"I think the whole idea, and what I get excited about is that the more we can design learning to reflect how kids' brains work, and the more we can use teaching strategies that really accelerate their learning, the easier it is for them, the more joyful it is for them, and also for us. In the end, I feel all this is adding up to joyful learning experiences for kids and for teachers. We all want to be great teachers, right? We all want to see the light bulbs go on for kids, And, I think this is, ultimately, all about those joyful learning experiences." - Bryan Goodwin
In this episode of Coaching Conversations, our special guest is Bryan Goodwin, President and CEO of McREL International, a nonprofit organization that provides in-depth professional learning and school improvement services to school systems worldwide to help educators use the science of teaching, learning, and leading to lift all learners.
Learn about the approach in developing the rigorous research base for the third edition of Bryan's book The New Classroom Instruction That Works and how this new methodology yielded an updated set of 14 high leverage teaching strategies that have been shown, scientifically, to promote deep, meaningful, and lasting learning for diverse students.
In this conversation, Bryan shares details about the six phases of learning and the cognitive science behind each.
Interested in learning how our consultants can make an impact on your School, District, or Program? Click here
Learn how to join our Institute by clicking here
"I think the whole idea, and what I get excited about is that the more we can design learning to reflect how kids' brains work, and the more we can use teaching strategies that really accelerate their learning, the easier it is for them, the more joyful it is for them, and also for us. In the end, I feel all this is adding up to joyful learning experiences for kids and for teachers. We all want to be great teachers, right? We all want to see the light bulbs go on for kids, And, I think this is, ultimately, all about those joyful learning experiences." - Bryan Goodwin
In this episode of Coaching Conversations, our special guest is Bryan Goodwin, President and CEO of McREL International, a nonprofit organization that provides in-depth professional learning and school improvement services to school systems worldwide to help educators use the science of teaching, learning, and leading to lift all learners.
Learn about the approach in developing the rigorous research base for the third edition of Bryan's book The New Classroom Instruction That Works and how this new methodology yielded an updated set of 14 high leverage teaching strategies that have been shown, scientifically, to promote deep, meaningful, and lasting learning for diverse students.
In this conversation, Bryan shares details about the six phases of learning and the cognitive science behind each.
Interested in learning how our consultants can make an impact on your School, District, or Program? Click here
Learn how to join our Institute by clicking here
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Unknown
that if we've learned something because we're curious about it, we're more likely to obtain it later. Actually, Curiosity appears to prime our brains for learning. So if we're in a state of heightened curiosity, we actually tend to learn things we weren't even trying to learn.
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Unknown
So that idea of it seems sometimes like it. Teachers like it's a nice to have a little bigger time. The kids are curious what we're saying. It's a need to have. If you really want your students to learn something, they have to first become interested. You have to get their brains switched on to learning.
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Unknown
By everyone. It's Jessica Wise. Host of the Coaching Questions on the Coaching Conversations Podcast with Jim Knight. I am very fortunate to be part of an amazing consultant team here at the instructional coaching group. If you were wondering about how to implement, reset or recharge instructional coaching in your system, partnering with one of the consultants is the way to go.
00:01:05:08 - 00:01:33:06
Unknown
Contact our managers of partnership and outreach for the opportunity for your district or school to build and sustain your effective instructional coaching program. These awesome consultants tailor learning to your needs as they work with coaches and administrators to ensure high quality learning geared toward long term and life giving implementation. Visit instructional coaching dot com and click on Bring ICG to your district to request a complimentary consultation.
00:01:33:06 - 00:01:52:10
Unknown
So I'm so looking forward to our conversation. You know, I've been super excited about the chance to learn with you, but then it turns out you're just a heck of a nice guy. And it's just been really fun just to work with you and sharing our interests and everything from Australian Rules Football to the Smiths, so and so likewise.
00:01:52:10 - 00:02:11:03
Unknown
Jim Logan. So I'm so grateful to have a chance to talk with you and then we're going to do this workshop in August. I think it's fixed. It's sixth, seventh and eighth, something like that in beautiful Lawrence, Kansas, Taylor Swift's favorite city in the world. And I have video evidence to prove it, and I've come to the institute to see it.
00:02:11:03 - 00:02:35:01
Unknown
We showed the Institute and we're working on a book which hopefully will have put together gather on instructional coaching for classroom instruction, the new classroom instruction that works. And I'm so excited about how the science of learning, science of teaching and the research, I mean, not quite ready to say the science of coaching, but the research on coaching and the work we do on coaching all comes together in our book and our workshop.
00:02:35:01 - 00:02:37:18
Unknown
And so I'm grateful to have you on this conversation.
00:02:37:18 - 00:02:57:14
Unknown
I'm so glad to be here. Jim, I've been learning a lot from you as well, and I'm we're we're excited, too, about the idea of really wrapping coaching around these strategies. We know that's actually where the magic happens. That's how we get teachers to change practice is by working with them and helping them do all the things that you talk about setting goals and tracking progress, all those things.
00:02:57:14 - 00:02:59:08
Unknown
So really excited about this too.
00:02:59:08 - 00:03:17:09
Unknown
So your organization, MACKRELL, is probably one of the most important research organizations in the United States. Could you kind of give us just a little bit of a background on what MACKRELL is, its history and the whole thing? And I think most of most people in the United States and other countries as well around the world are pretty familiar with micro.
00:03:17:09 - 00:03:39:09
Unknown
But just on the off chance somebody isn't, maybe you could share a bit about it. Sure, Yeah, we've been around a long time. We're actually we were incorporated in 1966, which predates my existence on this planet. But, you know, the idea of So Micro was incorporated to be one of the ten regional educational laboratories. And the idea was that we've got a lot of research just happening all the time, even back in 1966.
