SMARTBrief & Dan Willingham has a blog!

I am now a subscriber to the ASCD's SMARTBrief.

Sometimes this comes in handy, as when I can alert Dan Willingham to a new and wrong SMARTBrief informing educators that: “Students can benefit from tackling hardest material first.”

My heart sank when I read that headline because it gives aid and comfort to my district, where all instruction is based on the premise: hard first. e.g.: henceforth, Kindergarten children will do "research" and 3rd grade children will write "papers." That's the plan.

Seeing as how most college students can't do research and write papers, I would prefer my tax dollars not be spent on the profusion of classroom teachers, "literacy specialists," and "professional development opportunities" the district will require in order to teach writing the hard way to 5 year olds.

Fortunately, Dan W made short work of that one.

At least, he made short work of the claim on which it was based.


news flash:

Dan Willingham has a blog!!

Also a new article on studying and memory (pdf file) in American Educator!

The new article is one of his best. Fantastic.

According to Dan, the 3 principles of memory research most useful to students are:

1. memories are formed as the residue of thought: we remember what we think about [A couple of years ago I had the blinding revelation that when you obsessively go over and over a grudge or a grievance, you are in fact rehearsing that grudge and/or grievance. Which is often a bad idea. On the other hand, obsessively rehearsing school district and/or town council misbehavior has its uses.]

2. often memories are inaccessible not because we've forgotten the material, but because we lack the proper cue to recall that material to consciousness

3. the over-confidence principle: people tend to think their learning is more complete than it is


how to apply the principles

1. we remember what we think about

For teachers, the trick is to give students assignments that will force them to think about the material they've read or heard:

Given that we typically want students to retain meaning, we will mostly want students to think about what things mean when they study. It would be nice if you could simply tell your class, “When you read your textbook, think about what it means.” Naturally, you know that’s not the case. The instruction to “think about meaning” is difficult to follow because it is not specific enough. A better strategy is for students to have a specific task that will force them to think about meaning.*

Through a series of studies, reading researcher Michael Pressley figured out a way to do this that asked students to pose just one simple, specific question. He encouraged students to ask themselves “why?” at the end of each sentence as they read passages. passages. In one study, fourth- through eighth-grade students read brief passages about animals.12 For example, one began, “The Western Spotted Skunk lives in a hole in the ground. The skunk’s hole is usually found on a sandy piece of farmland near crops.” After reading each sentence, students were to ask themselves why that piece of information might be true. The researchers found that doing so produced a quite sizable benefit to memory, compared with students who were simply told to read the passage and remember it.

I think question-asking is phenomenally useful, and in fact I do something quite similar to Pressley's instructions myself when I read.

Willingham has various suggestions for how to handle longer chunks of text, but I would start by telling students to take Eugene Schwartz's advice:

turn the chapter's main ideas into questions

Any idea, phrase or sentence can be turned into a question by putting what, when, where, why, or how in front of it.

Take your reading assignment outline, extracted from your chapter signposts, and turn them into questions. The chapter title the background sources of Greek Civilization becomes what are the background sources of Greek Civilization?. A chapter title of The human body: a living machine becomes how is the human body like a living machine?.

Now you read each chapter, looking only for the answers to your questions.

You can see immediately what this technique does. It forces your attention on the main points, and prevents your being distracted by minor details.

source:
How to Double Your Child's Grades in School by Eugene Schwartz

2. cues that work: mnemonics (Willingham explains) And, speaking of mnemonics, there is a new book of school mnemonics out: i before e (except after c) by Judy Parkinson

3. making sure you've actually learned the material and can recall it on a test (or in a conversation): overlearning

Students should study until they know the material and then keep studying. How long they should continue studying depends on how long they hope to retain the material, how they will be tested, and other factors, but a good rule of thumb is to put in another 20 percent of the time it took to master the material.

(So if it takes me 3 years to learn algebra 1 & 2, should I keep studying another 18 months after that?)


last but not least: the secret of peer teaching

For years I've noticed that, yes, I do learn more when I have to teach or explain a concept to someone else.

Turns out there is a very simple reason for this phenomenon:

"...you will definitely think about material carefully if you teach it to others..."

Can't believe I didn't think of that myself.


demonstrations of the 3 principles of memory by Dan Willingham (pdf file)
An Approach to Reading that Really Works, part 1 (Carolyn Johnston)
An Approach to Reading that Really Works, part 2 (Carolyn Johnston)