I’ve compiled five of my current favourite ‘stickable’ thoughts that are rooted in research led by stalwarts in the field of education. Of course, they have their core applicability in the work we do as teachers but they flow just as seamlessly to life outside school as well. For me, they are powerful reminders and hold me to account when in a state of uncertainty or flux. I share these with you and invite you to contribute the thoughts that have influenced your professional practice. I hope these special words resonate with you as much as they do with me.
When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority
Karen Martin
This one is a biggie and applies to so many of us in a range of different contexts.
Crazy to-do lists? Unable to identify what’s really important? Overwhelmed with how much there is to do?
Prioritise!
What needs your attention immediately?
What can be put off until tomorrow?
What’s for later in the week?
Is there something that needs to have a sustained focus over a period of time?
A priority needs to be exactly that. A priority. It needs to be an attention grabber.
Look at your list of ‘priorities’ today: what is the real priority?
What is the priority in your subject development plan? Can you remember it? If you can’t, is it really a priority?
How do you help your children prioritise to make them effective self-managers? Do you explicitly verbalise the strategies you use as an adult?
How does this apply to your curriculum?
How does it apply to what you are teaching today?
What is the priority in your feedback to students?
If you are one of those highly skilled self-managers, whether a parent or a teacher, what is it that you do to stay focused on your priorities?
Fewer things in greater depth
Mary Myatt, ‘Back on Track’
‘Depth before speed’
‘Do less, better’.
‘Cut the fat’.
‘Declutter the curriculum’.
‘Less is more’.
How often do we cram the curriculum with the unnecessary, the frills, the activities that sound good and ‘fun’ but actually make no difference to the intended focus?
How often do we fill our presentations with more and more and clutter them with the unnecessary?
Would you rather have a fully taught curriculum or a fully learnt curriculum?
To stay focused on fewer things in greater depth, I have to constantly ask questions like:
– Why am I doing this?
– How will this make a difference?
– What difference will it make to the learning if I didn’t do this?
We need:
● Fewer objectives that provide incremental challenge
● Deep rather than superficial learning
● Time to engage fully and review, rehearse and practice
● Locate our own thinking and planning into the bigger whole
Make it stick
Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel, and Peter C Brown
Overloading the brain with information will not lead to memory retention. We need to learn and relearn concepts in order to retrieve them. Hattie refers to this as stickability.
How does something stick with you?
What is it that you need to do in order to make new learning or a new skill stick?
How do we make learning stick for our students?
The authors of ‘Make it Stick’ suggest that the two main goals of learning a new skill or concept are comprehension and retention.
The following three principles are recommended to maximise the benefits of retrieval practice:
1) Effortful retrieval – the harder your brain has to work to retrieve the information, the more firmly it cements it in your memory. A desirable difficulty.
2) Repeated testing improves your ability to apply the knowledge in different contexts.
3) Corrective feedback to prevent students from remembering the wrong answer and to reinforce the correct information.
Other high impact strategies that make learning stick:
– spaced repetition
– deliberate connections
– teacher clarity
– building structures and creating a context
The word ’stickability’ has changed my classroom practice because my focus is now much more on learning and memory, rather than on students doing and forgetting. With this shift, lesson planning is sharper. The focus is to ensure that students leave the lesson with what has been learnt, not what has been done.
Here are some questions to consider:
– What should students leave my classroom knowing or understanding?
– Why should this skill, knowledge or understanding stick with students?
– How will I make it stick?
– How will I know that it has stuck?
– If students become stuck, then what?
Practice before Performance
Thomas Guskey
This one resonates with me at so many levels and if there is one video that I can recommend, this is it. Differentiate instruction through mastery.
There is a difference between practice and performance. Do we recognise that difference?
Ever tried learning a musical instrument?
Seen a coach with an athlete?
Trained for a marathon?
Planned for a presentation?
Tried a new recipe?
Hours of practice and repetition go on behind the scenes in order to perform on the day of the performance.
My daughter learns to play the piano. It is one of the hardest activities she is currently involved in because it requires hours of practice. Does she put in the work? No points for guessing that one! When she goes from one class to another after a week’s interval, without having practiced the new bars learned in the previous class, she makes minimal progress. She retorts by saying ‘I don’t like piano’. I have no doubts about that, but as an adult I also know that it is because she has not developed competence yet. Will I let her quit? You know the answer!
I ask myself as I plan tasks for my students.
– Have I given students enough time to practice and rehearse the taught skill so that they are now ready for a performance?
– Have I rushed them from performance to performance, from subject to subject, expecting them to have mastered all the skills without giving them enough time to practice?
I quote Tom Sherrington
…the first stages of learning a new concept involve creating a set of connections that allow us to make meaning from the elements that make up the concept, linking them together and binding them to knowledge we already have. Forming these connections requires some short-term rehearsal, establishing a unit of knowledge that is stable and coherent enough that we can later retrieve it. If we don’t establish a basic level of stability and coherence, there is nothing secure enough for us to retrieve.
As an athlete and avid sportsperson myself, I know practice is key because with practice comes competence and competence precedes confidence. This is what Zaretta Hammond calls the Progress Principle. When we know we are getting better at something we lean into it more, we stick with it more, we put in more effort. The more students can build their competence, the more they will hang in there.
Where have you experienced the progress principle?
Rigour and enjoyment are intertwined
Tom Sherrington
Have you noticed how much fun you’re having when you are working just outside your comfort zone? The adrenaline rushes in, you are in a state of flow (Elena Aguilar, Onward). The work sparks joy. You don’t want it to stop. You’re aiming for high standards but that is almost a by-product of all the work, all the practice you have put in.
When I read this, I could draw an immediate parallel to my personal passions.
When I train for different events, whether a marathon, triathlon or a swimmathon – the training is the most enjoyable part of the journey. The training, the everyday effort is rigorous. I hold myself to high expectations. The last kilometre, the last repetition of a speed workout, the last uphill repeat, these are not easy, but that is where the most satisfaction comes. The effort, the slay, the work you put in everyday also provides the most joy. Rigour is deeply intertwined with enjoyment. So much so that I come back for it the next day with a bounce in my step. Needless to say, I have been coming back to it for years!
Useful questions to ask:
– Do my students feel that rigour and enjoyment are intertwined in my lessons?
– Is my material pitched high?
– Do I feel that I have a strong command of the subject in order to anticipate misconceptions and build an incremental ladder of difficulty within the unit of work?
– Is the work ethic in my class high?
– Is the focus on detail, accuracy and precision strong?
Are there any statements that resonate with you? Are there any that have had an impact on your practice or had a positive influence on your life?
Do share them as responses to the blog.
References :
Mary Myatt – The curriculum Gallimaufry to Coherence, Back on Track, Huh
Make it stick – Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel, and Peter C Brown
https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/zaretta-hammond-on-equity-and-student-engagement
Sneh Wadhwaney 