Notes from Research Ed Denver

I am at the Rocky Mountain Mind, Brain and Education conference put on by Research Ed in Denver.  These are my raw notes.  They may be mixed with my own thoughts, but they will not be in a coherent form until I have a chance to process them later.  Also, the 3:30 session will be missing because I am speaking during that session!  If you want notes for that, you can got my website, thelearninghawk.com and find them under the Presentation Resources tab. 

Keynote:  Dr. Jim Heal - Mental Models: Cognitive Keys to Effective Teaching

Book coming out in the spring of next year on this topic.

What do we mean by mental models? 

• A cognitive blueprint for how to do something 
• What does success at this thing look like
• What you draw upon when making decisions in the moment

Mental models are developed in real time and over time.  When a soccer player scans the field (average 150 per game - Messi 680 per game), he is putting together a picture of what the game looks like at that moment.

Teaching is complex - "The only time medicine ever approaches the complexity of an average day for a classroom teacher is an an emergency room during a natural disaster." - Lee Shulman

All techniques can be done at on a spectrum of fidelity.  Are you doing retrieval practice in a low resolution way or a high resolution way?  Low resolution is just carrying it out.  High resolution is knowing what you are doing, but also how and why you are doing it on a deep level.

Schema Theory - a network of interrelated concepts of ideas that we make more robust and useful over time.  Example: A four legged creature that is furry and goes woof approaches.  Your mind accesses your schema of things that fit into those categories and determine it has more dogginess than other things. Your schema then informs your response.  If your schema of dogs includes fear, you will run away.  If it includes love, you will pet the dog.  

Don't skip from the simple to the complex too quickly.

Students can't build a schema for something if they have no point of reference or background knowledge or if it is presented in a distracting way.  There is a difference between understanding the words and understanding what the words mean in a specific context.  You have to know enough to access what you need to access.  For example: if you didn't grow up watching baseball, it may feel like this.  With missing items in your schema, you are reading a redacted document, but because our minds are wired to make meaning, we fill in with guesses about what we think we are seeing.  This corrupts the schema for the future.  

The less a student knows, the harder it is to acquire more knowledge.  The new knowledge MUST fit meaningfully in what you already know.  

Chess board study - Three groups of people (Chess masters, quite good chess players, and chess novices) were shown a collection of chess boards in mid game and asked to remember the placement of the pieces.  The chess masters were able to remember significantly more than the other two groups.  Then, the boards were changed to a random arrangement, not like something that would happen in actual game play.  Then, all of the groups remembered the same low amount.  In the first scenario, people with more knowledge remembered because they weren't seeing pieces, they were seeing something with meaning.  Once it had no meaning, prior knowledge didn't help.

Even the stories we grow up with influence our schema.  A scenario was presented about a treasure hunter going into a cave with many branched tunnels who had nothing with him but a flashlight and a bag.  Students were asked to predict what was the best way for him to make sure he didn't get lost on the way out.  American students correctly answered 75% of the time (vs. 25% of Chinese students) because they had grown up with the story of Hansel and Gretel.  When a scenario was presented with a corresponding Chinese fairy tale, the numbers reversed.  

How do we expect students to think?    Do we expect them to have the parts of the knowledge they need to make meaningful and robust connections?  What do we do if they don't?  We can change the way a question is asked to reduce the cognitive load required to make meaningful connections (or have them memorize the fundamentals ahead of time).

If you want them to move from their current state to the desired state, you must given them the information so they can guess and check along the way.  Otherwise, you aren't teaching; you are giving them a riddle without hope of an answer.

How do we ensure they activate the right kinds of prior knowledge for the content we are teaching?  It's not guaranteed in your classroom, which is why you need a sophisticated mental model for teaching.

Rock Climber Model - Prior knowledge is the foot hold.  New knowledge is the handhold.  Teachers bridge that gap.  When climbing, the handhold becomes the new foothold.  This is also true in learning.

1. Where do I want my students to end up?
1. Do this with precision by doing the activities you want them to do and see what is important about it.
2. Where are they starting from?
1. What can I reliably assume my students already know that is relevant?
3. How do I bridge the gap?
1. Make analogies or connections from what they already know to your objective.  What is the underlying structure you can reveal even if the surface features are different?  (Division vs. dealing cards equally). You aren't "meeting them where they are at" by making it cool or fun but by making an actual deep connection between something they know.  One is the outward illusion of relevance and the other is connecting new knowledge to prior knowledge.
4. How can I avoid pitfalls and slips along the way?
1. Make sure your connections are accurate and relevant.

