Author Archives: Stephen Seyfer

Theory into Practice: Blooming the Curriculum with One Word – “So…”

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Tested practices created from research-based theories give teachers the best instructional opportunities to cause all children to learn.

It is easy to think of teaching and learning as linear. We teach and children learn one thing then another and another. Learning is an additive like train cars on a railroad line running through a classroom. Each car arrives with facts and skills to be taught and learned before it leaves the classroom/station, and the next train car of facts and skills arrives. There is more truth in this analogy that teachers want to admit. We change this perception with one word – “so.” All a teacher needs to do to move teaching and learning from a linear to a geometric design is to ask “So, what can/will/should you …” and teaching and learning launch vertically from children waiting for the next lesson to children doing higher orders of cognition with what they have already learned. It is blooming wonderfully!

What do we know?

The names of historic education and psychology theoreticians are fixed in our teacher preparation programs. Their names appear in texts and as footnote references. Piaget, Dewey, Vygotsky, Montessori, Skinner, Bruner, et al. Teacher licensing candidates learn to pair a name with a concept the historic person developed, take a test or write a paper acknowledging that person’s name and concept, and then allow the forgetting curve to move the name and theory into their memory fog. Who was that? What theory?

Stop doing this! Teaching and learning theories matter because theories give us road maps for how to transform schooling from linear – learn to test- to geometric – learn to think and do.

Benjamin Bloom, psychologist and pedagogue, gave us a systematic template to describe, assess, and classify educational goals. Bloom published his Taxonomy in 1956 and for decades teacher preparation schools taught Bloom’s cognitive domain, and six levels of cognition often called higher order thinking skills. Seventy years later, Bloom is still the go-to resource for describing and detailing levels of cognitive goals.

“So,” elevates your teaching and student learning.

The baseline of Bloom’s Taxonomy is the teaching and learning of background knowledge and a basic understanding of that knowledge. All children need to learn words that name and describe things in their world. So, we teach them to read and listen and build working vocabularies. Bloom categorizes the first goals of learning as level 1 – remembering and level 2 – understanding. A great deal of PreK-, 4K, and kindergarten involves experientially exposing children to words and facts and remembering and understanding.

In his research for his studies, Bloom saw that most classroom instruction at many grade levels was at level 1 and level 2 goals. Teachers used direct instruction to teach information for children to remember and describe. Teachers tested children, recorded learning scores, and began teaching the next lesson of information to be learned. Teaching and learning bobbled back and forth between remembering and understanding.

Bloom changed the goals of learning by interjecting “so what” into teaching. “So, what can you do with this information?” “So, how is this information like or unlike other information?” “So, which is a better choice in the use of this information?” And “So, what could you create from this information that is new and different?” Each of these questions is indicative of a higher level of cognition requiring children to think differently to answer the question. Bloom labeled these questions and placed them in a roster of unique learning goals.

Bloom’s Taxonomy: Each is a different category of learning goals needing distinct kinds of cognitive thinking. The goal is to –

  • Remember
  • Understand
  • Apply
  • Analyze
  • Evaluate
  • Create.

These goals are not sequential as in a continuum. The first two goals – remembering and understanding are goals for creating background knowledge – necessary for all learning to follow. Later learning builds upon the breadth and depth of a child’s foundational background knowledge. This tells us why children in the primary grades receive extensive direct instruction in reading, ELA, math, science, and social studies. And why direct instruction of required information fills the first chapters and units of middle school and high school instruction. Knowing things is necessary for the later goals of thinking about and working with that knowledge.

To build the goal of remembering, teachers use questions like –

  • Identification – What is the capital of Wisconsin? Of France?
  • Definition – What is the meaning of the word precipitation?
  • Listing – List the three branches of the US federal government?
  • Recall – When did the Civil War take place? When did the first man walk on the moon?
  • Recognition – Which of these formulas is correct for the area of a square?

The work of identifying, defining, listing, recalling, and recognizing words expands a child’s working vocabulary in their seeing, hearing, writing, speaking, and imaging more new words. Each question requires a child to write or speak a word in a different way that builds memory. Five to seven uses of the word reinforce short-term memory, and 15 to 17 different uses reinforce long-term memory.

Parallel to remembering words is understanding – the ways that people talk about and use words. The traditional model for remembering and then understanding is to “Say the word, spell the word, and use the word in a sentence.”

To build the goal of understanding, teachers use questions like –

  • Classify – Tell me the kinds of animals eat meat? … eat plants?
  • Describe – Describe what a Green Bay Packer would see standing in the middle of Lambeau Field just before the start of an NFL game.
  • Discuss – Tell me why World War Two is labeled a world war.
  • Translate – Rewrite this word problem into a mathematical equation.

Understanding requires definition of a word and opens a child to word families of synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. Typical five-year olds have a vocabulary of 10,000 words. Once in school, their vocabulary grows by 3,000 to 5,000 words each year. The rate of vocabulary growth continues until typical high school students know about 50,000 words. The next learning goals give power the words a child knows and understands.

It is important to remember that, although application, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis goals are not sequential, a child’s experience in one will have tangential benefit to the others.

After securing children in meeting the goals of remembering and understanding, a teacher can instruct them in exploring what a person can do with the information learned. This goal is application. True application happens when children use the information or skill or rule to answer a question or solve problem they have not seen before – application requires new contexts.

To build the goal of application, teachers use questions like –

  • Solving – If the hypotenuse is three, what are the lengths of the sides of the triangle.
  • Stimulating – If you were an actor on stage, how would you react to applause after you deliver your lines? Or after the end of the play?
  • Demonstrating – What are examples that show this rule works in the real world?
  • Implementing – If you only had two tools – a scissors and a stapler – and a sheet of cardboard, show us how you would construct a box.

The goal of application is to produce something – a performance, an explanation, a diagram, or a product. A teacher can present children with a “messy” problem or a mystery that includes the words “what if.” These words invite the child to use all they know to solve, react, prove, or implement what they know and to produce something in a new situation. Often the product is an answer on a test requiring a child to consider what they know in an unanticipated word problem. In a real-world context, the ability to apply is the goal of most adult work life problems.

A different goal for learning is analysis. As the goal of application is to produce something in a new context, the goal of analysis is to dissect information looking for patterns, the relationships between parts, and hidden meanings.

