go over what a story structure’s four principles, often summarized as the four Cs. The first C is causality, which means that events are causally related to one another. The second C is conflict. A story has a main character who is pursuing a goal but is unable to reach that goal. The third C is complications. The final C is character. A good story is built around strong, interesting characters, and the key to those qualities is action.

Using a story structure brings three important advantages. First, stories are easy to comprehend, because the audience knows the structure, which helps to interpret the action. 

Second, stories are interesting. Reading researchers have conducted experiments in which people read lots of different types of material and rate each for how interesting it is. Stories are consistently rated as more interesting than other formats (for example, expository prose), even if the same information is presented.

Third, stories are easy to remember.

Structure your lessons the way stories are structured, using the four Cs: causality, conflict, complications, and character. This doesn’t mean you must do most of the talking. Small-group work or projects or any other method may be used. The story structure applies to the way you organize the material that you encourage your students to think about, not to the methods you use to teach the material.

For my teaching, I think of it this way: the material I want students to learn is actually the answer to a question. I sometimes feel that we, as teachers, are so focused on getting to the answer, we spend insufficient time making sure that students understand the question and appreciate its significance. To us, the question and its importance are obvious. To them, they aren’t.

Thinking about meaning helps memory. How can teachers ensure that students think about meaning in the classroom? Here are some practical suggestions.

Learning is influenced by many factors, but one factor trumps the others: students remember what they think about.

The Counterintuitive Secret to Raising Kind Kids

This week's article summary is The Counterintuitive Secret to Raising Kind Kids.

There’s been a common motif to the past few article summaries: significant to helping children grow into kind, considerate adults is parents and teachers spending a lot of time talking with kids about and describing the full gamut of feelings from happiness to frustration to anger, especially when they’re young.

As the summary points out, a stern talking to or a lecture on the importance of sharing after kids misbehave does not help a child learn to share, be empathetic, or develop self-regulation. Punishment can actually result in the child recognizing he/she needs to be sneakier do as not to get caught. Dealing only with the infraction, i.e., providing a consequence/punishment, doesn’t deal with the cause of the misbehavior or help children learn about how their actions affect others. 

As I mentioned in Wednesday’s faculty meeting, the most provocative point from the article for me is that before children can understand others’ feelings, they need to understand and gradually learn to harness theirs. I’ve been in education for over 40 years and I wish I had learned this long ago as it would have dramatically changed how I worked with my students.

It can be a challenge for a teacher or parent to help kids voice how they feel after they’ve gotten into a spat, argument, or power struggle. Our tendency as adults often is to try to quickly fix situations and right the wrong. Yet we must keep the bigger goal for our kids in the forefront as well: guide them to learn from their both their successes and missteps. 

Regarding the ability to self-regulate emotions, ample research illustrates that we all need to be able to ’name it to tame it.’ Or as we say at Trinity, we helps our students ‘develop a strong sense of self and a sincere care, concern for others.’

Joe

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The world, as most of us have sadly noticed, seems to be filled with an increasing number of jerks lately. Most of us don’t want out kids to grow up and join their ranks. Which is why I'm pretty sure science writer Melinda Wenner Moyer's new book will fly off the shelves. It's brilliantly title How to Raise Kids Who Aren't A**holes and offers a deep dive into what research says about making sure your darling offspring end up kind and generous. 

In a recent interview with Scientific American, Wenner Moyer offered a sneak peak of what you'll find within. In the interview, she stresses that a lot of good science has been done on how to make sure your kid doesn't end up being a jerk that offers parents plenty of guidance. Some of it is quite counter-intuitive.

