“A set of pedagogical strategies intended to get students involved in thinking about what they are reading. Active reading may involve any of a wide range of activities, such as underlining, outlining, predicting, summarizing, paraphrasing, connecting the reading to one’s own experiences, visualizing, or asking questions about the content of the reading material.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Students from disadvantaged backgrounds show a characteristic pattern of reading achievement in school: they make good progress until around fourth grade, and then suddenly fall behind. The importance of background knowledge to comprehension gives us insight into this phenomenon. Reading instruction in the early grades concerns decoding, and so reading tests are basically tests of decoding ability. Kids from wealthier homes in fact do a bit better on these tests, but poorer children are still doing okay. But around fourth grade most children can decode fairly well, and so reading tests place greater weight on comprehension. The disadvantaged kids have not had the same opportunities to acquire the vocabulary and background knowledge needed to succeed on these tests and so their performance drops significantly.”
Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.
“…This all means that how teachers look and sound when talking to students can be quite revealing. Participants were asked to rate teachers’ perceptions of students to whom they were speaking with brief (ten-second) audio and video clips. Though the clips only focused on the teachers’ behavior and did not show the students, participants as young as fourth grade were able to successfully differentiate between two types of students being addressed by the teachers: those who were considered to be ‘high’ achieving and those who were ‘low’ achieving (Babad, Bernieri, & Rosenthal, 1991). The teacher interacted with the ‘high’- achieving student more positively than with the ‘low’-achieving student. With less than half a minute of observation, our perception of how others, in this case teachers, feel about students can be readily identified.
As the authors point out in the discussion of their findings, with only ten seconds of film footage, there was barely enough time for teachers to utter more than two words; thus truly it was the manner in which the teachers addressed the students and not the content of their discussion that affected the ratings of how the teacher felt about each student.
Though these findings may seem to speak directly to the so-called expectancy effects, namely the finding that how students perform in class may be largely influenced by how the teacher feels about them (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968), our focus here is more upon student comfort than academic performance. Now more than four decades after Pygmalion in the Classroom thrust the idea of teacher expectancy effects into the professional and public vernaculars (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968), there is still a fair amount of controversy regarding just how strongly teacher expectations of students affect intelligence and performance (Jussim & Harber, 2005).
Rather than wade into these murky waters, we will instead focus on the indisputable points that because detection of emotion is instinctual, teachers must be incredibly careful and conscientious about how they deal with students in a classroom, particularly those who are ‘easy’ and those who are seen as more ‘challenging.’ Given the fact that teacher interactions with students influence how those students are perceived by their peers (Birch & Ladd, 1998), the case for conscious monitoring of behavior cannot be overstated.
It is recommended that educators plan ahead for interactions with students they may consider more trying or challenging than others. Just as the successful teacher plans for contingencies such as having extra supplies for students who may forget of be unable to afford their own, so must she also plan ahead for the possibility of questions, to which answers have already been provided, or other solicitations that could possibly evoke even subtle expressions of exasperation or annoyance.”
Excerpted from: Rekart, Jerome L. The Cognitive Classroom: Using Brain and Cognitive Science to Optimize Student Success. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2013.
“The difference between a topic-centered and an idea-centered curriculum/instruction model is the difference between memorizing facts related to the American Revolution and developing and sharing ideas related to the concepts of freedom and independence as a result of studying the American Revolution. It is the difference between viewing the O.J. Simpson trial and drawing insights into the concept of justice from discussions of the trial. It is the difference between the facts of the Alaska oil spill and an understanding of the importance of environmental sustainability. Finally, it is the difference between the construction of mathematical angles and knowledgeable application of geometric form to ensure architectural strength in design.”
Excerpted from: Erickson, H. Lynn. Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching Beyond the Facts. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, 2002.
“…But a coherent curriculum also fosters through the grades, in a deliberate and systematic design, increasing sophistication in critical content knowledge, conceptual understanding, and complex performance abilities. The current emphasis on meeting national and state standards requires thoughtful planning in curriculum design. We cannot afford to do dinosaurs and rain forests at three different grade levels. We need to use the precious time in schools to maximum advantage. This does not mean that we cannot do thematic, integrated units or bring relevance and active student engagement into the learning process. But it does signal the need for coherent curricular plans that achieve the desired outcomes for students–outcomes that are based on the realities of living, learning, and working in the 21st century, as well as the mandates of discipline-based standards and assessments.”
Excerpted from: Erickson, H. Lynn. Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching Beyond the Facts. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, 2002.
“An approach to reading instruction developed in the 1950s as an alternative to basic reading programs; emphasizes student selection of reading materials and self-pacing in reading. With this method, the teacher adjusts instruction to student needs during small-group work and in individual conferences.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
[Nota bene, please, that I originally posted much of this material in a Weekly Text from August 28, 2015, which would have made it one of the earliest publications on this blog. This lesson continues to evolve, so I have decided to publish it once more with a couple of supplementary materials. If you have used this in your classroom, and plan to use it again, you may want to check back here every so often to see if I’ve added documents. I’ve also given this post a new title so that it is easy to search and locate on Mark’s Text Terminal.]
