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Culturally ResponsiveEducational ResearchEquity, Diversity, InclusionESL/ELLGood Teaching

Culturally Responsive Teaching: Teachers as Allies in Growth

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

What do students of color need in classrooms? Zaretta Hammond shares ideas in her book, “Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.” Let’s take a look at the teacher expectations Hammonds shares. One way to view these expectations is through the lens of high-effect size strategies. John Hattie leads the charge in his research and identifies which strategies work. His focus is on cataloging research about what accelerates student growth. I will also make reference to other authors who have long identified issues with how schools are set up to disempower the disenfranchised.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

When I first read Hammond’s book, I found myself amazed at the connections she makes. As a bilingual/ESL educator, I immediately saw culture and schema connections. Hammond puts dominant culture on notice in her book. We end up doing children a disservice when we ignore the power of culture. That’s because culture is what disempowered children bring to school with them. It’s their prior knowledge, their schema.

Her ideas about children’s schema align with education experts Robert Marzano and Frank Smith. What’s more, Hammonds’ explanation of how the brain works grounds her work in culturally responsive teaching. What I found most interesting is how well her work aligns with the work of John Hattie. As I read Chapter Six of her book, I found myself seeing the influence of high-effect size strategies. Let’s take a look at some of these connections between Hattie and Hammond.

Cultivate Self-Determination

Hammond explains that teachers fall into several potential camps. One of the roles teachers can play is that of a student ally. The role of the ally is to build a relationship of mutual support. This relationship empowers “marginalized students to increase their intellective capacity.” Without intellective capacity, schools offer a domesticating education steeped in the status quo.

Patrick Finn writes the following in his book “Literacy with an Attitude:”

“First, there is empowering education, which leads to powerful literacy, the kind of literacy that leads to positions of power and authority.

Second, there is domesticating education, which leads to functional literacy, literacy that makes a person productive and dependable but not troublesome.

Over time, political, social and economic forces have brought us to a place where the working class (and to a surprising degree, the middle class) gets domesticating education and functional literacy, and the rich get empower education and powerful literacy.

We don’t worry about a literate working class because the kind of literacy they get doesn’t make them dangerous.”

Marginalized students need intellective capacity. Why? Hammond says it’s because they have long internalized negative messages. These messages pertain to their ability to do well in school. Inequities form around their under-developed “learn how to learn skills.” What else plays a part? Hammond suggests weak foundational skills in reading and analytical writing.

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Moving Towards an Empowering Education

What’s more, a domesticating education permeates the culture of school. It even influences how teachers set up technology use for students:

“Economically disadvantaged students, who often use the computer for remediation and basic skills, learn to do what the computer tells them, while more affluent students, who use it to learn programming and tool applications, learn to tell the computer what to do.

Those who cannot claim computers as their own tool for exploring the world never grasp the power of technology. They are controlled by technology as adults–just as drill-and-practice routines controlled them as students.”

Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the Divide in Education

To overcome domesticating education, Hammond has a suggestion. That suggestion is that teachers work as student allies. Their mission? Cultivate student growth and self-determination.

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity OR it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Hammond makes several suggestions. Here are a few that were easy to connect to Hattie’s work. Relying on high-effect size instructional strategies is one way to empower students. They are a way to build intellective capacity.

Student Growth Cultivators

In their role as allies, Hammond says that teachers must offer students the following. To each point she makes, I’ve blended in John Hattie’s instructional strategies. Do you agree with the connections made?

Note: Chapter 6 of Zaretta Hammond’s book is the source quoted below. The John Hattie strategies come from the Visible Learning MetaX database. ZH=Zaretta Hammond; JH=John Hattie.

Talking about Learning

ZH: “Kid-friendly vocabulary for talking about learning moves.”

JH: Success Criteria (d=0.88) and Self-Reported Grades (d=1.33)

Students need to be able to own the language around their academic growth. To do that, students must put concepts focused on data, progress, and assessment in their own words. Hammond says that this is where teachers can assist students. Hattie makes similar ideas popular with success criteria. One key component of success criteria involves co-constructing these brief standard summaries.

What’s more, students are able to self-assess the quality of their own work or their level of mastery. Self-Reported Grades puts tracking progress in students’ hands. Knowing how close or far they are to meeting a learning objective gives students agency over their own learning.

Checklists and Graphing

ZH: “Checklists to help hone decision-making skills. They assist students during learning and focus their attention during data analysis.”

JH: Success Criteria (d=0.88) and Metacognition (d=0.60)

One of the challenges Hammond highlights includes encouraging student reliance on checklists. The purpose of checklists is to empower novice learners to escape the constraints they face. These constraints plague novice writers. Yet, they capture some of the challenges faced by all students. That is, having quick access to relevant knowledge and overcoming task demands (source). To address that, checklists provide relevant knowledge at the point of need.

While you might think this is about writing programs strategy, it’s not. Rather, it’s about Success Criteria:

Teachers use checklists, rubrics, and worked examples for, “demonstrating to students what success looks like and thus what the goal could be for their own learning” (Hattie, 2009, p. 172). They teach students how to use rubrics and checklists to reflect on what

they do well and how they can improve. Through self-questioning, self-verbalizing, and self-reported grades students learn to establish concrete learning goal; learning becomes more personalized and engaging. Such practices empower students thereby helping them to grow positive self-concepts. (source)

Tools such as graph paper and spreadsheets allow students to track their own progress. What’s more, they foster metacognition:

…checklists can help students develop metacognitive awareness of their intellectual processes. Metacognitive research suggests that students who can do the follow are better learners:

  • know how to learn
  • know which strategies are most effective when faced with a problem or a task, and
  • have accurate methods of assessing their progress

Students should get “practice engaging in metacognitive conversations about learning and strategy,” says Zaretta Hammond.

The Power of Metacognition

Metacognition (d=0.60), reflecting on one’s own growth, can accelerate student learning. Metacognition also plays into Self-Regulation (d=0.54). Checklists and self-regulation’s metacognition play well together. Consider the metacognitive aspect of Self-Regulation, the third aspect below:

  • Motivation to solve a problem
  • Cognition to think through the problem, and
  • Metacognition to review whether they are performing the task in a correct manner. This last point is where checklists come into play.