00:03:39:09 - 00:03:58:16
Unknown
There's a lot that is happening, but oftentimes it is tied up in, you know, academic journals and not making its way into the hands of teachers. And so Mackrell and the other labs were set up to like, how do we translate this really good research into practical application and we're still around now, what, 58 years later, because actually the research has gotten more sophisticated.
00:03:58:17 - 00:04:23:10
Unknown
There's a lot more we know about from cognitive science from and the research itself is becoming increasingly scientific using, you know, randomized controlled trial and other kinds of methodologies where we've got treatment groups, control groups, all that stuff. So MACKRELL is still focused on that. How do we help people translate what is really a kind of better renaissance of research and education into but the practical things, what do I do Monday morning in my classroom?
00:04:23:12 - 00:04:41:18
Unknown
And that's kind of where we sit, kind of as those boundary standards, both in the research, but then having a lot of folks on staff who know what classrooms look like. You have lots of classroom experience, leadership experience and so forth. And so I like to think that that's kind of like our chocolate and peanut butter. I think that's the research side of the house with the chocolate assistant side.
00:04:41:23 - 00:04:47:01
Unknown
My job is basically just to coordinate the two is something to just go away, let people do good work. Right?
00:04:47:01 - 00:04:57:22
Unknown
That's a good strategy. Maybe, if you don't mind, could you share a bit about your role in micro? And also, it's just some of your publications. We're going to talk about the new classroom instruction, the works, but what about the other books?
00:04:58:00 - 00:05:16:20
Unknown
Yeah, so then I've been writing a lot of books over a long, long period of time, and essentially it's distilling across research. And so my background was as a teacher, as a journalist, and so I kind of combined those two things in my writing, but I've read books. One was the first one I wrote for A.C.T., primarily, I write with A.C.T., wrote a book called Simply Better.
00:05:16:20 - 00:05:39:03
Unknown
And we were looking at we had just done huge synthesis of hundreds of research studies on what are the key leverage points for improving school systems. And that became the book simply better, which was really five key leverage points for improving school outcomes. Written books are about leadership. We have a program called Balance Leadership at MIT, well written books on that brought a lot of books on curiosity.
00:05:39:05 - 00:06:04:00
Unknown
I've also read books on one book back in the day called The 12 Touchstones of Good Teaching. What does it mean to be a good teacher Again, taking lots of research and saying, Can we boil it down to essential, you know, strategies, essential things that we should be focusing on? We try to I always think about trying to find the simplicity on the far side of complexity, and I think that's kind of what this latest book is trying to do in the new classroom instruction that works.
00:06:04:02 - 00:06:24:08
Unknown
Looking at brain science, how we know the process of learning works, but then also looking at we were looking at 105 studies. We've talked a lot more about that later, but we found no scientific studies and then we were looking at what what does that tell teachers they should be focusing on at least as a starter set of teaching strategies.
00:06:24:10 - 00:06:49:03
Unknown
So maybe say, if you don't mind a little bit about the history of the new classroom instruction that works that book in various formats. This has been a publication of MACKRELL. So tell us a bit about the background of that book too. Yes, that book actually came out of the laboratory program that you described earlier. Starting in 1998, Bob Marzano wrote a research mat analysis called The Theory based on analysis of research and instructional strategies.
00:06:49:05 - 00:07:09:21
Unknown
But I have to credit Bob for this because he really had the insight that, again, there's a lot of research out there. How do we boil it down to the to the essential things? And so that book then came out. There's a book called Classroom Instruction that Works that we co-published with ACG in. I think 2008 was sort of the right book at the right time that the book has sold more than a million copies worldwide.
00:07:09:21 - 00:07:32:22
Unknown
17 foreign languages really became kind of a phenomenal book that I think for a lot of folks and almost initiated. This era of using research to really guide classroom practice, made it practical, made it accessible for teachers. We had a second edition in 2010 where we updated the research base. This book now the new classroom instruction that works.
00:07:33:00 - 00:07:58:23
Unknown
We took a slightly different approach where we looked at in this case only scientific studies, the studies that past what works clearinghouse criteria for rigor. What we're clearing out is the federal database that has really sought to transform teaching into a scientific profession. And so that was a whole new set of studies. And so we took a slightly different approach with that, which I can talk about in a minute, but that's kind of a history.
00:07:59:00 - 00:08:19:15
Unknown
This book has been around for a long time. What we didn't want to lose was the I think the magic magic of it has always been helping teachers say, okay, what are the what are the core things I should have in my repertoire? There may be other things later, I add, but what things should I had in my back pocket to make sure I'm and delivering high quality learning experiences for kids.
00:08:19:17 - 00:08:38:02
Unknown
So the difference between this and some of the other works is rather than doing a meta analysis, we look at lots of different studies. You zoned in exclusively on studies that meet the rigorous criteria of what works Clearinghouse, and you were able to identify like about a hundred and some studies that had hit the criteria. Yeah, we found 105 studies.
00:08:38:02 - 00:08:53:04
Unknown
We were looking for studies that were that were a couple of things. One is that they were focused on instructional strategies, so you can find a lot of strategies that are like, it's a curriculum, right, that that a school can implement. Well, where a teacher I can't do much about my school's curriculum probably unless I'm on the curriculum committee.
00:08:53:06 - 00:09:16:06
Unknown
So we're looking at that. We also want to make sure the studies were across grade levels, across subject areas and also representing diverse learners. And so we're really happy that 70% of the studies in that sample had classrooms with diverse learners. At least 40% of the kids were either identified as, you know, read reduced lunch. Maybe they were previously low performing, they were multilingual, they were kids of color.
