Using Cognitive Load Theory to improve slideshow presentations. Applying the science of learning in the classroom. Is growth mindset the new learning styles? One teacher, Carl Hendrick says, saw growth mindset in the snow. Taking her children out into the pristine snow covering the school playground, she instructed them to walk around, taking note of their footprints. “Look at these paths you’ve been creating,” the teacher said. “In the same way that you’re creating new pathways in the snow, learning creates new pathways in your brain.” Hendrick, head of learning and research at Wellington College in Berkshire, pauses. “I don’t see how that’s going to help little Johnny solve quadratic equations in period one,” he says.
“The thing that’s going to help little Johnny solve quadratic equations is learning about quadratic equations.” It is a rare teacher who has not heard the term “growth mindset”. “A lot of educational problems are quite entrenched,” Hendrick says. 'The most unread book' Growth mindset was first introduced to the world in 2006 by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck. It is easy to see the appeal for teachers. Quality of education and training workshop: FES. 10.1007/s10648 019 09465 5. The Knowledge. The Semmelweis Reflex: Why does Education Ignore Important Research? In 1846 the general hospital in Vienna was experiencing a peculiar problem. There were two maternity wards at the hospital but at the first clinic, infant mortality rate was around 16% while at the second clinic the rate was much lower, often below 4%. Mysteriously there were no apparent differences between the two clinics to account for this. Part of the mystery was that there was no mystery.
Almost all of the deaths were due to puerperal (childbed) fever, a common cause of death in the 18th century. This fact was well known outside the hospital and many expectant mothers begged to be taken to the second clinic instead of the first. The stigma around the first clinic was so great that many mothers preferred to give birth in the street than be taken there. Working at the hospital at the time was Ignaz Semmelweis, a young doctor who had risen to the ranks of assistant professor where his duties included the examining patients before the professor’s rounds. Ignaz Semmelweis Like this: Memory platforms. Image: @jasonramasami A few years ago, still under the spell of the starter/main/development/plenary model of my teaching training, I began to stray. My distinctly unimpressive timekeeping meant that I would usually find myself doing the plenary of the previous lesson as the starter of the next.
Over time, I felt that I had cottoned on to something. By leaving the plenary to the next lesson, it seemed to force students to recollect what they had covered previously. This retrieval of prior learning would then, naturally, catapult us into the current lesson. As often in teaching, simple, straightforward ideas are usually the most effective. “Quizzing provides a reliable measure of what you’ve learned and what you haven’t yet mastered.
Periodically practicing new knowledge and skills through self-quizzing strengthens your learning of it and your ability to connect it to prior knowledge.” My quizzes now appear something like this: Q1 – Q3 – retrieve key knowledge from last lesson. Like this: Retrieval practice: five new tips to make learning stick | Tes News. When I started teaching, we were told that “weighing the pig doesn’t make it grow”; that sitting tests didn’t help pupils to learn anything. This is demonstrably false. As far back as 1885, the work of German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus showed how testing helps us to retrieve information from our memories and make it easier to recall in the future. And today, we are currently seeing an increasing focus on the idea that pupils should actually retain what they are taught – that there should be a change in long-term memory that allows students to recall previous lessons and apply them to future problems.
This has led to an increased interest in "retrieval practice". As a result of this revival, more and more teachers are starting their lessons with a quick quiz, with questions drawn from previous lessons and topics. A knowledge quiz is a wonderful way to take advantage of the retrieval effect but it isn’t the only way. Here are five more ideas to get retrieval working in your classroom. 17 Teaching Principles of Effective Instruction. @TeacherToolkit In 2010, Ross Morrison McGill founded @TeacherToolkit from a simple Twitter account through which he rapidly became the 'most followed teacher on social media in the UK'.
In 2015, he was nominated as one of the '500 Most Influential People in Britain' by The Sunday... Read more about @TeacherToolkit What makes a teacher, highly effective? Rosenshine identifies the hallmarks of effective teaching that he has discovered in his work over the past four decades. In his research (Rosenshine, 2012), a wide range of teachers were observed to identify the differences between the most effective and less effective teachers. Effective and less effective teachers I have written about Rosenshine’s research in my book, Mark Plan Teach, 2017 (page 136), but I have realised that I had never blogged about it here on Teacher Toolkit. Rosenshine explains that his 10 principles come from three sources and are summarised in the report as follows. Teacher training materials… 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Exploring Barak Rosenshine’s seminal Principles of Instruction: Why it is THE must-read for all teachers. This post is based on a talk I gave at ResearchEd in Rugby. The paper in question is Barak Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction published in American Educator in 2012, downloadable in full as a pdf here: I first came across if after seeing Oliver Caviglioli’s superb graphic summary for How2 – available here: My admiration for Rosenshine is largely informed by my experience working with teachers in various schools and colleges where I’ve been trying to engage people with research in order to support them to improve their practice.
For me, it is the best, most clear and comprehensive guide to evidence-informed teaching there is. Here are some of the reasons: It resonates for teachers of all subjects and contexts – because it focuses on aspects of teaching that are pretty much universal: questioning, practice, building knowledge. Interestingly, within the document, Barak Rosenshine offers a further list of 17 principles that overlap and flesh out the 10 sections. Reviewing material: Rosenshine.