A final point that Zaretta Hammond makes is that students must engage in reflection. She recommends students not only “practice metacognitive conversations,” but also set up time for reflection. Reflection must include reviewing the following:

  • self-assessment data
  • debriefing circles
  • provide usable, actionable feedback

Explore self-judgment and reflection as an aspect of metacognition in this blog entry.

Additional Resources

Want to learn more about Zaretta Hammond’s work? You may find this Wakelet collection I prepared useful.

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Educational Research

TCEA Responds: Student and Classroom Response Systems

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Dear TCEA Responds:

Are there apps that have students respond to a teacher’s multiple-choice questions? I need it to show the results in real-time in the form of a graph.

Thank you, Cindy

Dear Cindy,

Thanks for your question. This question recently came up in one of the Facebook groups I visited. Please allow me to share some of the classroom response systems mentioned.

Before I do, though, I have to share some of the qualities most of these systems share. Those include:

  • Support for various question types
  • Instant feedback
  • Automatic grading and reporting
  • Work on radio frequency or via WiFi
  • May need a device for students or run as an app on a student-owned device, or no device at all

These can be costly systems to put in place. As a technology director, I often encouraged more in-depth learning activities. That said, teachers can use classroom response systems for low-stakes, practice testing. Why is practice testing important?

How the Brain Works

In his book, “The Fundamentals of Teaching,” Mike Bell makes this point:

When repetition leads to long-term memories, there are physical changes in the brain. Brain memories disappear very quickly unless they are repeated. Our brains are made up of billions of nerve cells or neurons, all connected together. We form memories when some of these pathways become strengthened by being repeatedly used.

How do you strengthen these pathways? Through repetition. Repetition leads to what Bell describes as “long-term potentiation.” This isn’t just his label, though. Consider this:

Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a process involving persistent strengthening of synapses that leads to a long-lasting increase in signal transmission between neurons. It is an important process in the context of synaptic plasticity. LTP recording is widely recognized as a cellular model for the study of memory. (Source: Science Direct)

To Teach is to Learn Twice

When I read Mike Bell’s book, I had already read Zaretta Hammond’s book. In her book, “Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain,” Zaretta Hammond expands on this idea. She writes:

When the brain is learning something new, it clusters neurons together to create a neural pathway…when we go back and forth along this pathway, it helps drive new learning deeper into long-term memory until it becomes automatic or deeply understood.

The brain helps neurons talk to each other faster along these neural pathways through the process of myelination, where it wraps the body of the neuron with layers of a fatty substance called myelin. Myelination makes it easier for the brain to do more complex work because the fat allow the chemical and electrical impulses to travel across the neuron faster.

“When we don’t practice or use new dendrites shortly after learning,” Hammond says, “our brain prunes them.” Imagine your brain saving resources, reabsorbing unused dendrites.

By sharing these two descriptions that underscore repetition for long-term information retention,  I hope to strengthen my own neural pathways. Doesn’t this give Joseph Joubert’s quote a whole new meaning?

“To teach is to learn twice.”

 

Team Competition and the Rehearsal Strategy

Rehearsal is a concept I’ve described before. It is a high-effect size strategy (d=0.73) that accelerates student learning. It refers to mental techniques designed to help us remember information. It includes memorizing information through repetition. It can also involve repeating information upon seeing a visual cue (like images, flashcards).

For the purposes of this blog entry, team competition as a rehearsal strategy works. That is, the teacher asks questions requiring rehearsed information. Students answer on their own to gain points for their team.

Classroom response systems can facilitate point collection for their team.

Student vs Classroom Systems

Curious about what classroom response systems may be available for use? Before we get to those, let’s review a related category, Student Response Systems. Student Response Systems often work as part of another solution. This means you’re not relying on a “clicker” device from the vendor. Instead, you use a smartphone, Chromebook, and/or iPad.

tcea responds

What’s more, these tools work great with other high-effect size strategies, including our focus rehearsal through team competition.

Some popular ones include:

Want to learn about more or similar tools? Explore these TCEA TechNotes blog entries. Many tools (Kahoot, Quizziz) are also relied on for quick low-stakes assessments. Now, let’s take a look at Classroom Response Systems.

Classroom Response Systems

Here’s a shortlist of Classroom Response Systems. These systems often come with their own student device. They connect to each other via radio frequency or infrared beam. Rather than work with your existing technology, students get a clicker.

Since Classroom and Student Response systems are often confused, let’s define them for clarification. If there is a clicker device running on radio frequency, it’s a classroom response system. If the clicking happens in a browser or app, it’s a student response system.

Remember, the key difference between the previous list and the one below is simple. Classroom Response Systems are not app or browser-based.

Here are a few you can use:

Thanks for your question, Cindy. As you can see, there are many different types of response systems available to you. A few I didn’t mention here are included in another TechNotes blog entry, Buzz Me In: Remote Learning Buzzers and Scoreboards.

Finally, here’s a quick summary of educational research and a digital tool recommendation.

tcea responds
View or get a copy of this Google Slides document

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Educational ResearchGood Teaching

Two Strategies to Help Make Learning Stick

by Kathryn Laster
written by Kathryn Laster

Teacher confession time: I was doing it wrong! I didn’t realize how I asked questions in my classroom impacted the “stickiness” of learning. Furthermore, I didn’t realize there were quick, easy retrieval practice strategies that I could teach my students to help make learning stick.

So let’s try it. Think back and try to remember what you had for lunch last Tuesday. Seriously! Stop reading and try it. Did your eyes close? Or did you raise an eyebrow or scrunch up your nose? Unless Tuesday was a special occasion, or unless you have the same lunch every Tuesday, my guess is that it took a bit of thinking to remember your lunch from last Tuesday. But that’s a good thing, and that’s exactly the feeling we want our students to experience to help make the learning stick.

What is Retrieval Practice?

Retrieval practice is a learning strategy where you bring information to the front of your mind; you pull information out of your head.

I invite you to introduce the idea of retrieval practice to your students and emphasize the importance of desirable difficulty– just like you felt when trying to remember Tuesday’s lunch. Even though it’s often an uncomfortable feeling, the challenge of pulling information to mind is what improves the retention of the learning. This post from retrievalpractice.org includes slides of fun warm-up questions for students to practice that “memory feeling” and make retrieval no big deal.  

Takeaway #1: Starting Class with Retrieval Practice

Now take a minute to reflect. How much time is spent putting information into students’ heads in your classroom? Next, consider how much time students spend pulling information from their brains? 

