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! Continue reading
Theory into Practice: Blooming the Curriculum with One Word – “So…”
Theory into Practice – Behaviorism is a Good Teaching Method Until It Is Not
Teaching for learning is 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. Continue reading
Theory to Practice: Teach for Retention or Forget Teaching It. Your Students Will.
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. Continue reading
Content Knowledge, Pedagogy, and Empathy Are Equal Teaching Skill Sets
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. Continue reading
If We Do Not Teach Children to Listen, Why Are We Talking to Them?
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 Continue reading
The Curious Kick the Can of Facts into Possibilities
Education that does not evoke curiosity is telling the same stories over again in a daycare center to children who daydream with their eyes and ears closed. Continue reading
Is The Outcome of Public School a Generalized or a Specialized Education? The Answer is Yes.
Public education in the United States is our nation’s longest standing institution; however, its compass direction today is decided in thousands of classrooms by individual teachers. Our educational mission is adrift Continue reading
To Improve Student Outcomes, Theory Needs to Guide Teaching and Learning Practices
When we align foundational teaching and learning theories, principles, and practices as a through-line in student learning, we will see improved data because it results from connected instruction. Continue reading
Banning Cellphones In School Creates Unintended Consequences.
Banning student access to cellphones during instructional time is not simply a rule change. It is a transaction that demands teacher attention to the question of “what now?” If teachers think banning cellphones alone will improve classroom behavior and student attention, they are in for very rude future. Continue reading
Knowledge, Like Water, Will Slip Between Our Fingers Unless.
“If I taught something to children and they did not learn it, did I really teach them anything?” Possibly. Instead posit, “If I taught children and did not teach them how to remember what I taught them, did I really teach anything?” Indeed, not. If you expect children to remember what you taught them, teach them how to remember. Continue reading