At this stage, you introduce students to concepts, skills, and/or strategies. Think of it as building a strong foundation. Strategies seek to help student gain requisite knowledge needed to move forward to deep learning.
We define deep learning as a period when students consolidate their understanding and apply and extend some surface learning knowledge to support deeper conceptual understanding . . . We think of this as a 'sweet spot' that will often take up more instructional time, but can be accomplished only when students have the requisite knowledge to go deeper.
Transfer learning [is] the point at which students take their consolidated knowledge and skills and apply what they know to new scenarios and different contexts. It is also a time when students are able to think metacognitively, reflecting on their own learning and understanding.
Source: Hattie, Fisher and Frey (Visible Learning for Mathematics, 2017)
Core factor. These include strategies that affect everything about a lesson. Some sample strategies include:
Teacher Credibility (1.09)
Success Criteria (.88)
Teacher Clarity (.76)
Feedback (.64)
Surface Learning. At this stage, you introduce students to concepts, skills, and/or strategies. Think of it as building a strong foundation. Strategies seek to help student gain requisite knowledge needed to move forward to deep learning. Some sample strategies include:
Jigsaw Method (1.20),
Summarization (.74),
Direct Instruction (.59)
Flipped Classrooms (.58)
Interactive Video (.54)
Deep Learning: In this category, strategies assist students gain a deeper conceptual understanding. A few favorites include:
Reciprocal Teaching (.74),
Classroom Discussion (.82)
Concept Mapping (.64)
Metacognition Strategies (.58)
Transfer Learning. As you might imagine, students must finally apply what they know to new scenarios and contexts. Students should also be metacognitive, reflective on their learning. Strategies that typify this include the following:
Transfer Strategies (.86)
Problem-Solving Teaching (.68)
Service Learning (.58)
Peer Tutoring (.53)
Gaining a deeper understanding of high-effect size instructional strategies can be difficult.
"What will YOU as the teacher do?" This involves mapping out what ONE instructional strategy you are going to use.
“What will you and your students be doing in the lesson?” Carefully select and define what strategy your students will be engaged in.
Remember to match the strategies you choose to the learning intention.
-Miguel Guhlin (@mguhlin)
Focusing on learning outcomes enables both teacher and coach to develop student-centered goals. What’s more, focusing on learning outcomes lets you connect to standards-based goals. Weston suggests several questions. One of the important ones is What priority standards will you focus on? If you were going to write these as “I can” statements for students, what would they look like?
In this action step, you will reflect on the academic standards and skills you want students to know. Weston suggests asking questions that are quite practical. For example, which specific HES instructional strategy will you leverage to meet goals?
Remember to consider these questions:
Where are your learners in their learning?
Where are they going?
How will they get there?
For ed tech advocates, the rush to select a digital tool is strong. So many tech tools are available now, it’s tempting to use as many as possible. However, focus on only ONE digital tool to use with students. Later, you can app-smash but it has to be in service of learning.
“Plan your lesson, every activity, thinking through what your students will do.” Words of insight from a few years ago via my colleague, Diana Benner. I was in the throes of planning out a workshop that strained complexity. Whomever your audience for lesson design, put yourself in the place of your students.
What student data will inform teacher instructional practices? For many educators, learning to analyze state assessment data as a team is familiar. Others may find they need more personalized data. For this, they may rely on a variety of assessment tools, many of which are available online. Some are tech-based, but others can be paper-and-pencil or other.
The goal of these assessments is to gain insight into what students know before instruction. It is also to gain insight into what they have learned after instruction. Use assessments to adjust instruction as well to meet the needs of students
Engage students’ brain with these approaches:
Start positive and cultivate physical and emotional safety in the class
Inject suspense into your lesson. Try adding suspenseful pauses.
Movement activates the brain. Incorporate movements that support learning activities relevant to content.
Chunk learning to scaffold comprehension and processing
The new and unusual are of high interest to the brain. Create situations or demonstrations that break students out of their learning routine.
Take advantage of Think-Pair-Share type activities