The book will have multiple mental models.  The rock climber is just one of them.  

Session 1:  Andrew Watson - Thinking Creates Learning, The Essentials of Working Memory

Learning happens inside the human mind, so educators have a lot ot learn from those who study mental functions.

"Memory is the residue of thought." - Dan Willingham 

You cannot say, "Research says this, and therefore you must . . ."  What you can say is "Research found these principles. Use them to inform your decision making about your practice."

Working memory - A temporary system that selects, holds, reorganizes, and combines information from many sources.

Pulling from multiple streams of informations (alphabetizing the days of the week means pulling up the days, the order of the alphabet, and English spellings) requires a lot of working memory just to select and hold before you even get to reorganizing.

Students using working memory ALL of the time.  Very few things (only things that are firmly in long term memory with no other demand) don't require it.

Working memory is obvious crucial, but it is also limited and cannot be increased with training (the only thing that makes it bigger is aging from 4 to early 20s).  Play Lumosity games for enjoyment, but don't think it will increase your working memory; they were fine for false claims.  Teachers must be relentless about managing working memory demands.

Ask questions:

1. Can I predict working memory overload before it happens?  If so, I can prevent some.
2. Can I recognize working memory overload while it happens?  If so, I can address it in real time.

Session 2: Helen Reynolds - Three Research-informed Strategies that have been Game-changers in My Classroom

The Big Picture - The Brain and the Landscape

• Talking to students about their brains.  Help them to understand learning in a way they can apply.
• Advance organizers - Help students know where they are going.  Map out the terrain so the student can see it the way you see it.  Hang the "objectives" in the room, but not in the curriculum language - in language that helps them understand why they are doing what they are doing.

Breaking it Down - Explicit Instruction

• Explicit instruction is not lecturing because you are interacting with students and pausing to check for understanding all of the time.  Rosenshine and Sweller provide good research on why these work.
• Explicit instruction creates fewer working memory demands than other forms of instruction.
• Whiteboards for brain dumping, turn and talk, teacher organizes what they are producing on the board and asked them to consider why she organized it the way she did.
• Chunking into small steps
• I do/we do/you do guided practice
• Novices are NOT little experts
• Stop to ask questions

Building it Up - Spaced Retrieval Practice

• Retrieval practice - Pulling it out of your brain helps you to "cement it" in your brain.
• Shed Loads of Practice (SLOP)
• Weekly retrieval quizzes - low stakes (either don't grade it all or let them correct it for 100%) with questions that are spaced over time.

Be explicit about what you are doing, why you are doing it that way, what you are thinking while you are doing it.

Panel Discussion - Using the Science of Learning for Equity

First, we have to want to reach every single student.  We must design for the students at the margins.

The way you were taught is not necessarily the best way to teach.  Find out about the science of learning so you aren't perpetuating errors from the past.  (Personal note:  That doesn't mean you have to throw out things just because they are traditional.  It means do the work to find out why things work so you can choose from old and new thoughtfully.)

Start your lesson plans from the standpoint of those who need the most support rather than adding them on after your "normal" plan.

You have to show up and learn what works.  It's a moral imperative.  

If you are sharing research, you have to find digestible books and articles.  Not every researcher is a writer, and most people aren't trained in interpreting scientific studies.  Find authors that people will be wiling to read.  (I suggest Daniel Willingham, Andrew Watson, Barbara Oakley, John Almarode, Bradley Busch, and Peps McCrea.)

This should not be an initiative.  It should be the heart of what we do.

Invite policy makers into your schools and classrooms.  They need to see what works and what doesn't.  Amplify the stories of your students.  Advocate for what works publicly.  

Session 3: Mary Fran Park - Transforming Student Learning - Strategies from the book Making It Stick

You have to be careful what you assume they know.  Teach the essential basics at the beginning of the year.

