How I Stopped Thinking About Teaching and Thought More About Learning
Last spring break, in a pinch for a book to read, I downloaded Make it Stick by Peter Brown and How We Learn: The Surprising Truth and When, Where and Why it Happens by Benedict Carey. While on the bus, traveling all over Spain with students, I got hooked on brain research. With some spotty wifi in a hotel in Barcelona I downloaded Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner about how he has taught himself multiple languages using spaced-repetition (I'll explain later). I was blown away by the following quote:
"We are poor judges of when we are learning well and when we're not. When the going is harder and slower and it doesn't feel productive, we are drawn to strategies that feel more fruitful, unaware that the gains from these strategies are often temporary" (Brown)
I was thinking, how can I get my students to study the "right" way that will truly help them learn while not frustrating the heck out of them to the point that they give up??
I had all summer to think about it but I didn't feel prepared so I ordered two more books. I read Why Students Don't Like School by Daniel Willingham and Small Teaching by James Lang. If you are thinking that I'm crazy right now you might be right and if you are feeling like you don't have time for all 5 books then I suggest you make time for at least one of them. Although they were all amazing books the one that really stuck out to me was Small Teaching. Lang took facts and information from all of the above books and made a quasi-checklist of what you should do according to the research.
Here are my top 4 take-aways from Small Teaching (and really all of the books) and how it has changed some of the things I do in the classroom:
1. Frequent low-stake quizzing helps students with retrieval, which helps the process of developing long-term memory (that's what we all want right? Our students to remember things AFTER the test is done). This year I am giving (almost) daily quizzes that are only 5 points each (and sometimes have more than 5 questions so if they get one wrong, it's not the end of the world). I do these quizzes online so students can see feedback quickly (this is crucial for them to be able to assess their own learning and it helps my sanity). So far, the students appreciate the quick feedback and they say it is helping them focus more on their studying at home.
2. Giving students the opportunity to predict answers does not hurt their memory but in fact increases retention, even if their prediction/guess is wrong. I now start every class with a "question of the day" that students answer as a group (ex. ¿Qué te gusta hacer?). This question is meant to be new and challenging, something that we will be covering during the class so that they may be able to answer it with more confidence at the end of the class. This makes them "predict" how to answer the question given their background knowledge. I've noticed that they pay more attention to the answer since they've invested time into trying it out. I have students submit their "prediction" on goformative.com, which is a great resource for bell ringers and exit tickets because you can see what students write as they write and you can give them feedback (quickly) to help them along from your computer or ipad. Sometimes I give students a grade for their exit ticket using the same question from the beginning of class. This forces them to take it a bit more seriously at the beginning of class.
3. Interleaving practice instead of blocked practice is the best way for students to be able to use what you teach them in the real world. An example of blocked practice would be a worksheet on stem-changing present tense verbs. This is good when the topic is FIRST introduced, but then students need to practice stem-changing verbs interleaved/mixed with regular verbs. I haven't had a chance to incorporate this yet. However, I would like to give students more mixed practice. In that practice, i want them to actually write what kind of verb it is next to the answer so they have to stop and think it through. We have to help students go through that thought process before it becomes automatic. This is huge, no one is going to remind a student that pedir is stem changing when they are trying to order, they need to learn that.
4. Spaced-repetition helps you retrieve the facts/vocabulary that you want to remember right before you forget it. There is a whole calendar that can help you do this (see the fluentforever website) or you could use one of the many online resources to do it for you! Wyner suggests using Anki but I found it to be not very user friendly (especially for students). In my class we use quizlet for all vocabulary so I tried out Quizlet Plus Long-term Learning this summer to teach myself French. It is totally worth the $20. You add whatever terms/sets of terms that you want to study to your folder and say "study this folder". It comes up with a set of words for you to study daily. The words will be a mixture of new and review according to the algorithm. You tell the app whether you "know" or "don't know" the word and this determines how often and on which days you review these words. The folder is split up into 4 categories: words that you 1) don't know 2) kind of know 3) know and 4) know well. I'm not exactly clear how many times you need to "know" the word for it to go into the fourth category and be in your long term memory (quizlet is not saying anything about this) but I know for sure that I realllyyyyyyy know those words in that category. It is great for cumulative review. Students don't choose to study things from weeks ago, this reminds them to do it. I am not requiring my students to pay for this service, but I highly suggest it. I just wish it could be free!
So far this year I have been loving these changes. What do you think? What research have you read that has changed the way that you teach? Have you read these books? What did you take away from them? I hope that some of my ideas can work in your classroom as well and I look forward to hearing from you to get some ideas as well!