How to teach your kid empathy: Take the question of how to make sure your child is kind and generous. Almost every parent has experienced the embarrassment of your child being the one who refuses to share his or her toys on the playground, and most of us react the same way  -- you take your kid aside and deliver an age appropriate chat on the importance of sharing for friendship while pointing out how unpleasant it feels to be the one whose excluded from a toy or game. There's nothing wrong with this age-old technique of trying to lecture your kid into kindness, but Wenner Moyer claims research shows there is a more effective way. It's just not one that's instantly obvious to most of us. The secret to raising kind kids, according to science, is to talk about feelings more. This is counterintuitive. What your three-year-old is probably feeling when he refuses to share his ball is that he would like to play with that ball and sharing it with others is not very fun. So why would encouraging him to talk about how much he wants to keep his toy for himself lead to him willingly giving it up to another child? "Helping our kids understand their feelings gives them the capacity to understand others' feelings and helps them make decisions to help their friends and be more generous toward them," Wenner Moyer explains. "This is part of something called theory of mind--how to understand others' feelings." And it's not just talking about your child's feelings that helps. It's talking about your own too." Research suggests that the more parents talk about their feelings and other peoples', the more kids are likely to be generous and helpful," she adds. 

High EQ helps kids thrive: Helping your kid recognize and name their feelings and those of others, as well as developing strategies to cope with less-than-pleasant emotions, might seem like a small thing or too touchy feely for some tastes. But Wenner Moyer isn't the only one pointing out that the effects of this simple parenting move can end up being profound. For example, in her TEDx talk family therapist Lael Stone explains that the first step to developing the kind of high EQ that pays huge personal and professional dividends later in life is speaking openly and empathetically with your child about their feelings (and yours too). This teaches your child to recognize and sit with their own emotions, Stone explains, which later enables them to recognize and empathize with the emotions of others. While it may feel counterintuitive to name and validate your child's feelings when all you want them to do is think of the other kid's, science suggests making space to talk about emotions Isn't likely to turn them into self-obsessed navel gazers. Instead, it teaches them about the power of emotions generally, and understanding and acknowledging the emotions of others is the foundation of adult kindness and generosity. 

Why Ages 2-7 Matter So Much for Brain Development

This week's article summary is Why Ages 2-7 Matter So Much for Brain Development.

As early childhood and elementary educators, we all know how critical the early years of schooling are.

The article highlights two gifts (a compass and a violin) Albert Einstein received from his parents when he was 5 years old. Both items piqued Einstein’s interest and curiosity during a critical time in his life when his brain—just like everyone’s--is the most open to learning.

The article lists 4 ways teachers and parents can support and stimulate these foundational years:

• Give kids the freedom to explore, imagine, tinker, create
• Provide them with a wide breadth of experiences
• Help them begin to understand and harness both their inter and intrapersonal skills—what we at Trinity refer to as developing a sense of self and care for others
• Embrace that these critical years aren’t a precursor to ‘real learning’ but an essential building block for subsequent learning

At Trinity, we appropriately guide our students while making sure that they have ample opportunities to direct and manage their learning in imaginative and creative ways. Rather than having our students be sedentary at their desks filling out worksheets with proscribes answers, our kids are truly active, engaged learners.

When I read articles that affirm how we teach and why early childhood/elementary school years are so important, I wish that America as a whole would accept the science of learning, applaud child-centered pedagogy, and recognize how critical the first years of schooling are.

Joe 

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When Albert Einstein was a child, few people—if any—anticipated the remarkable contributions he would make to science. His language development was delayed, worrying his parents to the point of consulting a doctor. His sister once confessed that Einstein “had such difficulty with language that those around him feared he would never learn.” How did this child go from potential developmental delays to becoming, well, Einstein?

Part of the answer to that question is symbolized in two gifts that Einstein received from each of his parents when he was 5 years old. When Einstein was in bed all day from an illness, his father gave him a compass. For Einstein, it was a mysterious device that sparked his curiosity in science. Soon after, Einstein’s mother, who was a talented pianist, gave Einstein a violin. These two gifts challenged Einstein’s brain in distinctive ways at just the right time.

Children’s brains develop in spurts called critical periods. The first occurs around age 2, with a second one occurring during adolescence. At the start of these periods, the number of connections (synapses) between brain cells (neurons) doubles. Two-year-olds have twice as many synapses as adults. Because these connections between brain cells are where learning occurs, twice as many synapses enable the brain to learn faster than at any other time of life. Therefore, children’s experiences in this phase have lasting effects on their development.