00:09:16:08 - 00:09:34:21
Unknown
So what's great is we don't have to say we think these strategies are going to work in diverse classrooms. We say actually, we know they work in diverse classrooms and they really a lot of them were showing findings that were that were closing achievement gaps. The reason that we didn't do a mat analysis with this one is because these are more sophisticated studies.
00:09:34:23 - 00:09:53:13
Unknown
They tended to be a bundle of interventions or bundle of strategies put together. So like you might see, you know, a researcher saying, I want to try what happens if I, I help kids set goals and I do some direct instruction, but then I help them also maybe work in teams to, you know, extend that learning into something deeper.
00:09:53:15 - 00:10:16:00
Unknown
So from that it's like, well, we could see we could see several strategies that work. How do we distill which strategy, what strategy was the key strategy there? So we decided instead of doing that, we would just say, here's the effect sizes of that study and here's the constellation of strategies we saw there. So from that is how we came up with the 14 strategies we kept seeing.
00:10:16:00 - 00:10:25:21
Unknown
In several cases, the strategies repeat themselves. So every strategy we've identified, we found in at least seven studies, again in drivers classrooms across grade levels, across subject areas.
00:10:25:21 - 00:10:33:05
Unknown
I love it. So when we talk about evidence based, we can feel pretty confident that we have evidence to support the 14 strategies or yeah, yeah,
00:10:33:05 - 00:10:35:22
Unknown
stages of instruction you're going to talk that you talk about.
00:10:36:00 - 00:10:53:11
Unknown
And because these are, these are scientific studies, then we can also make causal references where we can say, well, or causal inference is right. We know that like the treatment group got something that the control group didn't and we saw gains in the treatment group. And so we don't have to worry about. Were there other confounding factors that might be at play here?
00:10:53:11 - 00:11:03:12
Unknown
You know, students, socioeconomic background or teacher skill, whatever? Like we can actually say these strategies when applied randomly to a group of kids, had positive outcomes.
00:11:03:12 - 00:11:21:01
Unknown
So you organize the book. Thank you so much for that explanation. And it's just really helpful to sort of get inside how you chose the 14 strategies and the six learning phases. And I thought maybe we could organize our talk around those six learning phases.
00:11:21:01 - 00:11:43:05
Unknown
And sometimes the questions almost seem a little bit goofy because the obvious it's just like the first one, for example, is become interested. And I'm going to ask you why is that important? But I think we all recognize why it's important. Maybe you could tell us about the research and just your thoughts about why that's important and what are some things teachers and coaches could do to help get kids interested.
00:11:43:05 - 00:11:59:23
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. So that so there's the other piece of what's in the new classroom instruction that works is looking at cognitive science. So it's looking at the science of learning. And that's been around for decades. I mean, some of it actually was like at the turn of the last century when we started to figure some things out about how we human beings learn.
00:11:59:23 - 00:12:25:09
Unknown
And so we had a previous book called Learning that Sticks, where we really talked about how could you just tell what we know from the science of learning, cognitive psychology into a simple six phase learning model? Now, you know the old adage every model's inaccurate, some are useful. So like a cognitive scientist might say, no, it's actually 17 phases or, you know, or 21 depending on the context, whatever we were trying to like, boil it down for a teacher saying what would make the most sense?
00:12:25:09 - 00:12:43:10
Unknown
And so when you think about if you learn anything and most of the things we learn, we learn outside classrooms, right? Anything we've learned we picked up, we became interested in first read. There's something, Peter Curiosity about it. Something was maybe mysterious about it or perplexing where we wanted to learn more. Like, if it's a skill, how does you know?
00:12:43:12 - 00:12:52:00
Unknown
How does that golfer hit that drive so well? I didn't learn how to do that myself. Right. And so what we also know from from this is brain science studies
00:12:52:00 - 00:13:05:23
Unknown
that if we've learned something because we're curious about it, we're more likely to obtain it later. Actually, Curiosity appears to prime our brains for learning. So if we're in a state of heightened curiosity, we actually tend to learn things we weren't even trying to learn.
00:13:06:01 - 00:13:20:00
Unknown
So that idea of it seems sometimes like it. Teachers like it's a nice to have a little bigger time. The kids are curious what we're saying. It's a need to have. If you really want your students to learn something, they have to first become interested. You have to get their brains switched on to learning.
00:13:20:00 - 00:13:23:14
Unknown
So as obvious as that sounds, I'm sure you see this, Jim.
00:13:23:14 - 00:13:24:20
Unknown
We see this where
00:13:24:20 - 00:13:42:18
Unknown
teachers feel pressed for time and they kind of skip over that. It becomes like, open your books to page 23 and let's get going here instead of like, how can I make this learning interesting to you and do what your brain naturally does and it gets switched on to learning is plays like a spine just and squeezed and is now it's ready to absorb learning.
00:13:43:10 - 00:14:03:15
Unknown
Yeah we would say it's inside out versus outside in. Yeah yeah right. You know when the person really wants to learn something, your work as a teacher or a coach in our case is pretty easy. But if the person doesn't want to learn, it, it's going to be really, really difficult. And and so we would we would say to you can't force people to learn, right?
00:14:03:19 - 00:14:09:16
Unknown
If they don't want to learn, they're not going to hear it. So they haven't. So something has to happen where they open themselves up to the learning for it to happen.
00:14:09:16 - 00:14:43:15
Unknown
Hi, everyone. It's ICD consultant Jessica Wise, host of the Coaching Questions on the Coaching Conversations podcast with Jim Knight. Are you interested in learning about tools and resources to build and maintain a successful instructional coaching program? If so, join our Instructional Coaching Institute designed for instructional coaches and administrators in this 16 week course led by Jim Knight. You'll learn how to establish a proven foundation for success, develop a deeper and complete understanding of the coaching process and practices, and cultivate necessary communication skills for healthy conversations.