To build the goal of analysis, teachers ask questions like –

  • Relationships – What is the connection between global warming and the strength and patterns of hurricanes?
  • Evidence – Which parts of this answer are based upon facts, and which parts are based upon opinion?
  • Categorizing – How would you classify these statements as causes or outcomes from the American Revolution?
  • Deconstructing – Separate this poem into its elements.

Analysis teaches children to be critical thinkers and to question and inquire into the nature of information. Teachers show children how to use charts, diagrams, and tables to show, organize, and rationalize similarities and differences. Children think and reason like historians and scientists. They study an event for its underlying causes and later effects. They guess how the absence of an underlying cause or sparking event may have changed history. Children chart and map chemical reactions to understand how elements relate and react to each other. They chart and map climatic events to understand forecasting. As application creates products, analysis dissects information into its critical attributes.

Educators gave an acronym to Bloom’s categorization of analysis, evaluation, and synthesis goals. They ar labeled as HOTS – higher order thinking skills. Ironically, HOTS should be the dominant goals of secondary education, but the curricular calendar relegates them to specific upper-level courses and a fraction of the school year. Best practice is for children at all grade levels, even 4K-primary, to be given goals in evaluative thinking. Teachers give children a rule or a “yardstick” and ask them to make a evaluation of information. For example, “Our rules say that you will quietly form a single file line when it’s time to come into the building after outdoor recess. What kind of behaviors would not be appropriate for your being “quiet” and in a “single file line?” Young children can do analysis.

Evaluation is making a critical judgment based upon evidence. The key to teaching children to evaluate is giving them a rule or a measurement against which they can make a judgment and provide evidence to support their decision.

To build the goal of evaluation, teachers ask questions like –

  • Judging – Based on First Amendments Rights, should this writer be banned from publishing opinions in the local newspaper?
  • Defending – Do you agree with the historical proposition that a “man’s home is his castle” and justifies the use of deadly force?
  • Prioritizing – Given that your school has limited finances, which of these curricular programs should be exempted from budget reductions?
  • Critiquing – Looking at the past list of Booker Award winners, which of these books has the best likelihood of winning the next award?

Evaluation requires understanding and analysis. Evaluation is not asking for opinions. “Do you like this abstract drawing of a barnyard?” asks for an opinion. Saying “This is an abstract painting of a barnyard. How and how well has the painter used elements of abstraction to tell you the subject of the painting is a barnyard?” asks for judgment with supporting evidence. To make this judgment, children must first understand the vocabulary of art. They must understand the definition of abstract art, and they must understand the critical attributes of abstraction. Then, they must be able to examine and dissect a piece of art by identifying the specific attributes of abstraction exhibited in the art. Finally, they must put their judgment and evidence in a coherent explanation. This is HOTS.

An evaluative assignment takes more time to prepare, more time and consideration for children to complete, and significant time for a teacher to assess and respond to a child’s supported judgment. In addition, every child may make a valid judgment with differing evidence resulting in all children succeeding in an assignment that took a lot of time. And this explains why children have limited lessons pursuing the goal of evaluation. HOTS take time and the curricular calendar has limited time.

The goal of creating also requires assimilation of other learning goals. Creation requires children to examine their knowledge of information, their analysis of critical attributes, and their evaluation of the qualities of what needs to be created to engage in creation. Creating is not just applying in a new situation but the making of something new from what is known to fit a given situation. Creating also is using evaluation to determine the “best” elements for the new creation.

To build the goal of creating, teachers ask questions like –

  • Design – Design a family home for five persons that would survive fire, hurricane, and criminal intrusion. The home will be in California or South Carolina near the ocean and surrounded by woods. You are not limited by cost or material selection.
  • Construct – Given toothpicks and a bottle of Elmer’s Glue, build a bridge that will support a five-pound weight.
  • Reorganize – How would you reorganize the baseball, softball, football, and soccer fields on our campus to require 20% less square feet of area?
  • Develop – Create a story board depicting how five children stranded on an island would create rules for their survival until they could be rescued one week later.

Lessons requiring the goal of creation attach easily to STEM curriculum, technology education, and career development. They also are precursors to real world applications of school-based education.

The Big Duh!

Benjamin Bloom gave us a structure for teaching children to develop different kinds of thinking, of cognition. His taxonomy is a scaffold we can use to ensure that all children learn more than just a recall of information. Using his scaffold of goals, we can cause children to “think and do”. Bloom is worth remembering and his theory of learning goals is a tool for optimizing every child’s education.

I encourage and challenge every teacher to analyze and evaluate their annual curriculum to ensure the teaching of HOTS at all grade levels and in all subjects.

Theory into Practice – Behaviorism is a Good Teaching Method Until It Is Not

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When I drive away from home, I often am plagued with uncertainty. Did I close the garage door? Closing the garage door is a matter of pushing the button in my car that automatically moves the door down to a closed position. My garage door and I have reached a state of automaticity – an action without thinking. Entering and leaving the garage requires the same action and I do it so often that I am not aware of doing it. No thinking needed.

This is behaviorism. I have taught myself that when I take an action, I can cause a desired something to happen. Stimulus and response. I push a button, and the door opens or closes. It is a learned behavior, because in an earlier life I needed to physically raise or lower the garage door. Instead, I learned to use an electronic device to move the door. Voila! A learned behavior that is so automatic that today I do not have to think to do it.

What do we know.

Educators are in the business of shaping thinking and behavior in the children we teach. We often are stimulus/response workers personified. Read the mission statement of your school district to understand the desired results of our behavior shaping. And consider the statement with a behaviorist mindset.

“(School district name), in partnership with family and community, will ensure excellence in educating every child to become a responsible citizen who is service minded and empathetic and can contribute to our interconnected world.

We are driven for excellence in academics, activities, arts, and athletics. We provide learning environments with instructional best practices that promote social, emotional, physical, and intellectual growth.”

Using this example, we teach an academic curriculum necessary for children to be informed, “service minded,” and “responsible” citizens. Children are to be “empathetic” and “contributors” in their world. We want their “academic, arts, activities, and athletics” performances to be “excellent.” And we will prepare children for their future “social, emotional, physical, and intellectual growth.” I highlight what this school district believes to be critical educational outcomes of a public education.