Here was the reason for my teacher’s confession earlier: I typically started class by reminding students of everything we did yesterday (or last week or in the unit.) “Good morning! Remember yesterday we found ways to solve quadratic equations by graphing, and you first …” I crammed all of that information into students’ heads, so I missed an opportunity for retrieval practice. Instead, I could have started class by creating a routine of asking students to write as much as they could remember about what we did in class yesterday without looking at their notes.

The key part is for students to understand the importance of creating desirable difficulty, so including “Without peeking at your notes” is an important phrase in the instructions.

Retrieval Practice to Start Class
Starting Class with Retrieval Practice

Takeaway #2: Make Retrieval Practice a Routine

To make retrieval practice a regular part of a classroom routine, authors Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain suggest the strategy of “Two Things,” which may be used at any point in the lesson. Once students realize the importance of pulling information to mind and embracing desirable difficulty, they will understand that these quick processing practices can help the learning stick. 

Two Things Retrieval Practice
Two Things Retrieval Practice

Students might jot their responses on a scratch piece of paper, in their notes, on a Google Doc, or using your LMS or another digital tool. 

Suggested questions include the following, but the possibilities are endless. 

  • What are two things you’ve learned so far today?
  • What are two things you learned yesterday?
  • What are two takeaways from this week?
  • What are two things you might need to know next?

I now realize that by simply tweaking my questions to include opportunities for retrieval, retention can be improved.

Try it Out!

Let’s end by trying the Two Things Strategy. Seriously, try it! Choose one of the prompts, and without scrolling up, retrieve and respond. 

  • The two key terms were desirable difficulty and retrieval practice. How would you define these terms?
  • What were the two takeaways from this post?
  • Name two of the questions in the Two Things Retrieval Practice list.
  • What are two ideas from this post that you plan to apply to your own work?

After retrieving the answers to these questions, return to the post to check your answers. If you want to discuss your ideas for using retrieval practice, please share in the comments!

Want to know more? 

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Build Coding Self-Efficacy with CoSpaces EDU

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

There are many benefits to encouraging students to build and create in 3D and craft code or script. But with so many options available, what is one solution you can focus your students on? Luckily there are augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) tools available to encourage 3D, coding, and collaboration. Before exploring some AR/VR tools, let’s look at some benefits.

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What Are the Benefits of AR/VR, and Coding?

In the workforce, there are several uses of AR/VR apps:

  • Providing information in real time
  • Facilitating training and mirroring real-life experiences
  • Enhance creativity in design and development

In addition to benefits for the workforce, some researchers suggest that AR/VR apps can assist with the following in the classroom:

  • Reduce cognitive overload
  • Assist students in developing higher-order thinking capabilities (source)
  • Potential to help autistic children in navigating academic and social situations (source)
  • Positively impact self-efficacy

There are several more applications but these reflect educational goals, don’t you agree?

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Self-Efficacy and Coding

According to the Visible Learning MetaX database, self-efficacy is:

A sense of confidence or the set of self-perceptions that influence thought, actions, and emotional arousal. It accomplishes this since it enables people to make decisions. The decisions they make are about what course of action they intend to pursue.

Self-efficacy enjoys an effect size of d=0.65. Since the hinge point for one year’s academic growth is d=0.40, this makes self-efficacy worthy of consideration. This 2020 study connecting self-efficacy and coding found:

The results of the analysis of quantitative data indicated that the model developed for coding education had a positive effect on students’ programming self-efficacy and attitudes towards technology. Students expressed positive opinions about coding education.

Their positive opinions included students thinking that:

  • Coding education facilitates the teaching of many different subjects such as mathematics and science.
  • Reflected their self-perception that they can do many activities

Those activities include code and program writing, designing games and robots, and solving problems with their coding education. With these benefits in mind, it’s important to ask, “What digital tools might work well in K-12 education?”

Digital Tool: CoSpaces EDU

As you might imagine, there are a great variety of digital tools that are the answer to that question. The tools for AR/VR and coding vary from year to year, as the technology improves. One tool that you might consider boasts the following features.

3D Modeling

  • 3D avatar and model creation
  • The ability construct 3D models that improve on solutions like Minecraft and others
  • Adding images, videos, sounds (including background music) to 3D models
  • Cross-platform capability (smartphone, tablet, desktop, Chromebook)

AR/VR Support

  • Move 3D creations into VR
  • Supports use of a VR headset
  • Allows for collaboration among students
  • Hologram interaction
  • Focus on creation, not consumption

Coding and Scripting

  • Block-based coding or programming like Scratch
  • Support for scripting languages that add interactions, events, and allow for game creation
  • Create simulations of physical phenomena that allow for visualization of abstract scientific concepts

CoSpaces EDU offers a few other features including MERGE Cube mode. You can also manage your class roster in it. Student management can interface with Clever, as well as Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

CoSpaces EDU Pricing

While CoSpaces EDU sounds great, how much does it cost? It enjoys a free tier with basic features, but the PRO Plan with five seats costs $74.99 per year. Each Pro Plan offers all features for a number of seats. You will have to decide if this best meets the needs of you and your students. Limited Pro Plans are also available for your consideration.

The CoSpaces EDU has an ambassador program, and you can see “getting started” resources. Also, explore their YouTube Channel. Give it a whirl!

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Educational ResearchGood Teaching

Powerful and Easy Digital Tools for Formative Assessment

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Interwoven into instruction, assessment has many benefits. Its biggest benefit? Aiding students and teachers in closing the learning gap. In the Fall of 2021, I attended TCEA’s Campus Technology Specialist Academy (CTSA). One of the sessions, led by Destiny Wagner and Kristofer Thurston, offered several gems related to using digital tools for formative assessment. These gems became some of my favorite takeaways. But before diving deeper into the tools, let’s take a look at formative assessment.

digital assessment
Reach out to Destiny Wagner (email: edtechdestiny@gmail.com) for more info on their excellent session.

What Is Formative Assessment?

