Mr Lee’s Top Teacher Takeaways for Sep 21

September 2021 #LeeTTT

I’ve decided to put together a monthly overview of what I’ve been learning as a part of my own retrieval practice and also to keep track of everything! Hopefully you find it useful as well.

Top things I read

How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice by Paul A. Kirschner, Carl Hendrick

Probably in the Top 2 books (alongside “Why don’t students like school?” by Daniel Willingham) I’ve read to do with educational research. It’s certainly not light reading, but Kirschner and Hendrick do a great job of breaking down 28 major papers on educational psychology and cognitive psychology. They do so using analogies and practical examples to ensure that it is applicable to educators. Here are some of my key takeaways:

Mathemagenic: activities that promote learning
Mathemantic: that which kills learning e.g. summarising without having learnt how to make a good summary.
Elaboration theory: begin with an overview or wide angle view of things which allows you to see. I found Elaboration Theory so interesting that I ended up writing an article on it here.
Internal summariser: appears at the end of each lesson and only reviews content from that lesson
Within-set summariser: covers all the material up to that point
Emphasis manipulation: Sequence delivery so that sub tasks are taught individually before being explained together as a whole.

“Without an understanding of human cognitive architecture, instruction is blind.”
John Sweller

Process worksheet uses heuristic guidance for each phase rules of thumb are provided as to how to successfully complete the phase.
Epistemic questions e.g. what aspect(s) of X, Y and/or Z should you take into account doing A and why?
Minimally guided instruction challenges working memory and thus inhibits effective and efficient learning.
“Feedback should be more work for the recipient than the donor.” Dylan William. Who also said that he wishes he called Formative Assessment, responsive teaching.
Students often see feedback as an overall judgement
Mastery approach is more likely to seek feedback. Self concept is important.
Testing should be 2/3 way through a unit to allow time to attend to misconceptions
Effective feedback must answer 3 major questions asked by a teacher and/or by a student: where am I going, how am I going, where to next
If a students knowledge is low then more instruction will be better than feedback.
Social learning theory: we learn by observing others

“Feedback is information with which learner can confirm, add to, overwrite, tune, or restructure information in memory, whether that information is domain knowledge, meta-cognitive knowledge, beliefs about self and tasks, or cognitive tactics and strategies. ”
Winne and Butler 1994

Top podcasts I listened to

Mind the Gap: Making Education Work Across the Globe

Ep. 26 — MARGE and in Charge: Whole-Brain Learning with Nimish Lad (S2E1)

Teach like a tour guide. Curriculum as a theme, each room has a focus and artefacts have been specifically focused. Your brain can think that it knows things and stops concentrating. Students need to know what they’re learning and why. Need to be interested in the content. We need to help them connect to it.

Expanding their spectrum of pleasure seeking experiences. How does it make them feel? Contenders practice until they get it right, champions practice until they can never get it wrong.

The Education Research Reading Room podcast

ERRR #057. Harry Fletcher-Wood on Habits of Success

The SIMPlIFy Model
Specify: Need significant clarity on what success actually looks like. Does each aspect of your plan relate to the main goal?
Inspire and Motivate: ‘headache – aspirin’ approach. e.g. give them something difficult to do and then something to make it less “painful” so that they can do it. Also, talked about using older students as role models.
Plan: Use prompts, checklists and implementation intentions
Initiate action: Make starting easy and draw the connection to previous successes.
Follow up: Make commitment public.

Loved the final words about finding the smartest people you disagree with and to learn from them.