Individual teachers in a school district are clinical shapers and molders of children. A kindergarten teacher clinically shapes early childhood children into school and educational ready students, and a teacher of AP Math clinically challenges and refines student abilities to resolve complex math problems. In between, a child is taught more than 30 courses of academic curriculum by 20+ teachers, each teacher clinically shaping a child in the academic goals of specific grade levels and courses.

We seldom stop to analyze the mechanistic delivery of a 4K-12 education. We seldom break down the building block and lock-step organization of schooling, but building block and lockstep is what it is. Each grade level and course respectively fits into an architecture for creating graduates who will achieve their community’s prescription for an educated citizen. John Dewey lives!

Behaviorism shapes children into…

The mechanics of shaping behavior are classical conditioning or operant conditioning. These two theories of psychology are taught in teacher preparation programs and always seem very academic to the teacher candidate. Candidates think, “What do they really have to do with daily teaching?” That is until the theories are carefully examined in practice. Psychological conditioning is behavior shaping. Teachers use classical or operant strategies depending on the nature of the learning goal. Teachers use classical and operant strategies all the time without conscious labeling of what they are doing – they consider it teaching with very precise goals. But they truly are shaping child behaviors.

Classical conditioning teaches children to respond to a specific stimulus with a specific thought or action. Teachers teach stimulus-response for every school rule or process that requires a quick, automatic response. Thinking is not needed. Bell systems are a stimulus sound that denotes the start and end of the school day or of a class period. A fire alarm causes children to evacuate the school according to a practiced plan. When a teacher claps her hands, it is a signal for students to stop what they are doing and listen to what the teacher says. Whistles in sports start or stop athletes. The sound of a starting pistol begins a race, and a bell sound announces the last lap of a race. Schools use signs with a slash mark to signal “not here,” such as a no smoking sign. Children are surrounded with visual and audio stimuli in school used to create automatic responses.

Differently, operant conditioning connects behaviors with rewards and punishments. Whereas, classical conditioning creates automatic, singular responses, operant conditioning relates choices with outcomes, some being favorable and others not so favorable. Teachers commonly use four forms of operant conditioning.

  • Token economies. Effort is linked to outcome. Students earn points for good behavior or achievement, and points can be traded for prizes or privileges. Much of our culture today practices token rewards to mold adult behavior.
  • Shaping. Reinforcing improvement. As a student’s behavior or achievement gets closer to the desired level the reward is increased. Because the incremental reward is always less than a 100% reward for a fully successful behavior or achievement, the student’s semi-reward spurs them to work harder the next time. Silver medal winners still want the gold medal. Children are taught “I can do better” as a reinforcing stimulus for persistence.
  • Skill and Drill. The power of immediate feedback. We want children to memorize math facts. To build automaticity, we use flashcards requiring an immediate response. Children then get immediate feedback on their accuracy and speed. No mistakes for automatic responses are the endgame. Like in gaming theory, feedback intrinsically challenges children to try repeatedly until their responses are correct and automatic.
  • Behavior Contracts. If/then propositions. Most often these are if/then agreements between a student and teacher, though they also apply to groups or a class. Students and teachers agree that “if students act/achieve to meet a goal, then they will receive a desired reward.”

Behaviorists know how to use rewards and punishments. Reinforcement causes and reinforces desired behaviors. Positive reinforcements, like token or grades, provide value for desired behavior or achievement. Negative reinforcements, like “no homework tonight, if…” take away something students view as undesirable if they behave or achieve positively. On the other hand, positive punishments correctly positively align a punishment with poor behavior and negative punishments take away what children want or value due to poor behavior or poor achievement.

Consider how schools reward attendance and honor rolls and treat truancy and failing grades. Operant conditioning is rampant in schools. A cynic may say that teachers are puppet master using conditioning strings to make children act like puppets.

Oops. When not to be behaviorist.

It is relatively easy to teach behaviorally, and I know teachers who are behaviorists 24/7. It is their go-to teaching method. “I do/you do/we do” is a strategy for teaching children specific learning outcomes within classical or operant conditioning. Accuracy or inaccuracy of replication and repetition are reinforced or punished and wanted behaviors or learning is refined. Teachers plan a “teach/test” calendar of classroom lessons to achieve student rote knowledge and learning of skills.

Additionally, the curriculum is directed by the tests children take at the end of chapters, units, and semesters. As behaviorists, these teachers quash disruptive behaviors with reward/punish mechanisms and have only minor disciplinary problems. The lack of discipline problems and strong allegiance to testing protocols leads principals to view behaviorists as good and adequate teachers.

However, behaviorism has its limits. If we use Bloom’s Taxonomy to consider teaching methods, behavioral strategies are effective for teaching knowledge and recall/understanding of facts. Skill and drill lessons effectively teach phonics-based reading and math facts, the Periodic Table, and safety procedures for using a table saw. However, as Bloom shows, behaviorist strategies do not cause children to organize, analyze, apply, evaluate, or synthesize complex information. And they do not lead children to use their background knowledge and experiences to create their own solutions.

This leads to the other teaching tools in a teacher’s toolbox. Cognitivist and constructivist teaching methods effectively teach children to learn and think and solve problems at the higher levels of the Taxonomy.

What to do.

There are places and times for behaviorist teaching in schools; knowing when and how to be a behaviorist is critical teaching.

Declare when you are being a behaviorist. Best practice is when a teacher matches teaching strategies with learning outcomes. Telling students the strategy you will use sounds mechanistic, but it is not. As Madeline Hunter taught us, telling children the learning goals and purpose of their lessons motivates them to engage in learning. Say “we are going to use teach/drill/test to ensure that all of you can …” clearly prepares children for what they will do and why they will do it.

Teach modeling. The “I do/we do/you do” sequence ensures accuracy of what they are to replicate. Accurate modeling is essential in drill/skill strategies.

Be a real behaviorist. Behaviorism works because lack of deviation in knowledge and skills learning is the educational goal. When you want children to achieve automaticity teach behaviorally.

Then change teaching tools. Use cognitivism and constructivism to teach children to organize, evaluate, and work with complex information, critical thinking, inquiry- and problem-based learning, and social-emotional growth. Behaviorism is the wrong teaching method for curriculum that requires intrinsic motivation, deeper investigation, and active not passive engagement.