In the Amazing Learning Design Outline (ALDO), I highlight the importance of assessment. Assessment is critical to crafting feedback that closes the learning gap. That gap, of course, is between where the student is now and where they need to be. Did you know that formative assessment can double student learning gains? Formative assessment is an ongoing, low-stakes assessment that provides such feedback to both students and teachers regularly. In other words, to gauge where students are in their learning, they must be assessed before, during, and after learning. And these assessments can tie into a wide variety of strategies.

digital assessment
digital assessment
Step 2 of Amazing Lesson Design Online (ALDO)

It is also important to note that students are active collaborators in closing this gap since they are involved in the formative assessment process. Some have organized a list of assessment criteria teachers can use, and you can read the complete list in this online document (PDF). But today we’ll focus on assessments that I’ve grouped into understanding checks, checklists, and self-assessment tools. 

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Get PDF version – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R4LmCIqn6vuupDer7478Vww0X3tu14j_/view?usp=sharing

When working with students, keep these three tips in mind when providing feedback:

1. Ask the four questions:

  • What can the student do?
  • What can’t the student do?
  • How does the student’s work compare with that of others?
  • How can the student do better?

2. Take advantage of single-point rubrics to convey expectations.

3. Connect the feedback language you use to specific success criteria. One example might be, “How will I know I have learned this?” Be sure to share that feedback at the start of the lesson (adapted from source).

Group 1: Understanding Checks

Checks for understanding are one aspect of formative assessment. ASCD even published a book on the topic. It can be defined as:

The frequent, interactive checking of student progress and understanding. These checks for understanding identify learning needs. They also allow the teacher to track and adjust teaching.

Adapted from Source: Todd Finley’s Dipsticks to Check for Understanding via Edutopia.org

An example of a type of understanding check is the pre-assessment. The goal of pre-assessment is to discover what students know and to identify what they need to learn. Students can use these to set learning goals and also predict how well they will do.

One idea for formative checks for understanding also comes from Dataworks’ TAPPLE concept:

  • (T)each first
  • (A)sk a specific question
  • (P)ause, Pair-Share, and Point
  • (P)ick a random non-volunteer
  • (L)isten to the Response
  • (E)ffective Feedback
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Are you already thinking of some ways you could use digital tools to (A)sk a specific question about what students have learned, or to (P)ause, Pair-share, and Point?

Since digital tools are flexible and can be used for a wide variety of purposes, they may lend themselves well to checks for understanding. In their session, Destiny and Kristofer shared several powerful and easy digital tools that could be used for understanding checks. Among those tools shared were:

  • Baamboozle. A versatile tool that students can use to create or participate in a wide variety of games. View video.
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Screenshot by author
  • Mentimeter. Provides student polling and creates open-ended results in word clouds out of responses. View video.
  • Pear Deck. Perform “on the fly” assessments with social- emotional health check-ins. It works well with a variety of Google and Microsoft Office products. View video.
  • Plickers. Print coded cards that students can use. The teacher relies on a free app to scan student cards. The direction of the card shows students’ response. View video.
  • Poll Everywhere. Assess students with a simple poll. View video.
  • Socrative. Set up multiple choice, true/false, or short answer assessments. View results in real time via a teacher dashboard. View video.
  • StrawPoll. Create easy-to-embed, mobile-friendly polls students can complete. View video.
digital assessment
Straw Poll Example – https://strawpoll.com/swau1ugve/r

StrawPoll has become one of my new favorites but others at TCEA rely on Gimkit, Kahoot, Quizziz, and Quizlet. Of course, there are others, such as EdPuzzle, Playposit, and more.

free templates

Adapted from David Perkins (2003) The Ladder of Feedback and John Hattie (2014) The Power of Feedback | Get Your Own Copy.

Group 2: Checklists

Use checklists and rubrics to identify and clarify success criteria for students. Think of success criteria as a to-do list for learning intentions. This short twelve minute video can provide some background on success criteria.

One easy tool you can use to create a checklist is simply Google Sheets. Here’s a quick video on how to do that:

You can also create rubrics for students directly in Google Classroom. Here is a quick six minute video on how this can be done.

Group 3: Self-Assessment Tools

Self-assessment tools are used by students to take their own measure. As you might imagine, many of the digital tools shared so far would also work well for this purpose.

Becton Loveless offers these suggestions for students designing their own assessments:

  • Explain what self-assessment is and why it matters
  • Show a model of what it looks like, preferably from previous students
  • Teach students different strategies of self-assessment
  • Have students practice creating assessments, then discuss as a group
  • Conference with students throughout the process

Becton also offers several low-tech examples that may get you thinking. Among those examples you can adapt and use digitally, consider these:

For example, PBIS Rewards offers several ways to create rubrics online. My top three in that list include iRubric, Rubistar, and Teachnology Rubric Generator. And a web search on rubrics will yield many PDF-based rubrics.

Choosing a Digital Tool

Which tool you decide to use will depend on the depth of complexity and funding you have available. For example, Mentimeter, StrawPoll, Plickers are free. With the others, there may be costs associated depending on the features you want. The important point to remember is that creating low-stakes assessments is your focus, and these assessments should always connect to the learning objectives.

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How Principals Can Support Instructional Coaches

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Are you an instructional coach? If you are, then who’s the one person you want in your corner, supporting your efforts? If you said, “campus principal,” you are spot on. Research shows that, without principal support, many initiatives at the campus level fail. Whenever I wanted to push a technology initiative for the good of students and staff, I visited the principal. My campus principal knew how to bring people together, to problem solve and collaborate.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways principals can support instructional coaches. We’ll begin with three important aspects of introducing coaches to campuses.

#1: Cultivate Culture and Climate

If you are a principal, you are immediately responsible for the culture and climate of your school. Ignore the former at the risk of the latter. This truth became evident to me early on in my career. May I share with you how that happened?

When a colleague and I visited a campus in an urban school district, we were both shocked at the wave of negativity there. We felt it as soon as we stepped into the building.  The campus radiated an aura of despair and sadness. Teachers we met with confirmed the feeling.

How had this happened? Even though the principal appeared happy and positive, the underlying culture appeared broken. Trust was lacking. The only values that mattered were the principal’s. Finding out why was easy. Understanding how took years.

Image Source: Culture and Climate

As an instructional coach, when you step onto a campus, you must share the values and norms of that space. Without that shared culture, you will fail. One person who can introduce you, who can vouch for you, is a principal who is in tune with campus culture and climate.