00:14:43:17 - 00:14:53:12
Unknown
We will also explore engagement in the classroom and coaching tools and resources. Learn more by visiting Instructional Coaching Icon. I look forward to seeing you at the Institute.
00:14:53:12 - 00:14:55:21
Unknown
And I'm that's why I'm thrilled. That's the first stage.
00:14:55:21 - 00:15:03:21
Unknown
And the second stage again, asking why this is important seems kind of silly, but second stage is commit to learn.
00:15:03:21 - 00:15:21:15
Unknown
Tell us about commit to learn and what are some things we could do to foster committing to learn. Yeah, Yeah. So I mean, if you think about the process of your point to that, we don't learn anything. We don't want to ultimately write or sometimes we talk ourselves into learning something because it's on the test. But what we're trying to get is intrinsic motivation.
00:15:21:15 - 00:15:44:01
Unknown
But if you think about the process of learning, it requires tremendous mental effort to keep our brain switched on, to keep reminding ourselves, No, this is important. Stay focused, keep learning this. Daniel Kahneman is a cognitive scientist. He's one of the greats. I wrote a book called Thinking Fast and Slow, and his point is that our brains want to go back to kind of revert back to low effort mode all the time.
00:15:44:03 - 00:16:04:09
Unknown
Our brains use the most calories of any other in organ in our body. So we want to always kind of step back and take it easy if we can. So learning requires focused mental effort. So how do we keep ourselves in vents? We need to learn, We have to commit to learning. And really the way to do that is through goal setting and intrinsic goals.
00:16:04:09 - 00:16:05:00
Unknown
Ideally,
00:16:05:00 - 00:16:24:03
Unknown
sometimes extrinsic rewards are okay, but primarily it's like I need to. Well, Jerry Brophy makes this point. He's also looked at the research on intrinsic motivation. He says the two keys to intrinsic motivation are, First of all, I feel that what I'm being asked to learn is achievable, that I can get there. Not that it's super easy, right?
00:16:24:04 - 00:16:40:22
Unknown
There's a challenge to it, but if I stretch myself, I'll get there. Kind of a Goldilocks zone of challenge, right? But the other piece is that I find it meaningful. I can see what's in it for me. We like to use the Madison Avenue term sometimes, like if I know what's in it for me, why this learning is important, I'm more likely to engage in it.
00:16:41:00 - 00:17:14:16
Unknown
And so the really the strategies there are around helping kids set goals. And so we talk to teachers about it's great have learning objectives and learning intentions or know where you're going with the learning that's necessary, but it's not sufficient until students take your learning intentions and turn them into their goals for learning. And so again, we saw a ton of studies that that found the power of getting kids to set their goals for learning that take ownership of learning, and then finally be like what they ask to learn is actually something I want to learn, you know, in its own right.
00:17:14:18 - 00:17:31:14
Unknown
Well, it's interesting the parallels with coaching, because we would say exactly the same thing. We're trying to we're trying to set up a situation, create the conditions where a teacher can identify something they really want to work on and emotionally compelling goal and then go after it and hit the goal. And you and I both talked about how that kind of parallels the the research on hope.
00:17:31:14 - 00:17:40:08
Unknown
That hope involves something to hope for. That would be our goal and then a pathway to the goal and and believe that we can get there agency. Those three things seem to be really important.
00:17:40:08 - 00:17:48:19
Unknown
We say coaches foster hope, but I think you could make the same thing for teachers helping kids identify what they want to work on, see the pathway and and work their way through.
00:17:48:20 - 00:18:04:10
Unknown
Yeah, and I love what you're going to have to do, Jim, which is we want to create the same conditions for teachers that they ought to be creating for kids. Right. And so actually helping teachers see the way that they learn is the way their kids are going to learn and, you know, replicate that in everything we're doing.
00:18:04:10 - 00:18:31:22
Unknown
Third thing is focus on new learning. Could you tell us about that phase? Yeah. So if we if we think about cognitive science for a moment, we when learning really starts to happen, it's in our short term working memory, which is sort of your stream of consciousness is what you're paying attention to at any given moment. We know that we tend to have a visual, you know, we're taking visual stimuli, we're taking verbal stimuli, and we keep going back to our storeroom of prior knowledge as we're learning something.
00:18:31:22 - 00:18:48:05
Unknown
And so there's a few things about that. One. One thing it's really interesting about our short term working memory is, first of all, we can only focus on one thing at a time. That's why we shouldn't multitask. But a really interesting phenomenon with our short term working memory is we can actually focus on visual and verbal information at the same time.
00:18:48:05 - 00:19:06:12
Unknown
It's called dual coding. And so that's something where when you think about now, then the power of using visualizations in the classroom or describing something for kids, you're walking them through the process, they're seeing the process, they're hearing explained. So we found a lot of strategies that really kind of relate to that dual coding idea.
00:19:06:12 - 00:19:11:15
Unknown
The other thing we know about short term working memory is that we can only juggle so many items at once too.
00:19:11:15 - 00:19:32:05
Unknown
And so there's a moment where we need to pause and process our learning. That's that kind of comes to the next phase. But one other thing about that is it's cognitive bandwidth. And so sometimes when we're trying to focus on new learning, if too much is coming at us at once, we struggle or if there are words we don't know, right, then we're completely lost, right?