The Big Duh!

Teaching for learning ia a purposeful and intentional process. When a teacher considers and selects the best teaching method for obtaining a wanted educational outcome for children, the teacher is exercising high professional problem solving and decision making. We all fall into the trap of grabbing familiar tools for the work at hand. A hammer is a hammer, but it is not the best tool for tightening a screw or creating a policy for resolving world hunger. Behaviorism, like a hammer, is the right tool for a small set of learning goals. It becomes the wrong tool when applied to all learning goals. Choose teaching tools wisely and keep each tool sharp.

Theory to Practice: Teach for Retention or Forget Teaching It. Your Students Will.

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I said it. Students heard it. Students will remember it. Not really. Educators assume or expect students to remember, but assumptions are not facts. Remembering what a teacher said is a struggle between working memory and brain dumping. If there is not an overt effort to retain what is heard, seen, or perceived, the working brain will dump what was heard, seen, or perceived within 30 seconds. That is a fact. A teacher who wants children to remember what they have been taught must know and practice principles of retention theory. If not, teaching is a wind that blows through children’s minds leaving little that was learned.

What do we know?

Retention is the unspoken assumption in everything we do in school. We want children to remember what we teach them. We test the heck out of students as an assurance that they remember their instruction. We reward children with high test scores and create tiers of intervention and remediation for children with low test scores. Test scores have become our measurement of retained memory. In fact, this pathway almost ensures that instructed learning will not be retained. It is based on false principles and practices.

Let us remember what we know about remembering.

  • The brain is bombarded with thousands of words, images, sounds, and perceptions every hour. The brain is not designed to and will not remember every input it receives.
  • If the brain does not consider/mentally repeat a word, image, sound, or perception it is lost within 30 seconds. The 30-Second Rule is reality.
  • The brain considers to seven to ten bits of information at a time – there is a constant pass through of information in immediate recall. The 30-second rule constantly moves the brain to “next” and “next.”
  • The Forgetting Curve also is a natural function of the brain’s need to be moving on to what is next in life. We forget 50% of received information within one hour and 70% within 24 hours without overt actions to reinforce the retention of that information.

Humans innately forget. If we want to students to remember, we must overtly use practices that cause them to remember. Retention theory must be embedded in every instructional lesson and unit.

Retention Theory

Madeline Hunter named five principles that cause students to remember instruction.

Meaning. One way to combat the 30-Second Rule is to make unfamiliar information meaningful. Brain retention improves when it knows that unfamiliar information connects to what a student already knows or the student’s personal interests. Personal interest is huge in reinforcing memory. She called these connections “anticipatory sets” or ways to overtly move the student toward a positive anticipation about a new lesson. This prepares the brain for memory.

Feeling Tone. Every classroom involves emotional theater, and teachers set the positive, negative, or neutral vibe in which teaching and learning happens. A teacher who has skills of affective and behavioral empathies creates a warm, inviting, and positive atmosphere. The lack empathetic skills and teacher-dominated class time builds hesitant, non-participative student responses in a negative climate. Positive and negative feeling tones are real – teachers know it when they are in one or the other, but do not always know their causations. A neutral feeling tone arises when there is a perceived indifference to whether children learn or not.

Degree and accuracy of Initial Learning. Both correct and incorrect learning lead to memory. Correct learning can be reinforced leading to long-term memory. However, incorrect learning needs to be identified, eliminated, and replaced with correct learning. Although interventions are required, they cloud reinforcement as the brain processes incorrect information out and correct information in. Therefore, when teachers take time to ensure all children achieve high levels of understanding of new instruction before moving to independent practice, teachers are enhancing memory work and retention.

Practice Schedule. Practice does not make perfection, it makes permanence. Theories show that massed practice or “cramming” is effective for fast learning that leads to quick forgetting. In contrast, distributed practice episodes are the key to long-term retention. Practice in retrieving remembered information builds memory muscle and intervals between practice sessions build permanence.

Transfer. The goal of teaching and learning is knowing things that are worth knowing and that can be applied in various new ways, places, and times. Retention of prior learning is reinforced when it is recalled and used in new contexts, and new learning is better understood and remembered when new memories are extensions of older, successful memories. Transfer that connects learning connects memories.

What to do. Each of the following describes a strategy for building and reinforcing retention based upon retention theory.

  • Make information “sticky” and easier to remember. Information is not created equally. Some seems slippery and is hard to remember while other information, like tree sap that clings to fingers, seems sticky and is easier to remember. These strategies make information sticky.

Chunk it. Individual bits of information are hard to remember, but easier when chunked in meaningful groups or sequences or patterns. Chunking means remembering all the individual bits as one – it is easier to remember.

Show it. Research shows that human memory of images is better than memory of independent text or audio. A picture, a video, or a graphic gives the brain another dimension of unfamiliar information. The student sees the word and an image of the word or picks up a representation of the word. Things that can be handled and made tangible, are very memorable.

Add emotional or novelty context. The easiest emotions to embed in new learning are surprise, happiness, and fear. Children love things that go “bang” or have surprise endings. They associate the surprise and the information. All learners appreciate novelty – new things to experience. Just saying “You are the first students to …” makes whatever it is they do “sticky” in their memory.

Do it. Motor skills and experiences are stored in different areas of the brain from information. Teaching about graphing coordinates in math class creates information. Creating a grid on a soccer field and placing/locating things by their coordinates creates a know it/do it combination that is very sticky.

Conversely, there are ways to make information slippery and hard to remember. Avoid or eliminate slippery practices, like giving students lists of random numbers or facts to remember without any context for their memory, allowing passive listening without note taking or required verbal engagement, or giving students information that is highly similar/almost identical to prior information.

  • Use active not passive retrieval of information. Memory requires mental activity and working the information until it avoids the brain dump, becomes short-term memory, then long-term memory, and is transferred to give meaning and context to other information. Passive retrieval relies on a student’s initial interaction with the information and rereading or repeating the same initial interaction. Passive retrieval yields low grade memory retention and leads to very quick forgetting.

What Did You Miss? After first instruction, ask students to write all they know about what they learned. Allow ten minutes. This on-demand retrieval exposes what the student remembers and, when compared with the totality of the first instruction, what is missing.