This first critical period of brain development begins around age 2 and concludes around age 7. It provides a prime opportunity to lay the foundation for a holistic education for children. Four ways to maximize this critical period include encouraging a love of learning, focusing on breadth instead of depth, paying attention to emotional intelligence, and not treating young children’s education as merely a precursor to “real” learning. 

ENCOURAGE A LOVE OF LEARNING: Young children need to enjoy the process of learning instead of focusing on performance. Educators and parents can emphasize the joys of trying new activities and learning something novel. We need to help children understand that mistakes are a welcome, normal part of learning. This period is also the time to establish a growth mindset--the belief that talents and abilities are developed through effort instead of being innately fixed. Educators should avoid labeling children or making universal statements about their ability.. Instead, emphasize persistence and create safe spaces for learning. Children will learn to love learning if we show enthusiasm over the process rather than fixating on results. 

FOCUS ON BREADTH, NOT DEPTH: One way to avoid focusing on results during this phase of development is to emphasize the breadth of skill development over depth. Exposing children to a wide variety of activities lays a foundation for developing skills in a range of fields. This is the time to engage children in music, reading, sports, math, art, science, and languages. In his book Range, David Epstein argues that breadth of experience is often overlooked and underappreciated. Focusing on excellence in a single activity may be appropriate at some point in life. But the people who thrive in our rapidly changing world are those who first learn how to draw from multiple fields and think creatively and abstractly. In other words, our society needs well-rounded individuals. Well-roundedness is especially important for children from ages 2 to 7. Their developing brains are ready to soak in a wide range of skill sets. This “sampling period,” as Epstein calls it, is integral. This is the window during which to develop children’s range. There is plenty of time for them to specialize later.

DON’T OVERLOOK EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Yes, we want children to read well and learn the fundamentals of math. But we should not disregard emotional intelligence. The advantages of learning during this first critical period of brain development should extend to interpersonal skills such as kindness, empathy, and teamwork. Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson explain the importance of developing children’s empathy in their book The Whole-Brain Child. Empathy begins with acknowledging one’s feelings. Therefore, they suggest helping children in this age group to first label their emotions (“I feel sad”) and then tell the story about what made them feel that way (“I feel sad because I wanted ice cream and you said no”). Once children practice labeling emotions, educators can start asking questions that encourage them to consider others’ feelings. One way to encourage care for others is to include children in what adults do for others. Even allowing young children to help with chores can make them more helpful and considerate people.

DON’T TREAT YOUNG CHILDREN’S EDUCATION AS MERELY A PRECURSOR TO “REAL” LEARNING: Children’s brains can uniquely absorb information during this critical phase. If intelligence is defined as the ability to learn, children between the ages of 2 and 7 may be the most intelligent humans on the planet. Research suggests that some skills cannot be learned nearly as well after this first critical period of brain development. For example, children in this age range are best suited to learn the patterns of language development, enabling them to master a second language to the same level as a native language. However, once children reach age 8, their language learning proficiency decreases, and second languages are not spoken as well as native ones. The same age effect is found when learning musical abilities such as perfect pitch. 

It is noteworthy that Einstein’s parents did not enroll him in physics lessons—the field that would lead him to a Nobel Prize. Instead, Einstein’s father included him in his work as an engineer. His mother signed him up for violin lessons because she wanted him to love and appreciate music. Both activities worked to develop his young mind holistically. It is tempting to think of early childhood education as a precursor to “real” education. But these may be the years that matter most. 

Supporting Executive Functioning Skills By Asking Questions

This week's article summary is Supporting Executive Functioning Skills By Asking Questions, and it's an apt follow-up to last week's summary on the top educational research studies of 2021.

Last week’s summary explained why schools need to directly connect social-emotional development to academic achievement. This week’s highlights how student executive functioning development and its practice and use in the classroom buoy academic success. In fact, the article specifically states that executive function development (planning, organizing, and self-regulation including managing attention and emotions), “boosts academic performance, since grades and assessments rely on executive function as a baseline for demonstrating mastery.”