Actions to Take

The climate and culture of school mediate the principal’s impact on learning (source). Some ways to do that include:

  • Identify existing school culture before trying to change it.
  • Make culture (values) and climate (behaviors) transparent to all.
  • Focus on long-term cultural goals to strengthen the learning environment.
  • Achieve real change when you start with school culture, rather than the way the school works.

Culture and climate are bound together. Culture is the values and norms of a school, while climate is the behavior. Researchers report that norms, values, rituals, and climate are all manifestations of culture. Some define culture as shared norms, climate as shared perceptions.

Building a coaching culture involves focuses on shifting unwritten rules. You are shifting values, norms, behaviors, and practices. These build the foundation needed to spread a coaching mindset and practices. The goal is to ensure that coaching becomes a key part of the campus’ identity (adapted from source).

A culture-sensitive principal can assist coaches in navigating the campus cosmology. That is, how everything at that campus came to be. That includes its origin, its development, and what the people there value, as well as how those values manifest themselves in the behavior of a campus. If you want to foster a culture of learning and growth, do what Jim Knight suggests. “Principals  need to do what they expect their teachers to do,” says Jim Knight.

Consider taking these actions on a consistent basis, adopting them slowly over time.

  • Model the actions you want teachers to enact.
  • Work together with staff to identify campus values and behaviors before changing them.
  • Adopt norms, values, and rituals together that reflect who you are as a campus.
  • Immerse instructional coaches in the campus culture and climate.

#2: Embrace Evidence-Based Approaches

Brain-based learning research has powerful implications for what we do in the classroom. But they also speak to our work as campus leaders. Engage the brains of students and staff with approaches that start positive. Work hard to cultivate emotional and physical safety in meetings and interactions. Communicate often, chunk learning, and use collaborative inquiry. Combine the new and unusual to maintain interest in activities that aid learning. Culturally Responsive instruction, wellness, and Social-Emotional Learning are critical.

Adapt evidence-based, instructional strategies for use in classrooms. The work of Mike Bell (author of The Fundamentals of Teaching) combines John Hattie, Robert Marzano, and others. The result is a way to cut low-effect practices that detract from learning. Bell brings together three areas, shown below, and offers up a five-step process.

principal's guide

Image Source: Video, The Fundamentals of Teaching

The five-step process relies on these strategies:

  • Prior knowledge
  • Presenting new material
  • Setting challenging tasks
  • Feedback and improvement
  • Repetition and consolidation

You can find a summary of these ideas and others in the Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO). It contains specific suggestions about strategies and digital tools.

principal's guide

Image Source: DianeSweeney.com, Lessons Learned: Team Coaching Cycles During Hybrid and Distance Learning

#3: Clarify the Coaching Vision and Model

As the instructional leader, involve coaches and campus staff to clarify the coaching vision. Decide on a specific coaching model. This can involve the following actions:

  • Articulate clear roles and responsibilities for coaches.
  • Outline a menu of services.
  • Set up a schedule for one-on-one, small group, and large-group coaching activities.
  • Use coaching cycles, and debrief coaches/teachers to ascertain effectiveness.
  • Avoid combining appraisal and coaching; keep them far apart.

“Create rich opportunities for teachers and coaches to work together,” says Diane Sweeney. The focus must be on “key strategy or instructional practice.” She goes on to encourage you to track how students progress in combination with a new practice.

Begin your journey to supporting instructional coaching with these three guideposts. You will find the negotiation and conversation can be powerful and work affirming.

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lunanotes
ChromebooksEducational ResearchGood Teaching

Digital Notes: Three Steps for Video Annotation

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Need a quick way to annotate YouTube videos? Then look no further than LunaNotes, a new Chrome extension now available. Come along with me as we take a quick look at this YouTube video note composer.

First, though, let’s take a look at why it’s important to add notes to video. It can have a powerful impact on student learning.

lunanotes

View or Get a Copy of the Google Slides version

Notetaking Makes a Difference

You may be familiar with a Surface Learning, evidence-based instructional strategy. This strategy is notetaking and enjoys an effect size of 0.51. Learning how to take notes yields the following benefits:

  • Increased engagement
  • More generative learning
  • Greater self-efficacy

To take full advantage of notetaking, students have to learn the skills involved in taking good notes. This means that note-takers engage in an active process to work through material. Also important is making connections or relating it to their existing knowledge (source).

An Active Process

You may ask, “What does an active process of notetaking entail?” It is not transcribing verbatim. In other words, just having students copy notes that the teacher created is not effective. Instead, students must paraphrase and summarize what they are learning, whether it is from the teacher, a resources like a textbook or website, or each other. These processes stimulate “deeper semantic processing,” and result in generative notetaking.

Generative notetaking pertains to “summarizing, paraphrasing, concept mapping.” Nongenerative notetaking involves copying something verbatim (source).

As students take notes, it’s important that they put what they see and hear in their own words. That is, paraphrase and summarize concepts. This means a three-step approach may be useful when considering digital notetaking.

Digital Notetaking: A Three-Step Process

When employing digital notetaking tools, you want to discourage verbatim transcription of information. Instead, encourage students to do the following:

Step 1: Take notes with paper and pencil.

The benefit of watching a video on the computer and taking notes by hand can stimulate learning as the deeper semantic processing gets the long-term retention results.

Step 2: Type up notes using LunaNotes.

Once you have jotted notes down on paper, review them. Type them up in LunaNotes as you watch the video a second time. Again, the goal is to revisit your notes over time to take advantage of spaced vs massed practice effect.

Step 3: Create a quiz on what you viewed.

Take advantage of the practice testing (a.k.a. retrieval practice) strategy. Create a quiz using one of the many tools available, such as Blooket, Vimboard, Podsie, or Knowt. For example, with Knowt, you can copy-and-paste your LunaNotes into it. Knowt will then create a quiz for you or your students.

Ready to see what LunaNotes can do?

Introducing LunaNotes

With a Chrome or Chromium browser (works fine in Microsoft Edge), get the browser extension. Other compatible browsers include Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi.

You can learn more about LunaNotes online at their website. They offer a short minute and a half video you can watch.

Features make it easy to do the following:

  • Add annotations to any YouTube video
  • Add colors, lists, bold, and other styles
  • Take screenshots of the video and draw on it

Your notes get saved to the cloud, so no need to worry if they disappear.