Make It Stick:  The Science of Successful Learning by Brown, Roediger, and McDanil

Illusion of Knowing

• Memorizing, Rereading, highlighting the book, and rewriting notes are ineffective strategies.  They lead to the illusion of mastery, but it is a poor example of metacognition.
• Retrieval practice allows them to check their own knowledge and reinforces, moving things from short term to long term memory.
• Turn think, pair, share into write, pair, share.  If they start talking right away, they haven't taken time to think.
• Low or no stakes quizzes.  Call it something else if it helps, but you must have them retrieve.
• Shuffle your flashcards for spacing and interleaving
• Distribute practice to give time for myelenation.
• IF you don't allow for some forgetting, they won't move it into long term memory.
• One page summaries - Having them translate it into a picture form makes them have to analyze and summarize

Session 4:  Paige Jennings - Cognitive Load Theory: What Every Educator Should Know

Dylan William says Cognitive Load Theory is the single most important thing any classroom teacher can understand.

Tapping into the already existing schema (accessing prior knowledge) decereases cognitive load.

Cognitive Load Theory is an information processing model in three parts

1. Sensory memory - what we take in
2. Working Memory - holding onto what we are paying attention to in the moment
3. Long Term Memory - Encode, retrieve to strengthen encoding

When you start to forget, you go through retrieval practice and "interrupt the forgetting."

Recommended Making It Stick

Reduce Extraneous Load - Consider how many other things may be in a student's working memory than just your content.  This is extraneous load.  It can come from room decorations, hunger, anger, the crush one of your students has on another, or instructions with two many steps.

Intrinsic Load - These are things we can manage, not eliminate.  Explicit (direct) instruction puts less demand on working memory.  Worked examples, chunking, and graphic organizers can help if used well.

Germane Load - This is the load you want.  It is one connects to your learning.  It's in your long term memory and giving your working memory a break.  Retrieval, spacing, interleaving, elaborative interrogation, and problem solving will help make the content stick.

Reflections on Learning and the Brain Conference - Part 3 - Well-Being and Happiness

Each year, when I attend the Learning and the Brain conference, I return with a very full brain, and much of what is in it is disconnected.  So, in order to process all of it, I look for themes and write about them.  This year, there will be three.  The first was on thinking and learning.  Last week was about meaning and purpose, and this final one is about well-being and happiness.  

It's no surprise to any teacher that we are in a crisis of student anxiety.  While the pandemic didn't help, it also didn't start this crisis.  Reports of unhappiness, loneliness, fear, and worry were on the rise starting about five years before Covid.  It seems to line up pretty well with the onset of smartphone ubiquity.  A student's ability to have their device on them at all times meant there was no escape from bullying and FOMO and no time to process anything before we were expected to comment on it.  According to Dr. Richard Davidson, author of The Neuroscience of Compassion, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, and The Science of Meditation, among many other books, isolation is now classified as an epidemic based on studies from 2003 to 2020.

The bad news is that lack of social connection is a major risk factor for many chronic health problems.  From hypertension to obesity to the premature onset of Alzheimer's disease, there are few conditions that aren't exacerbated by the absence of deep and meaningful relationships.  

The good news is that well-being is a skill, so it can be learned and practiced.  You can train yourself to be present in the moment (Mindfulness doesn't have to mean yoga).  You can take a few minutes each week to assess how connected you feel to your coworkers and your surroundings and take steps to improve them by taking a walk with a work friend during lunch (making your more connected to people) or do something to fill a need at work or church (making you feel more of a sense of place).  The number one factor in staying connected is having a sense of purpose because it helps you to imagine the future and your part in it.  This is the reason why some retired people thrive and others die soon after.  Those who use the time to volunteer, care for children, or effect change in their community live much longer than those who view retirement as a time of extended vacation.

Learning new things and making meaning of what you are learning also improves your sense of well being and helps you live longer.  Teachers, we have the ability to help our students view their learning as more meaningful than passing a test or job training.  We can help them see the awe and wonder that we do in our content.  And, if everyone in the class is seeing it, there is power in the feeling of belonging.  Their learning schema and their social schema overlap, giving a deeper and more complete understanding of the world.

In an 85 years long (and still running) study on happiness, there were four trends in the people who reported more sustainable happiness.  They were

• social support. 
• the freedom to make life choices. 
• the opportunity to be generous with time, money, effort, or expertise.
• high trust level in those around them.  

Notice that money is not on this list.  It did show up in reports of loneliness, which did correlate with those making below $24,000 per year.  (My conclusion - not those of the researchers - from that correlation is that people making very low amounts of money are probably working a lot of hours and perhaps at odd times and, therefore, have less opportunity for social connection.  It's not caused by lack of money but by the circumstances.)  Money spent on experiences rather than stuff is a better investment in well-being.  Being curious is a free way to gain social interaction.  If you go to a free event at your local museum about something you find interesting, you will also find other people there who find it interesting as well.  You could strike up a conversation with someone about that shared interest and find well-being in the process.  That may be the only conversation you ever have with them, or you might find that you share so much you start a club.