For parents who are skeptical of social-emotional development in schools unless it supports academic achievement, educational research consistently illustrates that success within and beyond the classroom results from a combination of intelligence and character, i.e., both IQ and EQ. 

The article recommends that we can stimulate our students to be more active in their learning by asking them questions rather than always providing directions. By getting students to think about what and how they can do to prepare, focus, review, and demonstrate, teachers are helping them to be more responsible and to think metacognitively, another research result from last year.

Joe  

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Executive function (EF) skills are brain-based management abilities that encompass a wide range of future skills like planning, organizing, self-regulation (including managing attention and emotions), learning, and memory. These skills are also learned at home when children do things like household chores. 

Reinforcing executive function at school helps students’ brains understand the cueing system that activates the use of a particular skill. For example, a student needs to understand environmental cues in order to engage with self-regulation tools, and these cues will differ at home and at school.

Self-management skills are often the secret sauce of school success. Kids who soar at school are often those who have the most honed EF skill set. Being an excellent writer, for example, isn’t enough. It’s important for students to demonstrate that they can manage time to write, chunk writing tasks into parts, manage attention to see an essay through, and remember editing strategies. Empowering students with these skills can boost academic performance, since grades and assessments rely on executive function as a baseline for demonstrating mastery.

REPLACE DIRECTIONS WITH THOUGHT-PROVOKING QUESTIONS: If you’ve ever heard one student coach another, you’ve probably realized that they’re parroting you. As teachers, we give lots of the same directions. Replacing these directions with mid- and then low-level supportive questions can help pass the onus of navigating the day to students, developing their future-skills executive functions. For example, the directive “Please take out your book” could be replaced with mid-level support questions like “What do you need to be ready for reading?” or “What do you picture on your desk during this time?”. There’s no single right way to do this; the idea is that you’re planning and adjusting the levels of support you offer so that students are gradually assuming the responsibility (similar to gradual release strategy for academic skills and tasks).

TEACH STUDENTS TO QUESTION AND COACH THEMSELVES: Whenever I design a lesson, I hear the voice of my mentor teacher coaching me to consider, “What’s the biggest takeaway you want every student to learn?” It’s an automatic audio track that plays whenever I’m planning a lesson. Like coaches and mentor teachers, classroom teachers can coach students to prompt themselves with questions or reminders for repeating tasks. For example, in planning a longer project or essay, a teacher can show students how to do the following:

• Question what the steps will be, by either visualizing or noting each “scene” as a step
• Consider what materials are needed
• Identify when to do each step
• Offer tips for how to remember what to do

Students who need deeper support can have a written list of these questions to access in times of planning. The idea is to create a format to make the student invisible and thinking skills visible. In this way, teachers can augment students’ developing executive function skills.

USE 6 PROBLEM-SOLVING ‘MAGIC’ QUESTIONS: There are some great go-to questions for teachers who want to help develop learners’ executive functioning skills but aren’t yet automatic in their questioning techniques. These magic questions include:

• What do you notice?
• What parts do you understand?
• What do you think you might need right now?
• How can you tell?
• Where could you look for that information?
• How will you remember to use that strategy or take that action?

When teachers ask these questions regularly, students get used to hearing them, and they can be applied automatically as students solve problems throughout their day. Teachers can also reply with these questions when students ask things like “Where is that assignment?” or “What do I need to do?” Think of how many times the students’ questions for us are related to processing the task, rather than the task or its content. What a gift for students to be able to tackle that type of thinking on their own.

This isn’t one more thing on your ever-growing list. These skills can be supported and extended by making small shifts, not additions, to your instruction. Replacing directions with questions can help increase students’ awareness of patterns and routines, releasing the onus of self-management to the students. Coaching students to notice the executive function demands of assignments can empower them to independently seek strategies when approaching their work. If all else fails, you can lean on those function magic questions, which are sure to get students’ brain “muscles” flexing. Empowering our kids with multiple tools for executive functioning will reduce their barriers to growth and smooth out some of the bumps of getting through the school day, for students and teachers.