00:19:32:05 - 00:19:52:00
Unknown
If I was trying to read an article on cricket, for example, I would be lost. I know the words. I don't know what they mean. And so that's where we see the power of like vocabulary instruction, not about just having kids, like, remotely memorize words, but understand the concept. And now here's a word that takes those all those ideas and distills into a simple packet of activation called a word.
00:19:52:00 - 00:19:52:21
Unknown
Right? So
00:19:52:21 - 00:20:06:23
Unknown
I kind of learn that as a hockey coach when I was coaching hockey is that when I started out as a coach in between periods, you know, you get to go to the dressing room and you tell the kids what you need to do. And when they used to come off, I'd be like, okay, look, the defenseman, you're going up too far.
00:20:06:23 - 00:20:21:09
Unknown
You're not staying a position forwards. I want you to for check harder and I want you to make sure there's somebody out in front of the net at all times. And you have to you have to our house. You guys are not hustling hard enough and I'd give them all this information and they eventually they might remember the first thing.
00:20:21:11 - 00:20:36:00
Unknown
And then when I shifted to more zoning in on, okay, here's the next thing you need to do to improve. Here's what I want. When the bottle what the other person, that's all you have to focus on. And I focus in on one little thing. I was a lot more effective as a coach still in saying, Yeah, I tried to teach my daughter skiing.
00:20:36:00 - 00:20:57:11
Unknown
I could throw a million things at them, like, you know, these together, bend your knees, you know, like spaced downhill. And then after a while, they're like, it was not a good father daughter moment. Right, Right. Well, well, you've made up for it, though. That's okay. So what about make sense of learning? That's the fourth, fourth phase. Yeah, I think it's another another thing we know about short term working memory.
00:20:57:13 - 00:21:15:05
Unknown
There's there's lots of limitations of our short term working memory. And one of it is right there in the title. It's short term, right? So we tend to find that after concerted effort, our brains while our time out and that's like 5 to 10 minutes. I see the same thing for adults, right? Sometimes people say, it's 20 minutes.
00:21:15:07 - 00:21:24:14
Unknown
I usually don't have to look at my watch app. I know I've gone on too long and people need to process. So what we do at those moments, we need to sort of shift what's happening. Like, like again,
00:21:24:14 - 00:21:36:00
Unknown
we could only keep our brains turned on for a limited amount of time, but when we pause and process and take a brain break, ideally what we're doing is we're start starting now to connect what we have just heard.
00:21:36:02 - 00:21:48:21
Unknown
You consolidate the learning. That's the psychology term, right? Consolidation. We're taking the new disparate bits of information, maybe clustering them, categorizing them, turning into a sequence or connecting it back to prior learning.
00:21:48:21 - 00:21:59:03
Unknown
And so at that base of learning, that's where we want to engage students maybe in peer groups, right? Where there's a question that is posed to them, they're now answering that question.
00:21:59:03 - 00:22:17:02
Unknown
Actually, questions themselves are a powerful way to support consolidation. We want to ask questions that make students think about what they've learned. Daniel Willingham As a cognitive scientist, he makes that point. Students only then what they think about. So we want to have those questions that are going make kids think about what they've just learned and process it.
00:22:17:02 - 00:22:37:03
Unknown
Or if I'm if they're learning a skill, procedural knowledge, try that skill now in front of the teacher. And that's where we can then be observing and say, hey, you know, are you missing a step here? Or we can see what their misconceptions might be and make sure that, you know, they're not developing bad habits or misconceptions before the cement drives down their learning too.
00:22:37:03 - 00:22:54:16
Unknown
So that's really that fourth phase of learning. And we sometimes we hear it. If we haven't done that for students, you know, they walk out of the classroom like that doesn't make sense to me, right? They're telling us I haven't been able to consolidate the learning in any way that I can I can grab on to. So we know the power of pausing and processing.
00:22:54:19 - 00:23:10:16
Unknown
I also know the temptation. I do this myself sometimes presenting, you know, you're looking at the clock. You're thinking, I've only got 10 minutes left. I should just power out through the end. And you do that, you make the mistake. I'm not giving people time to pause and process what they're doing. So we find the same thing in I'm sure you do, to jam in workshops.
00:23:10:16 - 00:23:35:15
Unknown
We pause. We let teachers talk to one another, reflect it. Sometimes writing is a great way also to consolidate your learning. So this is where our point also isn't that direct instruction is bad. Indirect instruction sometimes is the most direct way to teach something, but if it's only direct instruction for like 50 minutes, while our brains still want to take that that moment to pause and process.
00:23:35:15 - 00:23:53:21
Unknown
So we may go on teaching, but our students are going to go on learning. Well, it's probably not that it's direct instruction, it's probably that there's a lack of variety. I had had lunch with my daughter Emily when she was in her fourth year, senior year before she went on to graduate school. And I said, I said, So how's it going?
00:23:53:21 - 00:24:06:13
Unknown
How the class is going? And she said to me, If I have to think pair share one more time, I'm going to argue. She said, Right. If you do think pair share over and over again and that's all you do, it's going to have the same kind of impact as direct instruction all the time over and over again.
00:24:06:13 - 00:24:46:11
Unknown
There's a lack of variety. And so and I have this theory, you can tell me it's unscientific, but it's just my theory. But as a presenter that there are different ways of processing information with your brain and you need to shake them up. So there's the way you listen to direct instruction. There's the way you talk to a partner, there's a way you watch a video, there's a way you discuss a case, there's a way you do planning and, and the you can tell this is I'm sure this is unscientific that in my experience, when people watch a video, that experience is more energized thing than just another turn to your neighbor.
00:24:46:11 - 00:25:01:02
Unknown
But if you have if you have a video, that's one kind of thinking planning is. But if you spend all day planning by the afternoon, you're like, I think I've planned out. I think I'm done. So you have to kind of shake up the various ways in which you do it. I don't know if that fits with the research, but that's my personal experience.