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Educational ResearchGood Teaching

The Self-Directed Learner: Embracing Self-Judgment and Reflection

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Want to encourage attributes of independent, self-directed learning? Then you will want to cultivate in your students an attitude and practice of reflection. Their ability to reflect on their work and measure progress towards standards is critical. In this blog entry, you will learn about some research on the power of reflection.

Pull the Curtain of Mystery Back for Reflection

“What worked? What didn’t? How could I do it better next time?” Those three questions were the sum of my early attempts at reflection. But I didn’t get to deeper questions until later in my career.

Reflection is something I didn’t know much about as an educator. It was not a practice I encouraged students to engage in. As a writing teacher, my goal was to get students into peer conferencing to ask tough questions that would result in revisions and re-organization of pieces.

Now, research shows that when students do a few specific things, they have the potential to speed their own growth. John Hattie refers to Self-judgment and Reflection as having an effect size of 0.75. This is a bit better than Reciprocal Teaching (d=0.74). The Visible Learning MetaX database describes this introspective strategy in this way:

Self-judgement is a critical component of independent, self- directed learning. Students can often over- or underestimate their own capabilities. Teachers should cultivate in students the ability to apply standards to their own work.

Researchers have pressed the importance of a student’s ability to do the following:

1) reflect on her work; 2) discern its relationship to established standards, and 3) make self-judgements.

But how can students engage in self-judgment and reflection? What strategies might they use and how can teachers support them?

Clarifying Strategies

Meta-analyses suggest two strategies to model for students. Those strategies include:

  • Cultivate metacognitive knowledge instruction in students
  • Use self-developed tests

As you may know, metacognition is “the process of thinking about thinking.” It involves “reflecting on personal habits, knowledge, and approaches to learning” (source). Self-developed tests involve students crafting their own low-stakes quizzes or assessments.

Let’s take a look at some specific approaches you can use.

Approach #1: Confusion Spotlight

Strategy: Metacognition

Ask students to reflect on what they were learning that day. For any area that seems unclear or confusing, ask them to shine a spotlight on it. They can jot these ideas down in a notebook, put them on a post it or index card, or type them into a digital document, and then turn them in.

Marine, Tales from a Very Busy Teacher, suggests using self-assessment bins:

Students turn in their work into one of these bins depending on their level of understanding. It does take a lot of positive culture building, as well as trust, to help students feel comfortable when turning in their work to these bins.

After the first few weeks of school, students know the system and feel confident when turning in their work. It also makes grading a lot easier, as well as pulling students back for small group reteach or extension.

As you can see, Marine relies on the cards to structure reteach groups or get ideas for lesson extensions.

Approach #2: Chalk Talk Activity

Strategy: Metacognition

A silent activity, the Chalk Talk fosters thoughtful contemplation among students. Goals include reflecting on a question or ideas, commenting, and solving problems. Use this approach with a traditional chalkboard, whiteboard, or digital equivalent.

Chalk Talk includes a four step process:

1. Explain that Chalk Talk is a silent activity (no speaking at all). Students learn they can:

  • Write comments on others’ ideas
  • Draw connecting lines from comment to another’s idea, or
  • Respond to questions.

2. Facilitator writes a question on board, then circles it. (See some sample questions below.)

3. All students have a way of writing on the “Chalk Board.”

4. The facilitator can interact by circling other interesting ideas. You can also invite comments and questions or reflections by drawing additional circles around student ideas.

This is a great activity for students to do alone. You can also adapt it for small groups. One student may serve as the “recorder” sharing insights from their team. You can do it in isolation or with a collaborative tool. Collective, class-wide experiences are also engaging.

Finally, there are many electronic or online whiteboard solutions you can use. Three to consider include:

You can also rely on a graphic organizer/semantic mapping tool. Those might include solutions such as Google Drawings, yED Live, or Bubbl.us. Each allows for student collaboration.

Approach #3: Capacity Matrix

Strategy: Metacognition

Use a capacity matrix that outlines key learning targets from the lesson. Right after the lesson begins, ask students to gauge their current knowledge. You can do this with a fist to five Jamboard or use a paper document.

Get fist to five Jamboard template

Marine, Tales from a Very Busy Teacher, shares her insights. She recommends creating learning target cards. Her goal is to make learning targets as visible as possible. As you might suppose, this combines with the powerful Teacher Clarity strategy that focuses students on understanding the learning goal(s).

“…self-assessment tickets help students self reflect and self regulate while they’re learning. I call them “Learning Target Tickets” with my students. They’re pretty simple to use and be used for any lesson, in any content area” (source).

Marine offers these tips for using the learning target tickets:

  • After the engagement activity or attention grabber, state the learning goal.
  • Ask students to write it down on their tickets. Then they can self-assess their level of learning in the “before lesson” column. This is a capacity matrix. I like Marine’s innovation of before lesson/after lesson/teacher analysis. Those rows are something worth incorporating in classroom practice.
  • When the lesson ends, ask students to rate their grasp of the new content in the after lesson column.
  • Ask students to write a short reflection on the lesson.

Afterwards, ask students to share their biggest growth area or reflection. These could be text-based like what Marine makes available to buy. Or you could mix it up a bit with audio (e.g. Vocaroo, Mote), or video (e.g. Flipgrid) options.

Approach #4: Interrogate Your Process

Strategy: Metacognition

Interrogating your process results in valuable information. It can also be painful to try to work through it without external questions. That’s important, though, because you need to be self-judgmental. That is, you need to measure your process against an external standard. Rubrics are helpful for this. So are questions that students can ask themselves.

Here are a few metacognitive questions with that aim in mind. Consider these below, an excerpt of the complete list:

  • What process did you go through to produce this piece?
  • What problems did you encounter while you were working on this piece? How did you solve them?
  • What resources did you use while working on this piece? Which ones were especially helpful? Which ones would you use again?
  • Did you meet your standards? Did your goals for this product change?
  • In what ways did your work meet (and not meet) the standards for this assignment?

You can find more in this  longer question set.

Created by author. Get a copy

Approach #5: Pupil, Test Thyself

Strategy: Self-Developed Tests

This final approach to fostering self-judgment and reflection includes student-created assessments. There are a multitude of digital tools you can make available to your students.

Since I have addressed this in other blog entries, I won’t do more than point you to some of them below:

Give these approaches a try when fostering reflection and self-judgment in your classroom. The gains are worth the effort for students.