Discriminating Retrieval. Give students an explanation of the first instruction but one that is missing some information. Ask students to fill in the missing information. This retrieval requires to brain to “work” to clinically retrieve, consider, and identify the parts of the information.

Practice testing and retesting. The strategy of pre-testing and post-testing most often are used to inform and assess instruction. Pre-testing and subsequent testing also work to build and reinforce memory. In any test, students reinforce what they correctly remember. Testing strengthens successful memory retrieval.

Feedback loops. Testing also provides feedback about what students do not know. Focused work on improved reading, listening, seeing, and experiencing of unknown or non-secured information builds new memories. The active work needed to correct misinformation and learn correct information mentally strengthens memorization of what is learned.

Mental refinement/teach back (Feynman Technique). One of the most active is also the strongest retrieval strategy. When students teach what they learned to others, they must consolidate and refine the information they know, construct it in their own words, and deliver the information in ways the others can learn. We often hear that the best way to learn something is to teach it; that also applies to memorization.

  • Spacing. The term “spacing” tells us that productive, active retrieval must is purposefully distributed not massed.       

Intervals. Research suggests these intervals for moving new information into short-term memory and short-term memory into long-term. First review = 24 hours after first instruction. Remember: Without active retrieval, 70% of first instruction is forgotten in 24 hours. Second review = one week later. Third review = one month later. Fourth review = 3-6 months later.

10-30% Rule. Research recommends the optimal gap between retrieval/practice sessions should be 10-30% of the time you want students to remember the information. If the final test is in one month, use practice exercises every 3 to 6 days. If the final test or performance is in one year, practice once each month. For classroom rules that cover a school year, test/practice every month of the school year.

Interleaving. Do not practice the same information/skill at every practice session. Test/practice just a part of the same information at one session and other parts at subsequent sessions. And include different types of information in each session. This requires students to mentally sort through the memory, mine that information, and retrieve specific memories.

Leitner or Box Method. Everyday include a brief retrieval of new information and things students are having difficulty remembering. Every 3 days include a retrieval of things students are shaky on in their memory. Once every week practice information all students can retrieve easily.

  • Layered mastery. Best practice is not the constant use of one active retrieval strategy. Like physical exercise, using one strategy repeatedly only makes that one type of memory stronger. Layered mastery creates a multi-month schedule of intervals for brain dumping, testing, teaching to others that causes students to retrieve information repeatedly, analyze the information, apply the information, evaluate the reliability and validity of information, and synthesize the information into new configurations. When teachers use Bloom’s Taxonomy to guide their use retention theory, they cause students to build their own retrieval systems.

The Big Duh!

The industrial model of teaching and learning in the United States makes curriculum a conveyor belt of information that teachers teach, and students try to learn. The high demands and constancy of our K-12 curriculum delivery do not include time and resources for meaningful information retention. We teach and test then teach and test something new. If we want students to know what they learn for more than one day or until the next quiz, we must understand and use retention theory and its research-based practices. If we do not teach students to build memory building and retrieval, we truly institutionalize forgetting.

Content Knowledge, Pedagogy, and Empathy Are Equal Teaching Skill Sets

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President Theodore Roosevelt said, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” As educators, we know this, but we do not heed these words.

I work with a teacher licensing agency in Wisconsin. We are WI Department of Instruction-approved to prepare and endorse candidates for teacher licenses. Candidates are instructed and assessed in their understanding of and ability to teach content knowledge and to know and effectively use pedagogical skills. These two categories dominate teacher preparation.

Yet research and experience tell us that the single most essential quality children of all ages look for in their teachers is genuine care combined with trust of them as children and learners. Teacher empathy drives the “why” students engage in our curricular and pedagogical improvement strategies. We will not improve the data-based results until we attend to the human-based inputs.

A positive, empathetic care factor needs to become the third and co-equal skill set in teacher preparation. Until we do this, all other concerns for student academic achievement, student mental health and well-being, and their preparation as good citizens will continue to founder in our school systems. Children need to know their teacher cares about them individually before they begin to care about what that teacher is teaching.

What do we know?

Classroom environments, the way teachers and students behave, conform to teacher-student relationships. An observer sees it at once. The teaching/learning climate is a result of how children perceive their teacher’s relationship with them. There is no avoiding the nature and quality of interactions between teachers and students.

On the positive side, these are characteristics that occur in classrooms where children feel and know their teacher cares about and knows them as individuals, these things happen.

  • Children learn best when they feel safe to make mistakes, ask questions, and take risks.
  • Students work harder for teachers they believe they care about them.
  • Strong relationships reduce behavioral issues because students want to maintain connection and respect with their teacher.
  • When teachers communicate belief in a child’s potential, students persist longer and are more resilient.
  • Positive teacher-relationships are powerful for students from marginalized or high-risk backgrounds.

On the negative side, reverse each statement in classrooms where children do not believe their teacher cares about them as individuals. Feelings of safety, willingness to take academic risks, effort levels, behaviors, and persistence on difficult assignments – they all go away.

Question our assumptions.

In our teacher preparation programs, we assume that people who want to be teachers innately care about children. Why would they want to be teachers if they did not? It is a mistaken assumption. We know people who, as students, loved literature and story writing, doing math problems, completing science experiments, turning wood on lathes, and competing in athletics who though being an English, math, science, shop, or PE teacher would extend that love into a profession. Causing children to learn a curriculum is completely different than loving a curriculum. Too many people who love a subject do not find enjoyment in the messiness of children’s lives and classroom dramas. They have no empathy for the child who is not like they were as a child.

Even teachers who consider themselves to be empathetic often rate themselves as being higher on the empathy scales than their students rate them. Empathy is not the demanding and careful work needed in lesson planning, even when the planning acknowledges differences in students. Empathy for students is in the personal interactions between a teacher and children – it is in the immediacy and intricacies of what is said and done. If children believe that an empathetic teacher  

  • listens attentively and respectfully,
  • is consistent and fair,
  • knows each student’s name, interests, and challenges,
  • has and supports high expectations for each child’s learning, and
  • responds to mistakes and problems with guidance not shame, then

help teachers teach them. If they do not believe these to be true, classrooms are relational battlegrounds.

What to do.

Treat empathy as co-equal to content knowledge and pedagogy. Candidates are not born with content or pedagogical knowledge, and they are not born with genetic-based empathy. Each of these co-equal essentials is learned and can be improved with learning.