00:25:01:02 - 00:25:28:09
Unknown
Yeah, Yeah, I think I mean, when you watch a video, also you're getting that dual coding. I'm getting visual and verbal information. It's easier on my brain. But your point to it and we make this point too, that you need to mix it up. That's also something that, that engages our curiosity, some novelty. So if I'm only thing pairing sharing and that we caution against think pair share ad nauseum right because people they do want to throw up in their mouths like one more more think their share and do something different and sometimes that might just be.
00:25:28:12 - 00:25:47:09
Unknown
We also spoke to like AI and talked out right But if I could sit here quietly and reflect on something, I could do that if I could stare out the window. And since what I've just learned, or maybe I get up and move around or do something different or sometimes it's like the you know, you just pause the mini lesson and say, I want to tell you a funny story that illustrates this, right?
00:25:47:15 - 00:26:13:16
Unknown
That can be enough of novel, enough switching things up. So our brains are always looking for that variety because again, that's what we are. Our brains are actually attuned to being stimulated by something that's different out of the ordinary. It was actually probably a survival technique for us at one point to pay attention to something different today. You know, there's a I like you here's my example of like, you know, it wasn't that there was a tree on the savanna that was important.
00:26:13:16 - 00:26:32:17
Unknown
Is that today? Because that tree is always there today there's a line under the tree, so I'm going to pay attention to that. So our brains are always attuned to novelty, something different. So yeah, obviously mixing things up, doing things that are different. Yeah. So as you pause, pause and process, you want to make it something, something different each time probably.
00:26:32:19 - 00:26:52:08
Unknown
So the fifth thing really get to the pause and process. Fifth is practice and reflect. Tell us more about this phase. Yeah. And so as we think about now, learning moving from your short term working memory into long term memory, which is how we store information, we know there's really only one way to do that, and that's really through repetition.
00:26:52:08 - 00:27:14:03
Unknown
And there's actually a neuroscience component to this where we know every time you go back to a previous memory, you kind of trigger your brain to wrap a substance around it called myelin, right? So it's myelination is the is the fancy term, but it's kind of a fatty substance that basically makes that neuron. It's almost like insulation on the neuron makes it fire together more rapidly, more effectively.
00:27:14:05 - 00:27:33:22
Unknown
So if we know that to be true and the only way you can really get a neuron to be really stable and solid is repetition. That's kind of the key thing. So I know that sounds like, that's rote learning, is that drill kill? It's not exactly because what we also need to be doing is as we are learning, we're reflecting on our learning.
00:27:34:00 - 00:27:56:20
Unknown
But there's some interesting things here that we learned from cognitive science retrieval practice, basically being quizzed on something about Iraq, my brain to remember something, I'm more likely to recall it. And so we also tell folks like you should quiz more and grade less. Like we always think of quizzes as something because my grade book. But I do this in workshops because we process, Hey, what were the five things we just talked about?
00:27:56:22 - 00:28:17:01
Unknown
Go back to your memory and it will reinforce that. So but the other key thing here too, sometimes this is where as kids are practicing something, they start to realize they're they're struggling with it. So we can also have like targeted supports here where we say we're going to create a new mini lesson, go back and repeat something that maybe didn't didn't sink in the first time.
00:28:17:01 - 00:28:17:23
Unknown
And so
00:28:17:23 - 00:28:28:00
Unknown
that's kind of key is to build foundational knowledge and skills. We've got to repeat that memory. The other piece, Jim, is like it's repetition spaced over time. So, you know,
00:28:28:00 - 00:28:44:23
Unknown
cramming, which I know we all did in college, really doesn't work as a cognitive scientist. Make the point it's fast learning leads to fast forgetting. So it's having those relearning episodes spread over time helps that myelin warm in our brains, makes those neural connections stronger.
00:28:44:23 - 00:29:07:13
Unknown
So that's the practice in reflect phase. And at least in the next phase, we'll talk about it in a second. Extend and apply. Well, I'm thinking it's very important to practice and reflect the right things. So it's not just practicing and reflecting, but you have to say these are the priority probably primarily skills that kids need to be able to demonstrate.
00:29:07:13 - 00:29:24:08
Unknown
We're going to focus on this. I'm like, back to hockey. My kids had a hockey coach who used to do the same practice, same breakout routine over and over again, and parents were like, Well, why are the kids not just playing and having more fun? You know, I asked my son, I said, Mike, how do you feel about this?
00:29:24:08 - 00:29:39:22
Unknown
He said, Dad, I can close my eyes and shoot the puck down the ice and I know the guy is going to be that. Yeah. So the fact that they had learned these high priority things, how to get the puck out of the zone it practice it over and over and over again was important. But if they'd spent all kinds of time on something trivial, it wouldn't been helpful.
00:29:39:22 - 00:29:53:15
Unknown
They they didn't only know one of the most important things. And so I think for a teacher to identify these are the these are my priority skills. I really want to make sure the kids have it then are you and have a you wouldn't have a basketball coach that says, okay, you've learned how to free throw. We're not going to practice that anymore.
00:29:53:15 - 00:30:23:16
Unknown
They're going to be practicing various aspects of the game to get really skilled and get really skilled. And we talked about the talent code is one book to talk to other because they're really skilled. You've got to you got to practice to get good. Yeah. And there's another interesting thing about practice is that it's called mixed practice or interleaving practice where during this practice session we may be trying, you know, you're shooting the basketball from different distances, actually helps you learn how to shoot from one distance better because it makes our brains have to toggle back and forth between the slight change in what we're doing.