The other good news is that you don't have to make a major life change to make this happen.  You can take small repeated actions.  Text a friend you haven't seen in a while.  Have a weekly lunch with a colleague.  Donate to a cause (a small amount monthly might be better for you than a larger one time donation); if you don't have money, make a point to volunteer one day per month.  Visit the free or low cost events in your area (museums and libraries and churches hold a lot of them) on weekends.  

The point is that we can structure our lives in such a way that we combat isolation with small sustainable changes.  Take one action today.

Reflections from Learning and the Brain Conference - Part 2 - Meaning and Purpose

Each year, when I attend the Learning and the Brain conference, I return with a very full brain, and much of what is in it is disconnected.  So, in order to process all of it, I look for themes and write about them.  This year, there will be three.  Last week's was on thinking and learning.  This second one is about meaning and purpose, and the third will be about well-being and happiness.  

If you ask teachers or school leaders to think about what they want for their students, the word purpose is likely to arise.  The GRACE vision statement talks about God's plan for our students' lives.  Look at the surveys of empty nesters or the recently retired, and you will find that they initially struggle because, unless they are intentional about redirecting, they have lost their sense of purpose (having defined it wrongly in the first place).  Professional athletes like Tiger Woods won't retire because they don't know who they are without their sport.  It's the only purpose they feel they have.  This is not true and represents job idolatry, but that's a rant for a different post.

It turns out that research into how we learn also involves a sense of purpose and meaning.  According to the work of Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, the way kids make meaning out of the things they witness enables processes of adaptive change in their brains. It influences the white matter of their cerebral cortex and makes more connections between neurons.  So the psychology of learning has a biological effect, and biology has psychological effects.  Even between people, there is feedback between the emotions of one person and the biology of another.  We've all had the experience of a friend's tears or a supervisor's anger making us feel sick.  When a baby focuses its gaze on us and smiles, there are physical changes in our heart rate.  Petting a dog or cat is thought to lower a person's blood pressure.  Since we aren't carved up pieces, we cannot separate physical neurology from psychological change.

What does this mean for my classroom?  Quite a few things, actually.  It shows us that a teacher's emotional state influences the class' physical atmosphere.  If I remain calm, students are less likely to spiral into a hormonal spin.  If I let them work me up, we create a dangerous cycle.  In past posts, I've called this "feeding the crazy."

It also means that I should carefully approach how to help my students make meaning of their learning.  This doesn't mean I am going to ask them how they feel about Newton's Second Law, but it might mean I should put them in the problem.  If they can get a physical sense of applying a force (even just in their minds), they can make the meaning of it more real.  

In her keynote address, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang showed a poem that her daughter wrote to her baby brother, Teddy.  She told him that she loved him "more than the whole earth-size."  Having just learned they lived on a very large ball of dirt that floated through space and moved around the sun, this second-grader connected her love for her brother, which she couldn't quite wrap her head around to the size and movement of the planet, which she also couldn't quite wrap her head around.  Making these connections is a natural process, but we can leverage it to make better use of it for our lessons.  We can connect the slope of a graph to a slowly or rapidly changing process that is common to students (or ask them to suggest a connection).

Daniel Willingham also discusses how having a student connect content to deeper meaning helps their memory.  He recommends a relatively slow process for using flashcards.  We typically fly through them pretty quickly if we are getting the answer right, but he suggests stopping after each card to ask yourself a why question.  So, you have answered the question "What is the relationship between volume and pressure?" with "Inverse."  Now, ask yourself why is that relationship inverse rather than direct?  Connecting to the meaning creates a more complex story that may involve emotion (e.g. The balloon will pop if the pressure is high enough, which will startle me) and will cause more change in the brain.  

Students have long wanted to understand the purpose of what they are learning.  This is one of the reasons we get asked the question "When am I ever going to use this in real life?"  There are a lot of ways to handle that question, but you don't actually have to convince them that they will use it as an individual.  It can be enough that they know this information is used by someone.  As John Almarode says, "They just need to know that it means something more than the grade in the grade book."  If engineers use it, tell them.  If poets, artists, doctors, CPAs, factory workers, or receptionists use it, your students will benefit from knowing that.  It will help them see purpose and meaning in what they are learning.  