Begin by dropping the mistaken assumption that all teacher candidates are empathetic toward children. Instead, teach them about empathy and empathetic behaviors. Teach them how to understand and use their knowledge of empathy to build professional relationships with children, parents, and colleagues. Teach them how to measure their own empathy over time and in different contexts. And teach them that empathy is not a dispassionate strategy but a constant disposition. Empathy lives in a growth mindset.

Create a teacher preparation curriculum based upon empathy as a muscle memory that can be learned and strengthened. Teach –

  1. cognitive empathy, an academic understanding of perceptions of others and how to respond to those perceptions. There is a full, academic curriculum of this content.
  2. and practice affective empathy, a non-academic, real-world exposure of how to translate academic empathy into reactions and relationship-building. There are clinical settings for practicing and refining affective skills. As a type of muscle memory, we can help teacher candidates rehearse empathetic behaviors and self-critique their behaviors for a clearer understanding of how others perceive their empathetic skills.
  3. teach empathetic regulation to avoid burning out, potential callousness, and over emoting. There are models for understanding and resolving stress.

Use self-reports, observational tools, and student surveys to measure effect and impact of what candidates learn and how they internalize their learning into professional behaviors and relationship building.

Teach teacher prep providers and school supervisors to use research-based assessments to guide candidate development of empathetic skills sets AND to give classroom teachers feedback on their classroom and school practices. Most classroom observation tools avoid clinical critique of empathetic behaviors.

Make the use of research-based assessments a part of school-wide professional development divorced from employment evaluation. The quality of a teacher’s empathy for and relationships with children is hidden in academic and discipline reports yet it affects those outcomes immensely.

The Big Duh!

Traditional teacher preparation programs historically have emphasized the “hard” components of teaching and shunned the “soft” components. In Wisconsin PI 34, these are the rules for teacher prep programs, we have hard guidelines and assessments for content knowledge and the applications of pedagogical knowledge. We document these. At the same time, prep programs “record” human relations and educator disposition surveys. The latter are not treated like the former. Candidate licensing applications pass or fail their prep programs based on their content preparation and demonstration of pedagogy; their relations and dispositions surveys are check-offs and this flies in the face of what Roosevelt taught us.  I repeat –  “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”

If doing the same things repeatedly expecting different results is a sign of unintelligent behavior, then ignoring what we know about the co-equal skills sets of teacher empathy is equally unintelligent. Ramp up teacher knowledge and use of empathetic skill sets to see improvements in student learning and behaviors.

If We Do Not Teach Children to Listen, Why Are We Talking to Them?

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“Are you hearing me?” Good question. Humans begin hearing sounds, including human voices, in the womb. Hearing, like seeing, is an innate characteristic of humans. We are anatomically designed to hear the noise that surrounds us every day.

“Are you listening to me?” Another good question. Listening is an acquired skill that the person you are speaking to may or may not have mastered. Given the noise a person hears in their immediacy, it is an assumption that you are heard AND are being listened to. There is a stark difference between hearing and listening. You can be aware of a person speaking and not pay attention to their speech.

“Are you actively listening to me?” A better question. To this question “Maybe not” is a common answer. And the reason is “I don’t know how to listen actively.”

What do we know?

Parents and guardians expect their children to hear their adult voices early in life. In the smaller family setting, hearing, and listening to a parent and sibling voices is different than hearing and listening in larger, social, and real-life settings where noise is ubiquitous. Hence, educators teach children to listen.

Focus is essential for listening. However, focus is not easy to attain and harder to sustain. Focus is measured by attention span. These are reasons for us to consider the importance of focus for a listener.

  • Humans have an average attention span shorter than the attention span of goldfish. The average focused human attention span is 8.25 seconds. A goldfish pays attention for 9 seconds.
  • Attention spans range from 2 seconds to over 20 minutes, seldom longer.
  • Females have longer attention spans that males.
  • The average human attention span decreased by almost 25% from 2000 to 2015. Technology and media surround us with constant noise resulting in our hearing but not listening to it.
  • The average audience attention span is 8 to 10 minutes before needing a shift in delivery or format, though initial engagement (the first 30 seconds) is crucial to grab focus, as it is highly dependent on interest, task, and presentation style.
  • Your attention span can be affected by how emotionally engaged you are in a task. It also can be improved by mindfulness.

Our choices are to let children independently develop their natural listening skills or we can teach children to listen. We can adhere to Rousseau and allow a hearing child to wander through life in the belief that experience creates listening skills. Natural listening skills are in each of us, and we just need time and place for these to become effective everyday tools. Natural listening begins with survival – discerning danger – and evolves into listening to the surrounding environment. There is a wealth of wonderful sounds in nature.

Natural learning to listen happens. However, our contemporary world has changed compared to the time of Rousseau and has magnified sounds into noise. As children grow, they need to discern the information heard within all the noise that surrounds us. Information may be glorious melodies or the klaxon of emergency vehicles. Or ideas that excite us to learn more. Listening elicits responses to what is heard.

Many people today show untrained listening characteristics. They hear. They recognize the source or speaker. They may acknowledge the topic of the speaker. Then, they fade into being untrained listeners. Their focus wanders. They insert their own ideas. They start to create a rebuttal before the speaker has finished. Or their thinking pursues unrelated tangents. Some of the untrained just shut down their listening when they should listen because they do not know how. Then all sounds are noise.

So, we teach children to listen. Listening begins by hearing something or someone producing a sound to be listened to. Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act. People are always hearing, most of the time subconsciously. Listening is a choice. It is the interpretative action taken by someone to understand and potentially make sense of something heard. Active listening is an acquired skill we need to teach to children.

There are other good reasons to become good listeners.

  • Good listeners are more likable. Individuals with strong listening skills are present in the conversation. People who listen with focus are perceived to be more likable people.
  • Good listeners build stronger relationships. Communication is not a one-way street. Good listeners show interest, ask open-ended questions, and acknowledge what is being said. This helps reduce misunderstandings and build stronger relationships.
  • Good listeners have a clearer understanding of the topics in discussion. Individuals with refined listening skills try to fully understand a speaker’s message. They pay attention to both verbal and nonverbal cues and ask for clarification when needed.

https://online.maryville.edu/blog/types-of-listening

What do we know?