00:30:23:18 - 00:30:43:02
Unknown
Same thing applies to declared of knowledge like they've done studies like with art appreciation. If I'm only looking at Monet paintings, my brain starts to go yada yada yada. This is Monet. But if I'm missing a yoni with Matisse and you know and go now my brain has to go back and forth like whether the characteristics of a monet versus a Van Gogh.
00:30:43:03 - 00:30:58:22
Unknown
So that idea of mixed practice is really powerful to a lot of teachers. Don't do it right. We just say, okay, work on, you know, problems 21 through 40 in the book tonight that are all the same kind of problem. Instead of like introducing something from the last unit or something else, we've been unique. You alert learning during this unit.
00:30:58:22 - 00:31:19:16
Unknown
So there's a lot of things we've learned about how to make practice really powerful too. So last as extended apply. Why is that important? And what are some quick suggestions on how we can get kids to do that? Yeah, so again, we can go back to cognitive science on this. What we know is that if you've learned something only one way or in one setting, you're more likely to forget it.
00:31:19:16 - 00:31:37:14
Unknown
Or you might store that information, but you can't always retrieve it. And we've all had that problem. Make something on the tip of your tongue that, you know, like somebody's name. You've met them before, but maybe only met them at one conference, one time. And so but as soon as they tell you their name, like, yeah, I knew that, right?
00:31:37:16 - 00:31:55:08
Unknown
It tells us we stored the information. We just didn't have enough books to retrieve it. So what we're trying to do is help kids have multiple retrieval hooks to their learning. Well, the best way to do that is, yeah, it's repetition, but it's the repetition. Get me now, I've taken that information and I'm trying to apply it. I've learned a math formula.
00:31:55:10 - 00:32:11:17
Unknown
Now I'm trying to apply it in real life. What I've learned, you know, a new writing skill. And now I have a chance to actually, you know, I'm trying to defend an argument and I'm using that new writing skill war. I've learned about a period of history, but now I'm trying to build an argument about it or, you know, to write about what I've learned.
00:32:11:17 - 00:32:42:09
Unknown
And so what we're trying to do is create more complex learning opportunities for students. And usually that almost always means going beyond just the summative test because again, if all I'm doing is learning how to answer a multiple choice test, I'm only learning about history or science in one way with one application. So what we see is there's a lot of powerful things, strategies around like guided investigations or structured problem solving, or we call it cognitive writing, where we engage in writing about what we've learned.
00:32:42:11 - 00:32:44:09
Unknown
I know about you, Gemma. I think that's also it's
00:32:44:09 - 00:32:59:14
Unknown
that's the thing. It's lopped off in a lot of unit planning, right? Like we just end with the test, we move out the next unit and then kids forget 90% of what they've learned, you know? So I think it's that's a really powerful strategy. And again, that's the kind of thing I think for a lot of teachers.
00:32:59:14 - 00:33:09:03
Unknown
They feel like that's a nice to have or be great to do a project. I don't have time for that. What I think the cognitive science and what the science of teaching is showing us is that actually that's a need to have
00:33:09:03 - 00:33:15:19
Unknown
if you want your students to truly retain information, be able to restore, stored and retrieve it, they need to engage in deep learning with it.
00:33:17:08 - 00:33:37:02
Unknown
Now, I think we would have called this in my day and I wasn't. I was around in 1966. But anyway, we would have we would have call a generalization I think is talk. Yeah, yeah. Or transfer. And there's much more sophisticated than that but that that's the key thing now does a does a an excellent teacher need to implement all six phases.
00:33:37:04 - 00:33:57:15
Unknown
Yes but not in a single lesson. Right. So we make that point too. It's really more about unit design and you're thinking again, you kind of go back to the standards. And second, what what's the essential knowledge, the enduring understandings, whatever you want to call that, the big ideas that I want my kids to get and how do I then anchor the learning in that extend and apply?
00:33:57:17 - 00:34:13:04
Unknown
Then you got to back it up, right? There's going to be foundational knowledge and skills. They're going to have to learn through repetition or delay, So solidify it's repetition. They've got to make sense of what they're learning. They need to be. They need to encounter that new learning in ways that support and ready at ready acquisition of knowledge.
00:34:13:04 - 00:34:31:17
Unknown
And then they need to set a goal for it and had to do something to get them interested in the first place. So it's kind of a you could use a backward design approach to this. So we would say yes to units, right? But not necessarily. You're not trying to this obviously every lesson that would be kind of a a drive by approach to doing this.
00:34:31:19 - 00:34:48:01
Unknown
So I wanted to say just a little bit about what we've been doing and then just see if you have any comments. So what we've been doing is we've been saying, let's go through the the six phases and let's talk about the 14 teaching strategies. And then we were saying, okay, if I implement that strategy, what should be helping for students?
00:34:48:03 - 00:35:09:05
Unknown
And we've been trying to identify, for example, I would like my kids to be more persistent. I'd like to be more interested in learning to look at the first stages or I'd like them to apply their learning in other contexts or and and so our institute we're going to do in Lawrence, Kansas, Taylor's west favorite city we're going to do is we're going to talk people through the process of how do you help teachers identify those schools.
00:35:09:07 - 00:35:35:21
Unknown
Then how do you help teachers learn the strategies and then the goals become sort of objective standards of impact. If the strategy works, we should see a change in students, which means that teachers will will learn inherent and like intrinsically to create the to use a strategy effectively. And it's really taking the impact cycle and applying it and saying how will we take the your research and and put it into our process we call the impact cycle.