By the way, it is unlikely they will admit it in that moment, so don't get your hopes up for them to say, "Oh, great.  Now, I'm cool with doing the hard thing you have asked me to do."  Just know that your explanation did have a deeper long-term effect on their brain than what you are seeing.

It Was Just in Someone's Mind

This morning, in a post-camp haze, I was mindlessly flipping through channels.  Being Sunday morning, there were a number of church services, and a passed one with a very large and exceptionally skilled choir.  They were singing The Hallelujah Chorus. While I am not sure why they were singing this in July, I am happy to hear this song any time, so I stayed and enjoyed the rapturous crescendo that defines that incredible work, missing being in such a choir (because hearing that song from an audience is nothing compared to being surrounded by it).  As it ended, it occurred to me that, because it was written in 1741, there was a time when that song did not exist.  What then struck me was what it must have been like to be Handel, to have never heard that song before, and then to have had it in your mind.  What must that feel like? 

Creativity and imagination are words we have cheapened in our culture. Like most other good words, we have overused them to the point of meaninglessness or used them in a context they are too big for.  When we tell students that part of their grade on a project will be for creativity, what too many teachers have meant is that they will give points for making it pretty.  All you need is a little glitter to get creativity points (which is disadvantaging to boys, by the way - a project can be awesome and ugly at the same time and there is far too much glitter in the world).  We also act like poets and visual artists and dancers are creative, while scoffing at the idea of a creative scientist.  This comes, I believe, from a misunderstanding of what creativity means.  Creativity, as defined by Sir Ken Robinson, is "the process of having original ideas that have value."  It is original thinking, and it's part of being made in the image of God. He is creative, so we are creative.

But it starts with something else we seem to have trouble grasping the definition of - imagination.  Again, we use it too often out of context.  Anyone who says kind of silly things is praised for having a good imagination, but we are making that word too small.  Imagination is one of the things that sets humans apart from the rest of creation.  It means having an image in our minds of something that does not exist.  Imagination enables us to envision the outcome of various choices we might make.  It allows us to hold imaginary arguments in our heads before having real ones.  It gives writers the ability to create stories and movie makers to create new worlds, but it is also what enabled the construction of a highway system before there had been one.  Before there was ever a skyscraper, someone envisioned it.  Far from being the exclusive realm of artists, imagination is held by all humans.  It is the gift from God that has allowed us to create and advance culture, to dream, to write, to invent, to describe the atom, and to travel to the moon.

Handel imagined a song he had never heard before, and a in Japanese civil engineer imagined this highway interchange.  Did he intend for it to look like a brain?  I don't know.  But, it took a nurtured and well-trained brain to make it happen.  It started with an image in his mind.  He then had to figure out how to get it out of his mind, onto paper, into the mind of someone else who saw its value.  They had to make a plan for how to make it a reality, pitch it to a group of people that would also see its value, get funding, materials, and labor.  They then had to teach those people the plan.  Those people then had to execute it.  

This blog is meant to be about education, so here's the connection.  Kids have tons of imagination, and sometimes, we unintentionally squelch it when we should be nurturing it.  There are a million products that are supposed to stimulate imagination.  While some of the people who design these may be well-meaning, the majority are just monetizing parental insecurities.  We don't have to stimulate creativity in children because God already gave it to them.  Our job is to keep them from losing it.  If a child mentions a crazy idea (which they do at least two or three times a day), it is true but unhelpful to say, "That's crazy.  The world doesn't work that way."  It would be more helpful to say, "What would that look like?" or "How would you do that?"  That allows them to elaborate on the image in their mind.  Keep them talking about the original idea they have.

Developing a child's imagination and creativity doesn't have to be difficult, and it doesn't have to cost money.  In fact, you only really need two sentences.  "That's interesting.  Tell me more."

Give Your Brain a Break

I had something planned to write about this week.  I know I did.  I spent time thinking about it and pre-writing in my head when I was out walking last week.  I cannot, however, remember what it was.  I normally post on Sundays, but I didn't post yesterday because when I sat down to write, I couldn't remember what I was going to write about.  I thought perhaps I would remember by this morning, but it hasn't happened.  Yesterday, my mom and I spent some time with my 94-year-old granny.  She has said a number of things lately that we believe is remembering things from months ago but believing they happened this week.  You may have found difficulty in recent weeks, searching for the next word you want to say or remembering what you had planned to do next.  We are all a mental step behind where we are accustomed to being.