Parents are children’s first teachers of listening skills. With their first “Say ‘Mama/Dada” parents teach an infant to associate sounds and words with a desired meaning. A parent says a word and coos to give it meaning, or holds up a toy and names it, or points to food on a spoon and names it. They speak “baby talk” to encourage their baby to make a desired association. Most parents do not have training in this; they are not taught how to teach their child to listen. Parents do what they remember being done for them, or what family members tell them to do. Others talk with their peers to learn how to talk to their baby. In general, infants from birth to pre-school or instructional daycare are subjected to several years of popular, culturally informed parenting.

The Science of Early Learning provides 22 techniques for parents to try in their efforts to move their baby from hearers of sounds to a baby who is building skills as a listener. A search of the literature, including the tenth edition of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, provides a plethora of resources for parents to teach their children to be listeners.

https://thescienceofearlylearning.com/tips/how-to-talk-to-babies

By age 4, children reflect many of their parents’ listening characteristics. Children hear us even when we do not want to be heard. An infant’s auditory vocabulary is influenced by and mirrors the words, vocabulary, sentence structures, and dialects their parents or their older siblings use. Babies soak up everything they see and hear a parent do because they have no filtering mechanisms.

When infants do not begin to micmic parents and siblings, there is worry that hearing may be impaired. That is why schools are mandated through Child Find activities to use auditory testing to verify a child’s hearing

In Wisconsin, schools, daycares, pre-schools, and local physicians partner to inform young parents about the Child Find activities of local elementary schools. One of the screenings typical of a Child Find appointment is a hearing assessment. Teachers work with parents in primary school when either believes that a student/child has difficulty hearing. Testing and diagnosis can lead to further testing and perhaps to special education service and accommodations.

https://dcf.wisconsin.gov/files/childcare/pdg/lceymeetings/2022-08-04-lcey-handout-early-childhood.pdf

What do schools do to teach listening skills?

Who at school teaches children to be listeners? Many people talk to children every school day but are not teaching listening. Active listening is a concise curriculum in all grades and in all subjects.

Schools are mandated in WI Stats 118.01(2)(a)1. to teach children basic skills “… by listening …” One of a 4K-K teacher’s first actions each morning is gaining student attention, channeling them from all the noise surrounding them as they get out of a family car or school bus, enter the school, put their things on hallway hooks or in cubbies or lockers, and enter their classroom.  As the sounds of their classmates surround them, children hear their teacher say, “Sit down. Eyes on me. Give me your ears.”  And so, school listening instruction begins.

Veteran kindergarten teachers look like magicians to parents of 4-year-olds gathered for kindergarten round ups and orientations. They efficiently quiet squirming kids and boisterous children as easily as they might herd cats. For most veterans, the use of curated commands, signals, words, voice, body language, and attitude over time work to change behaviors and make children active listeners. Effective teaching at all levels incorporates myriads of indirect communications that move a hearing child to a listening student.

https://www.fayschool.org/kindergarten-readiness/six-strategies-to-teach-kids-to-listen

The mandate for direct instruction also derives from our state’s adoption of the Common Core ELA standards. All children are to be instructed in listening, as well as reading, writing, and speaking. The Wisconsin DPI standards place listening and speaking in the context of effective communications. Students are to be active and “productive communicators” in a wide variety of school and life circumstances.

https://www.coreknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/CK_CCSS_ELAAlignment.pdf

The ELA mandate reads –

“Speaking and Listening Standards – Introduction

These standards are directed toward developing students’ abilities to productively participate in communicative exchanges. Productive participation means that students are able to communicate in large groups, small groups, and one-on-one exchanges with varied audiences, for varied purposes, and in varied situations; can respond to and develop what others have said; can contribute accurate, relevant information; and can analyze and synthesize a multitude of ideas in various domains. Students must have ample opportunities to take part in a variety of conversations and communicative exchanges to practice and apply these standards. Some standards repeat from grade-level to grade-level in recognition of the fact that students’ understandings develop and deepen over time. The ultimate goal of these standards is that students are able to understand and make flexible choices in their use of language in order to meet their communicative goals with varied audiences, for varied purposes, and in varied situations.”

https://dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/ela/resources/Standards%20Listening.pdf

Each phrase in the above introduction points to a facet of effective communication and the last sentence poses the capstone – to meet communicative goals with varied audiences, for varied purposes, and in varied situations. Additionally, the fluid use of the word “varied” causes all listening skills instruction to be embedded in subject, content, or skills instruction. The context is listening within the instruction of reading, math, art, or PE. Seldom do teachers provide naked listening skill instruction devoid of a context for listening to something to be learned.

Elementary teachers focus early instruction on simple listening skills and, with repetition, increase the complexity of listening. Children are taught to discern these:

  • Audience – Is the speaker talking only to me or to a small group or to a large group. Who am I in the audience?
  • Purpose – Am I to listen for directions, information, entertainment, or is this a conversation?
  • Situations – How important is my listening? Is this casual, focused, important, or emergency?
  • Responding based upon purpose – What am I to do? Do I repeat what is heard, interpret what is heard, personalize what is heard, or remember what is heard?
  • Next – How do I use what I heard to be ready for what is next?

Teachers prepare and move children from one learning activity to another many times during a school day. Teachers use routine signals to alert children to listen. They may flick the classroom lights on and off, use a chime, or a buzzer. The concept is that the signal alerts children to listen. Once alerted to listen, a teacher focuses students to listen for “who is to do what, how, when, and why.” Ten to fifteen minutes later, another signal is used, students are alerted to listen, and the class moves into another activity.

Many listening skills are universal for school children. Given the age of elementary learners, a great deal of instructional time is devoted to group expectations and how an individual student in a group or classroom listens. One college’s teacher prep program stresses the “Three As of listening – attitude, attention, adjustment.”  Teachers must shape children’s behavior first to an attitude of community. A recognition that all classmates matter is a huge first step for a 4K-K child. Once teachers have each child moving from “me” to “we,” the teacher creates, uses, and reinforces strategies for gaining student visual and auditory attention. We pay attention to what we are looking at, and visual attention helps us to block out the noise so we can focus on the sounds coming from the person being seen. In evolving from hearing to focused listening, a child is ready to adjust to what is being said, asked, or directed.