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Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO) created by author
Educational ResearchGood Teaching

Meet ALDO: Amazing Lesson Design Outline

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Ever wish you had an easy-to-follow checklist when designing learning for students? I know I have…often. Some of my colleagues effortlessly design amazing lessons, but I have to plod through each point. But lesson design is something that is critical to ultimate success in the classroom for each student. That’s why I’d like to take a moment to share my latest version of the outline I use. At the end, you will find a custom GPT you can use to get an AI spin on ALDO.

You can also explore this choice board organized with the outline in mind:

ALDO Choice Board
Get your own copy

As you work through this list, ask yourself, “What schema or plan do I follow?” If you show me your district’s mandated lesson plan format, well, that may not get the job done. At the end of this blog entry, I’ll share a heuristic, a Google Doc, that you can use. I like it because it combines many resources in one place and works to help you more efficiently plan your lesson design.

For now, let’s work through the major components of my Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO). Ready? Let’s get started.

Did You Know?

Robert M. Gagne’s Theory of Instruction (1965) offers some suggestions worth revisiting. He divides instruction into nine events. Those events include 1) Gaining attention; 2) Informing learners of objectives; 3) Stimulating recall of prior learning; 4) Presenting the stimulus; 5) Providing learning guidance; 6) Eliciting performance; 7) Providing feedback; 8) Assessing performance; and, 9) Enhancing retention and transfer. You might also enjoy Mike Schmoker’s Focus: Elevating the Essentials visual  or Madeline Hunter’s version. Some prefer the Gradual Release Model. When considering amazing lesson design, it’s important to remember this is well-traveled ground. Find what inspires you.

1 – Relationships First: Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Connections

Image Source: CASEL

“Teachers must place a strong emphasis on rigor, relevance, but most of all, on developing relationships with children,” says Dr. Asa Hiliard, former Director of Urban Studies at Georgia State University. I’ve seen this firsthand. Let me share that with you.

Watching my wife, a masterful second grade teacher, you’d never guess she had an outline. Her lesson design first includes building powerful relationships with her students. It has her finding out what TV shows they like, what they like to eat, their life story, and building connections through an ongoing conversation with her class. She focuses in to connect academic content to specific students. Her approach leaves me in awe. When she asks her students to get to work, they do. When it’s time to behave, they do.

The first part of my lesson design outline? It’s build relationships. As Dr. James Comer (Yale University) says:

No significant learning can occur without a significant relationships of mutual respect, teacher to student.

“Brain-based learning can positively impact student motivation, attitudes and academic achievement,” say researchers. Without relationships, students won’t trust what you have to say. Absent powerful relationships between students, you have no community. And that would be a tragedy because of the next step.

2 – Assessment

As coaches and teachers, we have to, as Dr. John Hattie says, “Know our impact.” If you don’t know where students are, you will be unable to give them feedback on future growth. Worse, students won’t be able to self-regulate their own learning when given feedback. Students have to be clear on what they are to know and do. They have to know where they stand in their own learning relevant to growth.

To gauge where students are in their learning, you need to assess them before, during, and after. And those assessments can be low-stakes. They can tie into a wide variety of strategies that are proven to work, including retrieval practice and spaced vs massed practice. They can also rely on a wide variety of digital tools designed for that purpose.

Tip: You may want to use the SOLO Taxonomy to chart student growth. Learn more about SOLO via this blog entry.

3 – Teaching and Learning

The first step for those savvy with brain-based learning research is to engage students. Once you have figured how to best engage students, give thought to another question.

“What high-impact approaches align to the learning intention?” That’s a question that kept me up and reading. How can we align effective, evidence-based strategies to students’ learning needs? You can find a variety of evidence-based, high-effect size strategies that you can use at the best time.

Remember, only rely on one strategy at a time. For example, don’t try to put in place two teaching strategies like direct instruction and flipped classroom. Pick one. The same for students. Avoid trying to teach students to do concept mapping and outlining at the same time. Focus on one until you and your students can do it really well.

Social Media Response to ALDO

Thanks to those of you on social media who have shared ALDO with others. Here’s what some of you are saying:

Fantastic visual representation of the stages of learning and using a critical lense when creating lesson experiences! I can’t wait to use this with our new Ts as they continue to deepen their thinking abt. teaching/learning. Thx! via Meg Burke

Thank you for this wonderful resource! I’m definitely sharing it with my teachers! After having a coaching conversation this morning with a teacher about her PBL lessons, this is a great resource for deep and transfer teaching/learning with intentional design. TY via Myla Lee

The “Amazing Lesson Design Outline” (ALDO) created by Miguel Guhlin @mguhlin for @TCEA features mountains of terrific teaching strategies intuitively organized. Wow! https://bit.ly/3A99v6M via Todd Finley

Great distinction between Surface, Deep, and Transfer Learning. via LanguageTeachingLab

Did You Know?

Get a guided introduction to Hattie’s work via the TCEA Strategies That Work courses. What’s more, you get powerful videos, a $49 TCEA membership, and CPE hours for the same or less than buying a book. You have fifteen courses to choose from, including the latest Evidence-Based Teaching course.

The Evidence-Based Teaching course provides a detailed walkthrough of the Amazing Lesson Design Outline (ALDO), including the research underpinnings. It’s the perfect way to introduce your instructional coaches, teachers, and administrators to research that works. Participants earn 12 CPE hours, a digital badge, and certificate upon completion.

 

4 – Assess and Gauge Progress

As you did in Step Two, take a moment to re-assess students. Discover where they are in relation to the learning objective(s). You can rely on existing goals.

ALDOA Cry for Help: I Can’t Form an Online Community

An email request for help came in the other day. My diagnosis? The teachers had not put in place (yet) what they needed to create a sense of community. As a result, it made everything they tried to do difficult. My prescription? Intensify relationship-building efforts with teachers and students. Also, put into place the following tips:

1- Model for teachers social and emotional learning opportunities for virtual classroom use appropriate for the middle school students.

2- Set up criteria, such as a rubric, not as a staff assessment but, for a self-assessment checklist teachers can use when planning lessons. That checklist is the Amazing Learning Design Outline (ALDO) that appears later in this blog entry.

3-Adapt evidence-based strategies to support instruction. For example, this includes direct instruction, jigsaw for introducing concepts and ideas, classroom discussion and/or reciprocal teaching for digging deeper, problem-based teaching, and self-reported grades. Remember, use only one strategy at a time depending on the learning intention.