The Most Important Education Studies of 2021

This week's article summary is The Most Important Education Studies of 2021.

As you read the summaries of the top studies from last year, you’ll see much validation of what and how we teach at Trinity. A significant attribute of our school is how open we are to research on how children best learn. 

Some commonalities among the studies:

• Metacognition techniques help students learn better: Whether it’s through project-based learning where kids discover skills and concepts from trial and error or students taking a pretest before a unit, learning is aided when students are cognitively active and aware of what and why they are learning something.
• A trusting, safe, relationship-based classroom precedes academic performance: Be it classroom management consistency or a classroom culture of effort and persistence, a classroom needs to be a warm, supportive, predictable environment for students in order to optimize learning.
• Parents, by and large, do not respond favorably to the term ‘social-emotional development’ or to other similarly non-academic terms like ‘soft skills’, including ‘growth mindset’:  As teachers, we recognize the critical importance of helping students develop executive functioning skills like self-evaluation, resilience, planning, and, self-regulation; yet a number of studies below concluded that parents still want schools to develop their children academically.  Hence they need to hear how social-emotional skills support academic achievement. The more schools can directly link social-emotional learning to academic success, the more parents will support it.

 Joe

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WHAT PARENTS FEAR ABOUT SEL (AND HOW TO CHANGE THEIR MINDS): When researchers at the Fordham Institute asked parents to rank phrases with social emotional learning, nothing seemed to add up. The term “social-emotional learning” was very unpopular; parents wanted to steer their kids clear of it. But when the researchers added a simple clause, forming a new phrase—”social-emotional & academic learning”—the program shot all the way up to No. 2 in the rankings. Parents were picking up subtle cues in the list of SEL-related terms that irked or worried them, the researchers suggest. Phrases like “soft skills” and “growth mindset” felt “nebulous” and devoid of academic content. For some, the language felt suspiciously like “code for liberal indoctrination.” But the study suggests that parents might need the simplest of reassurances to break through the political noise. Removing the jargon, focusing on productive phrases like “life skills,” and relentlessly connecting SEL to academic progress puts parents at ease—and seems to save social and emotional learning in the process.

THE SECRET MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES OF EXPERT TEACHERS: In the hands of experienced teachers, classroom management can seem almost invisible: Subtle techniques are quietly at work behind the scenes, with students falling into orderly routines and engaging in rigorous academic tasks almost as if by magic. That’s no accident, according to new research. While outbursts are inevitable in school settings, expert teachers seed their classrooms with proactive, relationship-building strategies that often prevent misbehavior before it erupts. They also approach discipline more holistically than their less-experienced counterparts, consistently reframing misbehavior in the broader context of how lessons can be more engaging, or how clearly they communicate expectations. Focusing on the underlying dynamics of classroom behavior—and not on surface-level disruptions—means that expert teachers often look the other way at all the right times, too. Rather than rise to the bait of a minor breach in etiquette, a common mistake of new teachers, they tend to play the long game, asking questions about the origins of misbehavior, deftly navigating the terrain between discipline and student autonomy, and opting to confront misconduct privately when possible.

THE SURPRISING POWER OF PRETESTING: Asking students to take a practice test before they’ve even encountered the material may seem like a waste of time—after all, they’d just be guessing. But new research concludes that the approach, called pretesting, is actually more effective than other typical study strategies. In the study, students who took a practice test before learning the material outperformed their peers who studied more traditionally by 50% on a follow-up test. The researchers hypothesize that the “generation of errors” was a key to the strategy’s success, spurring student curiosity and priming them to “search for the correct answers” when they finally explored the new material. Learning is more durable when students do the hard work of correcting misconceptions, the research suggests, reminding us yet again that being wrong is an important milestone on the road to being right.