Put into context, the routine above is used to prepare children for whole group activities, like recess or lunch. Listening routines also are used to prepare students for reading group instruction, or individual work time at interest centers in the classroom.

https://www.centenaryuniversity.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Triple-A-Listening-Supplemental-Reading.pdf

Ready to listen is different from listening

Hearing to listen is a first step. Listening for a purpose is a second. Listening as preparation for doing something based upon what one listens to is a new step. Studies show we remember only between 25-50% of what we hear – the rest is abandoned as noise. After ten minutes of listening, most people begin to drift. Unfocused listening results in an awareness of less than 25% of what we hear.

https://www.mindtools.com/az4wxv7/active-listening

Based upon these studies, teachers learn to “chunk” communications they want children to hear, listen to, remember, and be able to respond to or act upon. To do this, there are several time-tested cues for getting a child to listen and follow directions. The institutional experiences of Boys Town tell us to do these to help children be ready to listen.

When communicating with children –

  • Stay calm
  • Be direct
  • State commands positively
  • Give one command at a time 
  • Give age-appropriate instructions
  • Give brief reasons
  • Be physically present
  • Ask the child to repeat the instruction
  • Reward compliance 
  • Make sure you mean it

https://www.boystown.org/parenting/Pages/how-to-get-your-child-to-listen.aspx

Listening for what?

So far, we have addressed the importance of listening, the mandate to teach children to listen, and the general routines and frameworks for listening. The next level, teaching children to be active listeners, is where the effective communications expectations of the mandates make an educational difference.

Accuracy. For decades teachers have heard and used the phrase “checking for understanding.”  We ask children to repeat what they listened to you say. A correct response conveys congruence – the child heard and listened to what you said. Asking multiple children to repeat what they listened to you say creates an accountability for listening.

Do not be surprised when a child’s repeating what they heard you say is nothing like what you said. They “heard,” they did not “listen.” Listening is a learned skill. Patience and persistence are required. Simply tell your information a second time and again check for understanding. And perhaps a third and fourth time, if necessary. Accuracy matters.

Because listening is an acquired skill and “acquiring” requires time to learn and time is a valuable instructional commodity, teachers sadly diminish checking for understanding over time. Teaching accuracy in listening takes time and time wasted due to misunderstanding is far greater than the time to check for initial understanding.

Detail. Active listening requires an ear for details, and we can teach children to pay attention to details. The first step is to write down the details as they are verbally given. Check for understanding on the details. A second step is to create “responsibility” for details. One student listens for the “who,” another for the “what,” another for the “how,” another for the “to what degree,” and another for the “when.”  Check for understanding. Rotate responsibilities as some details are given at the end of the directions and everyone must listen to the entire direction.

I observe high quality teachers in middle and high school classrooms checking for understanding. Not only is this what the mandate tells us to do, it is best practice. Checking assures accuracy and detail in student learning.

Nuance. Many of the things we listen to are loaded with clues as to the feelings and values and dispositions of the speaker. Accuracy and details may be further understood by the way they are delivered. Teachers are not robotics delivering information in monotoned voices. They imbue what they tell children with the excitement and suspense of new learning. Children need to understand nuance and identify when it supplies extra meaning to their listening. Have children listen specifically for descriptor words and phrases; listen to the adjectives and adverbs and prepositions. Ask listeners to interpret the socio-emotional flavor of what they listened to. 

Clarification and response. Assign listening students to craft a clarifying question after their listening. Is there a detail that is not clear enough? Is there a possible early response a listener wants to try out while still in a checking for understanding phase? Consider all the time teachers spend answering student questions after the work has begun. When children ask clarifying questions at the time of the directions they demonstrate and reinforce their skills as active listeners.

Synergy. Active listening demonstrates a respect and rapport between teacher and students. When the speaker and listeners are actively engaged, speakers are encouraged to be more descriptive of details and nuance.  Respect for the speaker

To propel student learning, communications must become two-way, respectful, challenging, and nuanced. It may require specific vocabulary and exact terms. As communication becomes more focused on specific outcomes, the need for listening and responding skills become even greater. 

How do we know a child is an active listener?

Generalized, active listening is hearing, paying attention, listening, and an ability to respond to what is listened to. These statements cover the waterfront of how children and teachers engage in school communications, especially as children get older.

These are signs that a child is an active listener.

  1. Pays attention. When paying attention, there is about a one second lag between the speaker speaking and the listener’s brain hearing. 
  2. Shows that she is listening. Visually looks at the speaker, shows facial expressions equal with what is said, and takes notes.
  3. Provides feedback. Repeats key points to prove listening.
  4. Defers judgment.
  5. Responds appropriately. Asks valid and respectful questions, summarizes key points, suggests what you want to know or do next.

https://www.mindtools.com/az4wxv7/active-listening

Elevating active listening to upper-level listening.

Knowing that active listening is within the listener yet is cued by teacher communication, we can elevate active listening by moving our teaching interactions from the lower three levels – remembering, understanding, and applying – to higher levels of thinking – analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The sociometrics of a classroom conversation change drastically when we move from asking students for the recall or interpretation of knowledge to the comparing and contrasting ideas, evaluating an idea’s significance, or generating fresh solutions. Instead of teacher-student interactions, conversations become student-student exchanges. Teachers use wait time to assure students have time to consider their arguments while using body language to assure a student who is eager to contribute will be able to do so. Active listening leads to intellectual excitement – the teaching moments teachers cling to in their memories of classroom work. 

https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy

The United States State Department provides these four keys to their personnel about listening skills and they can be applied to any upper-level listening.

1. Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.

2. Be nonjudgmental

3. Give your undivided attention to the speaker

4. Use silence effectively.

This is sound advice to any teacher who is an ambassador for student learning.

https://2009-2017.state.gov/m/a/os/65759.htm

The Big Duh!

It may be that active listening skills are the most important life skill we teach to children in school. Active listening is crucial in every aspect of life. And, as the volume of noise in the world increases, knowing the difference between hearing and listening will be a valued skill.

Every teacher is responsible teaching active learning. We fail when we believe that by middle school all children know how to be active listeners. Good listening skills must be taught and practiced in every grade and every subject for every child. Given all the noise in the world, it is too easy for any child, or adult, to slide into the noise.