00:35:35:21 - 00:35:54:14
Unknown
So I wondered another leading question, but any thoughts about the process we did the last couple of days and what we're working on? Yeah, well, I'm really sad about it. A gem is it's like we are also applying the six Phase six phases of learning to how teachers learn, right? So we're going to help them think about what's your problem of practice in the classroom?
00:35:54:14 - 00:36:13:10
Unknown
What's the biggest thing you want to do? Because now, now you're curious, right? Like, how would I get my kids to be more persistent or focus more whatever it might be, and then set that goal, learn something new, go have a chance to make sense of it. I'm applying in my classroom. I'm getting some coaching. So as I do, I do my repetitions with it.
00:36:13:10 - 00:36:31:07
Unknown
I'm getting some feedback and then eventually what we know is teachers are going to take that idea and I'm going to meld it on to something else. I'll extend it. I'll do, you know, the transfer of it. So that's what I'm really excited about. I love what we've been coming up with to jam around each of the 14 strategies, being able to think about, well, what's different for kids?
00:36:31:09 - 00:36:56:05
Unknown
How will I, you know, why am I doing this? What should I see in my students? And it's not just always academic outcomes, right? Maybe they're more engaged or something's happening that we know is a is a, you know, important precondition or, you know, a leverage point. Good learning, too. So I'm I'm really excited by this because also we just know from we do know from research, right, that learning new when teachers are doing professional learning, most of their professional learning doesn't stick either.
00:36:56:05 - 00:37:08:14
Unknown
Right. The the research is pretty dismal around professional learning unless you can have coaching or opportunities to work with peers to really get that to stick in my new yeah, build it into my repertoire of practices.
00:37:08:14 - 00:37:28:02
Unknown
The other thing I really like about it is that we're in for the like this week is probably the first time I felt like I know how now I would go about addressing schoolwide goals and individual coaching because you're you're model, you're 14 evidence based practices and six phases that gives you a way to do a comprehensive model for instruction.
00:37:28:02 - 00:37:48:00
Unknown
And then the coaching says, well, for this teacher, this teacher, right, I need to work on curiosity on the part of kids, but they might want to work on something else. And so you can into the individualized support at the same time as you have a schoolwide goal. Yeah, I mean that's been a mystery me a long time, but I think I really feel like this week it came clear thanks to working with you.
00:37:48:03 - 00:38:05:17
Unknown
Yeah, I was just about to do it and we kind of realized, this is sort of, you know, one of our strategies is a guided investigation. What that means is we don't want to turn kids totally loose and say, just go research whatever you want to research. But teachers have a role. So that's the same thing. Instructional coaches have a role to say, Do we work on a practice as meaningful to you?
00:38:05:17 - 00:38:28:07
Unknown
But we want to make sure that the practice you're working on is actually going to have an impact on kids, right? So yeah, you could focus on bulletin boards that looks nice, but does it change anything for kids? And so that's not to knock bulletin boards. Maybe I have some bitter memories of being told my bulletin board for grade B, but we want to make sure what they're working on is truly high leverage and is going to have an impact.
00:38:28:07 - 00:38:48:02
Unknown
And that again, like now, you've got you can have your school rowing in the same direction, even though you may be in different parts of the boat, if you will. I love it. I love it very much. Is there anything else you want to say about the research you describe in the new classroom instruction that works? You know, I think the other thing I always talk about is because I know sometimes research can seem like a bummer.
00:38:48:08 - 00:39:13:11
Unknown
You know, like research tells you I should eat more kale salad or whatever, or go to spinning class and it can feel like one more thing we're telling teachers you should do. But I think the whole idea and what I get excited about this with is that the more we can design learning to reflect our kids brains work and the more we can use teaching strategies that really accelerate their learning, the easier it is for them, The more joyful is for them and also for us.
00:39:13:11 - 00:39:27:09
Unknown
And so I think in the end I feel like all this is adding up to joyful learning experiences for kids and for teachers. And so I wouldn't want people to feel like this is going to be one more like drudgery or it's going to feel like a graduate, you know, level course. It's like this is going to help.
00:39:27:11 - 00:39:39:01
Unknown
We all want to be great teachers, right? We all want to have see the light bulbs go on. We're kids. And I think that's this is ultimately all about is that those joyful learning experiences, I love it more. Joy is a good idea.
00:39:39:01 - 00:39:43:21
Unknown
thanks so much for the conversation, Brian. Thank you for the partnership.
00:39:43:21 - 00:40:04:19
Unknown
I am so thrilled to be a part of this conversation and working on this work and I think it's going to be fun to see how it all evolves Next. Next Big Thing will be our event in Kansas, the book after that, and just continue and work on helping kids really succeed. We always say we want to have an unmistakable impact on the quality of kids lives and on kids learning.
00:40:04:19 - 00:40:17:22
Unknown
And I think this is a great way to move in that direction. So I'm grateful for our conversation. More importantly, I'm grateful for the work you've done. I think it's really, really wonderful. Well, thank you, Jim. It's been a great conversation and I'm so excited about the work we've got together. It's been really I've been learning so much from you.
00:40:18:00 - 00:40:35:13
Unknown
Yeah. I hope to see everybody in Lawrence Taylor Swift, favorite city, but also home of basketball. Right. It's where basketball was invented. So, you know, I'm surprised you didn't mention that gym or maybe not where it was invented, but the first coach was the inventor. Okay. All right. So he he's the only losing coach at the University of Kansas, which was James Naismith.
00:40:35:13 - 00:40:50:13
Unknown
But the other seven all have winning records. So but this year wasn't a particularly good year, though. So we better what? We better not play it up. Well, both of us are suffering, Baylor tonight. We are suffering. Yeah. Yeah. So. Well, thank you, Jennifer. Appreciate it. Thank you, Brian.