4-Implement coaching for results. I like Diane Sweeney’s model and suggest you explore the Coaching for Results series (Parts Three, Four, and Five are relevant here). Diane Sweeney has a handy one-pager that is designed to assist coaches with teacher work. It incorporates formative assessments, including entry/exit tickets.

5 – Reflect

Make sure to take some time to reflect on what worked and what did not for both you and your students. What role did technology play in enhancing teaching and learning? You might also ask yourself, What could I do differently next time? How can I assist students in becoming more metacognitive about their own learning experience?

Remember that reflection isn’t only for you as the teacher. It is also for students to engage in.

Get ALDO, the Amazing Lesson Design Outline

Ready to get the ALDO? Keep it by your side as you are planning a lesson or preparing activities. The links to digital tools and resources will soon become gateways to new ideas.

Let’s take a moment to walk through the creation of the prompt via video:

Test the ALDO Coach GPT

Update 1/20/2024: Please note that ALDO has been updated with the latest effect sizes from the Visible Learning MetaX database, and converted to Canva format (Canva is free for educators). Feel free to make copies and share widely so long as credit is given as indicated and original authors (cited in bibliography on page one) remain included.

Get a copy of ALDO v2 (shown above) | View Full Size

Want to view the OLD ALDO v1? Use these links: View the ALDO v1 | Get a Copy of v1

 

 

 

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brain-based
Educational Research

Brain-Based Strategies That Work

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Wondering about the connection between brain-based research and high-effect size instructional strategies? I’ve always wondered at what point these two connect. In this blog entry, I’ll try to share my understanding of how they do.

Before We Start, A Quick Reminder

As I’ve mentioned before, there is a plethora of pop research. That is, brain research that is popular, yet inaccurate. Here’s a quick review of brain myths that are completely untrue in case you missed some of the latest updates.

brainy

Increasing Long-Term Retention and Performance

If you put brain-based learning in place, you will see increased knowledge retention; it’s simply a fact. What’s more, you will see improved academic performance (source). As we know, brain-based learning strategies affect more than the skills our children learn. They can also affect social and emotional development and improve motivation and attitude.

How might teachers be more deliberate about incorporating brain-based teaching approaches?

Brain-Based Teaching Approaches

Several ways you can engage students’ brain include the following:

  • Start positive and cultivate physical and emotional safety in the class.
  • Inject suspense into your lesson by adding suspenseful pauses.
  • Movement activates the brain. Incorporate movements that support learning activities relevant to content.
  • Chunk the learning into small, manageable pieces 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.

Be aware that nutrition, sleep, and exercise also play a key role in brain health. Explore this Wakelet meta-collection on Improving Brain Function.

brainy

Blending Brain-Based Approaches and Strategies That Work

As you can see from the chart above, there are a wide variety of teaching approaches. The approaches shown run the gamut from brain-based to high-effect size strategies. The high-effect size instructional strategies address items featured in Hattie’s Visible Learning. 

You can see that there are some strategies and approaches that appear on both lists. Those include some of the following. I have addressed missing strategies in other blog entries.

  • Teacher-Student Relationships (d=0.48). This strategy focuses on “the quality of the relationships in the classroom. The more safe and supported students feel, the better the academic outcomes (source).
  • Practice Testing (d=0.46). Known also as retrieval practice, this involves frequent quizzing over a period of time. It encourages students’ recall of material from memory. The more students recall material learned before, the more significant the retention (source).
  • Rehearsal (d=0.73). This refers to mental techniques for helping students remember information. It can include memorization, organizing data at random and then repeating it to a visual cue (source).

As you might imagine, this overlap of instructional strategies has a positive effect. It also signals exactly what strategies we can use to great effect.

“We do not want evidence – we want good evidence, evidence that we can interpret to make a difference in the school and class, and we want big picture thinking based on these interpretations of this evidence.”

Source: As cited: John Hattie, Author of Visible Learning

Overlapping Research and Experts on What Works

In The Fundamentals of Teaching, Mike Bell presents a compilation of strategies that work. Hattie’s endorsement of his book, quoted above, makes a powerful point. Several areas of research highlight specific strategies. Some of the strategies he sees of value include:

  • Prior knowledge
  • Presentation
  • Feedback
  • Repetition

In this blog entry, I’ve shared how brain-based learning research aligns to a few strategies. The ones highlighted in bold are also brain-based. As you might imagine, any solid instruction will incorporate these strategies. Mike Bell suggests teachers can improve learning by first focusing on what works and then second, ridding ourselves of time-consuming, low-effect size practices. You can listen to him present the key concepts in his video below.

I encourage you to continue to explore evidence-based strategies. You can find quite a bit on the topic here at TCEA, in blog entries and online, self-paced courses.

Study the Research

Here are a few reliable sources of research. This list is adapted from Bell’s list. For your convenience, find the links below:

Brain-Based Strategies

Here are two strategies I rely on. What are your favorites?

#1: Inside-Outside Circle

  1. Pair students up.
  2. Form one circle with students facing out (Inside Circle)
  3. Remaining students find and face their partners (Outside Circle)
  4. Pose a question and indicate what role each partner will play. For instance, “What are three ways to engage students’ brains?”
    Inside partner speaks; outside partner listens.”
  5. Pause for think time.
  6. Switch roles—the outside partner talks; inside partner listens.
  7. After that, the outside circle rotates clockwise, and each student ends up with a new partner.
  8. Repeat process with a new question:
    “What is one way YOU start positive with your students?”

Brain-Based Strategy #2: Sage and Scribe

Develop students’ ability to explain concepts in a clear manner. Taking notes or detailing the process in writing also is a surface learning activity, great for introducing new ideas, skills. 

  1. Students work in pairs. Designate one student as the sage (speaker), the other as the scribe (silent writer).
  2. Ask a question and allow a few moments for sages to think. For example: “Explain how concept mapping works.”
  3. When the teacher says “Begin,” the sage explains the process to the scribe.
  4. The scribe writes down the sage’s spoken version of the process on paper (or types it).
  5. Once time has expired, sage and scribe switch places to respond to a new question. For example: “What is one way you can use bell ringers, or entry/exit tickets, in the classroom?
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