A FULLER PICTURE OF WHAT A ‘GOOD’ SCHOOL IS: It’s time to rethink our definition of what a “good school” is, researchers assert in a study published in late 2020. That’s because typical measures of school quality like test scores often provide an incomplete and misleading picture, the researchers found. The study looked at over 150,000 ninth-grade students who attended Chicago public schools and concluded that emphasizing the social and emotional dimensions of learning—relationship-building, a sense of belonging, and resilience, for example—improves high school graduation and college matriculation rates for both high- and low-income students, beating out schools that focus primarily on improving test scores. The findings reinforce the importance of a holistic approach to measuring student progress and are a reminder that schools—and teachers—can influence students in ways that are difficult to measure and may only materialize well into the future.

TEACHING IS LEARNING: One of the best ways to learn a concept is to teach it to someone else. But do you actually have to step into the shoes of a teacher, or does the mere expectation of teaching do the trick? In a  2021 study, researchers split students into two groups and gave them each a science passage about the Doppler effect—a phenomenon associated with sound and light waves that explains the gradual change in tone and pitch as a car races off into the distance, for example. One group studied the text as preparation for a test; the other was told that they’d be teaching the material to another student. The researchers never carried out the second half of the activity—students read the passages but never taught the lesson. All of the participants were then tested on their factual recall of the Doppler effect, and their ability to draw deeper conclusions from the reading. The upshot? Students who prepared to teach outperformed their counterparts in both duration and depth of learning, scoring 9% higher on factual recall a week after the lessons concluded, and 24% higher on their ability to make inferences. The research suggests that asking students to prepare to teach something—or encouraging them to think “could I teach this to someone else?”—can significantly alter their learning trajectories.

A DISTURBING STRAIN OF BIAS IN KIDS’ BOOKS: Some of the most popular and well-regarded children’s books—Caldecott and Newbery honorees among them—persistently depict Black, Asian, and Hispanic characters with lighter skin, according to new research. Using artificial intelligence, researchers combed through 1,130 children’s books written in the last century, comparing two sets of diverse children’s books—one a collection of popular books that garnered major literary awards, the other favored by identity-based awards. The software analyzed data on skin tone, race, age, and gender. Among the findings: While more characters with darker skin color begin to appear over time, the most popular books—those most frequently checked out of libraries and lining classroom bookshelves—continue to depict people of color in lighter skin tones. When adult characters are “moral or upstanding,” their skin color tends to appear lighter. Female characters, meanwhile, are often seen but not heard. Cultural representations are a reflection of our values, the researchers conclude: “Inequality in representation, therefore, constitutes an explicit statement of inequality of value.”

THE NEVER-ENDING ‘PAPER VERSUS DIGITAL’ WAR: The argument goes like this: Digital screens turn reading into a cold and impersonal task; they’re good for information foraging, and not much more. “Real” books, meanwhile, have a heft and tactility that make them intimate, enchanting—and irreplaceable. But researchers have often found weak or equivocal evidence for the superiority of reading on paper. While a recent study concluded that paper books yielded better comprehension than e-books when many of the digital tools had been removed, the effect sizes were small. A 2021 meta-analysis further muddies the water: When digital and paper books are “mostly similar,” kids comprehend the print version more readily—but when enhancements like motion and sound “target the story content,” e-books generally have the edge. Nostalgia is a force that every new technology must eventually confront. There’s plenty of evidence that writing with pen and paper encodes learning more deeply than typing. But new digital book formats come preloaded with powerful tools that allow readers to annotate, look up words, answer embedded questions, and share their thinking with other readers. We may not be ready to admit it, but these are precisely the kinds of activities that drive deeper engagement, enhance comprehension, and leave us with a lasting memory of what we’ve read. The future of e-reading, despite the naysayers, remains promising.