Is there a way we can assist our students in remembering what we teach them in the classroom? More broadly, can we help students become stronger, more effective, and therefore more satisfied learners, particularly in terms of retention (de rigeur now for hyper-tested students), by showing them how memory actually functions? The answer, or part of the answer at least, thanks to Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, is yes. Professor Willingham writes a column called “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” for The American Educator, which is an excellent quarterly journal of research into pedagogical practice and educational policy issues published by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). I’m amazed at the consistently cogent and useful scholarly research the AFT presents in this first-rate publication.
Anyway, in the winter 2008-2009 issue, Professor Willingham published his column under the title–clicking on this hyperlink will download of PDF of the article–“What Will Improve a Student’s Memory?” This is a cognitive science experiment in three parts that demonstrates the role of thought and memory in the learning process. So far, I’ve developed for use in teaching a lesson adapted from Professor Willingham’s First Demonstration of Memory, will help you and your students conduct the first of these three experiments, then sort out its immediate results. Through this clever and concrete demonstration, students will learn that thinking is the parent of memory–as Professor Willingham emphasizes. I like to start the year with this lesson; in fact, I teach it on the first day of school, before discussing classroom norms and expectations, as a way of setting the tone (i.e. your learning comes first) for the year.
To get to the instructional material in the PDF, you’ll need download the article by clicking on the link above, then scroll down through the document to page 26, “Demonstration of the Three Principles.” You’ll use Demonstration 1: once you’ve read through the procedure for the demonstration. Nonetheless, here is the unit plan for all three lessons that rationalize the use of these three demonstrations of memory with students. Eventually, I’ll write the other two lessons for demonstrations two and three, and post those here as well.
To the documents for this lesson: here is the lesson plan for the First Demonstration. Although the PDF posted above includes the procedures for all three demonstrations, this is the typescript of the teaching procedure for the First Demonstration (this text is also included in the lesson plan). This structured and numbered worksheet might hasten the process of delivering this lesson, particularly for struggling students. Over time, working with a large and homogenous group or students, I developed two supports for concluding the work on this lesson. Students will need to determine, as part of this exercise, which kinds of words they remembered. This first version of the support give students the words in the order in which they were read, and asks them to find the words they remembered by searching the list. That requires focus and the ability to sort out information; some students I have served over the years struggled with this part of the activity. So I designed a second version of the support with the words read arranged by type in columns in a table, and therefore a bit less challenging to sort, interpret, and process.
I find this lesson, taught to a well-focused class generally takes less than the 44 minutes my school has deemed adequate for conveying new information and providing students with an opportunity to use it. After finishing the procedural work, and sorting out the results of that work to assess its meaning (it’s part of the procedure in the article), I like to ask students a few questions. The big question is, of course, Why did you remember the words you rated for pleasantness? Another query I use is What can students and teachers do to work together to study words in a way helps students remember their meaning and use them in their future discourses? (Do your students understand the concept of discourse? It seems to me it’s a word and concept high school students really ought to know.) I also ask questions that prepare students for some of the work we’ll do that is animated by Professor Willingham’s first demonstration: Is there something common to words that can help us understand them as families? which helps to rationalize the use of word root worksheets. Is there a way to learn words by thinking about what they might mean? justifies the use of do-now context clues worksheets. In any case, the really big question this and the other two Demonstrations ask is this: Thinking about the outcome of this thought experiment, what are its implications for classroom practice?
For teachers, the big question really just that: what does this demonstration of memory imply for classroom teaching practice. It’s a conversation that circumstances never afforded me an opportunity to conduct or join, despite using this version of the lesson as a professional development exercise for colleagues on a couple of occasions.
In any case, through this clever and concrete demonstration, students will learn that thinking is the parent of memory–as Professor Willingham emphasizes in his article. I like to start the year with this lesson; in fact, I teach it on the first day of school, before discussing classroom norms and expectations, as a way of setting the tone (i.e. your learning and the means by which it is accomplished are of paramount importance in this classroom) for the year.
Most of the vocabulary building work I’ll publish on Mark’s Text Terminal derives directly from my understanding of the cognitive mechanisms Professor Willingham’s “First Demonstration” exposes. This lesson, if nothing else, may help you persuade resistant students that this is a useful way to learn and master new words and the concepts or things they define.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Our first priority in education is to develop sound literacy skills. All the career exploration in the world won’t compensate for lack of reading, communication, or thinking abilities. If elementary schools red-flag all students who are developmentally delayed in the basic skills, intervention programs making creative use of school personnel and programs can bring greater degrees of student success. When instructional programs are not working for some students, they deserve a more appropriate curriculum. If the amount of time spent on literacy development is not producing the expected level of mastery, then the time devoted to these areas needs to be expanded. Schools can no longer afford to let students slide through, even if outside reasons make the inside instruction difficult.”
Excerpted from: Erickson, H. Lynn. Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching Beyond the Facts. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, 2002.
“Education that emphasizes learning from firsthand, personal experiences rather than from lectures, books, and other secondhand sources. Experiential learning my take the form of internships, service learning, school-to-work programs, field studies, cross-cultural education, or training for leadership development.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.”
Wilson Mizner, quoted in Edward Dean Sullivan, The Fabulous Wilson Mizner (1935)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
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