NEW RESEARCH MAKES A POWERFUL CASE FOR PBL: Many classrooms today still look like they did 100 years ago, when students were preparing for factory jobs. But the world’s moved on: Modern careers demand a more sophisticated set of skills—collaboration, advanced problem-solving, and creativity, for example—and those can be difficult to teach in classrooms that rarely give students the time and space to develop those competencies. Project-based learning (PBL) would seem like an ideal solution. But critics say PBL places too much responsibility on novice learners, ignoring the evidence about the effectiveness of direct instruction and ultimately undermining subject fluency. Advocates counter that student-centered learning and direct instruction can and should coexist in classrooms. Now two new large-scale studies provide evidence that a well-structured, project-based approach boosts learning for a wide range of students. In the studies, elementary and high school students engaged in challenging projects that had them designing water systems for local farms or creating toys using simple household objects to learn about gravity, friction, and force. Subsequent testing revealed notable learning gains—well above those experienced by students in traditional classrooms—and those gains seemed to raise all boats, persisting across socioeconomic class, race, and reading levels.

Simon Sinek's Advice for 2022

 The first summary of 2022 is Simon Sinek Tweeted a Simple Truth About Success We All Need to Hear Before 2022.

Many of us are familiar with ideas and advice of Simon Sinek, including books such as  Together is Better, Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last.

Sinek has a knack for reducing the complex into simple words.

As we head into the second half of the school year, we can use his advice to support our own goals and our students’ as well.

We all have goals. Often we use as inspiration those who have reached the highest levels, yet we can neglect to reflect on their drive, effort, sacrifice, and resilience on their rise to the top.

We glorify Tom Brady, Wayne Gretsky, LeBron James (or Michael Jordan), Jack Nicklaus (or Tiger Woods) as the GOATS of their respective sports. Although we know they worked hard to reach their pinnacles, we focus on their talent as the primary reason for their success.

As we head into a new year and set or re-set goals for ourselves, Simon Sinek reminds us that for an aspirational goal to be accomplished it needs to be preceded by ‘planning, commitment, and ultimately, action’. 

There’s a reason so many New Year’s resolutions flame out a few weeks into January: we set lofty goals without developing feasible, incremental plans. Whether it’s to drop a few pounds, eat better, or find more ‘me time’, we can get caught up in the destination without establishing a systematic way to get there and an accompanying mindset that keeps up positive through the inevitable ups and downs.

The longer I’m in education the more strongly I believe the agency (strong, confident sense of self) we help build in our students is our greatest gift to them.

We need to remind our kids that whatever ambitious goals they set for themselves, they need to take smaller steps and measure gradual progress over time. Most of us know Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team and Tom Brady was a backup quarterback in college; they ultimately accomplished great things in their careers but we need to think about how they responded to significant setbacks in their lives.

Thank you for such a smooth start to the second half of the school year under continued uncertain conditions!

Joe

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Simon Sinek’s messages are worth pause and reflection, but what beguiles me most is their cut-through-the-confusion simplicity.  No obfuscation, no over-complication. This is how it is.

No surprise, then, that I was struck but a recent tweet from him that reminded me of a core truth of success we so often forget. He wrote: "While dreams of greatness are great, we must remember to appreciate the joy of the start."

There are three things I want to call out here that, in my mind, underscore this message:

First, as much attention as we give achievement, no achievement is possible without an idea that becomes a goal that leads to planning, commitment, and ultimately, action. Too often, achievements hang in thin air like some magically suspended bauble. Let's celebrate the achievement at all its points -- because every step was required to get there.

Second, while Sinek doesn't directly address this in his tweet, I'm also reminded that we're sometimes too goal focused. In other words, we lose the joy and impact of the journey when all we care about is the destination. Tennis great Arthur Ashe has an apt quote in this vein: "The doing is often more important than the outcome." Why? Because the doing is where we experience life, where we learn, where we overcome challenges. The achievement -- the end point -- is merely a marker that signifies how much we've grown along the way.

Third, appreciation does not play second fiddle to hustle. We hear a lot about hustle in the entrepreneurial and business spaces. It's the secret sauce to true success, some would say. But if you don't appreciate the journey -- however difficult -- how long can you last? And how strong will your relationships be? What sort of impact can someone have who hates the journey and pushes forward simply to say they made it? Appreciation of opportunity, capacity, and experience are all key to making the sort of impact we dream of making. So yes, let's "dream of greatness," but embrace the start, the journey, and the love of the game.