Part of the reason for our mental slowness is the imbalance of neurotransmitters that come from social distancing.  Some of it is due to the diet many adopted during the pandemic as it did not include the nutrients that were good for the brain and did include ingredients that are bad for cognitive function.  If you aren't making a concerted effort to get some sunlight, your brain will be affected as well.  If you have noticed a more profound drop in the past few weeks than the rest of the pandemic, it is likely your brain is also suffering from the impact of world events on your mental function.  Even if they are not impacting your life directly, if they are in the back of your mind, they are taking up space in your working memory.  That lowers your ability to hold as many other things in your mind at once as you usually do.

So, what can we do?  I addressed some strategies back in April in my post about isolation as a single person.  Here are a few ideas.

Eat right - It's time to stop using the pandemic as an excuse to eat trash.  You know what you are supposed to do, and you are an adult who can make decisions, so make better ones.  In particular, for your brain, you need vitamins E and D and Omega 3 fatty acids.  You can supplement if you have to, but it is always better absorbed in the context of food and natural digestion.

Get some exercise - You don't have to reorganize your life to put in an hour-long, extra-strenuous workout.  I'm talking about going for a walk.  Take a lap around the outside of your house.  The mental break, fresh air, and vitamin D inducing sunlight will help your brain function.

Put your phone down - I know everyone has grown to think of their phone as a part of their left hand, but it doesn't have to be.  The non-stop scroll of news and social media posts about the news are keeping it in your working memory.  Set a time boundary (half an hour in the morning or one hour in the evening, scrolling during lunchtime - whatever works for you) on your exposure to news.  Reading the same story over and over again makes your brain respond as if the event were happening over and over again.  You aren't more informed.  You are more anxious, and it is bad for your brain.

Challenge your brain - Do something to keep your brain exercised.  I do a daily crossword puzzle.  You might want to read a chapter of a book and do Sudoku.  It doesn't really matter what it is as long as it provides a good amount of challenge for your brain, keeping it stimulated and working.  When you are trying to remember something, don't just Google it right away.  Give your brain some time to try to remember it.

Cut yourself (and others) some slack - I'm an organizer and a planner, and I try to teach my kids to organize as well.  It's an important part of equipping them for life, so I am have always held them to due dates and deadlines.  I take their late work, but there is a penalty, because I don't believe I am preparing them for adult life (where bills have late fees and there are consequences to submitting applications late) if I don't hold them accountable for when something is due.  I am, however, cutting them way more slack during this time.  Because I know we are ALL having trouble with our working memory, I am not penalizing them for something being late by a day, and I am reminding them more if things are missing.  I am giving less penalty for late submissions than I used to.  The EduTwitter mob would find it horrible that I am assigning anything with a deadline.  I believe they are wrong.  Preparing them for adult life is still important, even in a pandemic, and sending them the message that it isn't is likely to lead them to the conclusion that they won't have an adult life.  While I plan to return to more strict policies in the future, it is only fair to show everyone around us an extra measure of grace.

Now that you have finished this post, put your phone down and go for an outdoor walk.  Your brain will be glad that you did.

What I Feel vs. What I Know (Returning to School in the Age of Coronavirus)

It's June 21, and in any other year, there would be a few weeks of summer left before I start thinking about what the day to day of school life would be in the next school year.  As we all know, however, 2020 is not like any other year.  Rather than waiting until the middle of July, I have been thinking about it since the third week of May.  In the past two weeks, I have attended four virtual meetings about school, two regarding how to address racial reconciliation in the Christian school environment and two about the impact COVID19 will have on our daily operations next year, from daily temperature checks to how lunch will be distributed.  It's no wonder my heart rate and blood pressure were high when the Red Cross checked it last week.  There's a lot to feel.

I'm having a hard time describing what I feel.  Fear isn't the right word.  I'm not scared.  I've cried a few times, but I'm not sure sadness is what I feel either.  I think about next year a lot, but I don't know if that counts as worry.  Perhaps apprehensive is the right word?  I'm not sure.  

I know this.  Each year that I have taught, I felt strengthened by the years of experience I had behind me.  This year, I don't feel that stability.  I think that's what causes me to think about it so often, trying to visualize something I've never done before.  And, of course, the dark side of edutwitter has reared its ugly head.  Don't get me wrong, Twitter is often a great place of sharing and encouragement for educators, but it is also where some teachers reveal their most cynical sides (and a few who I cannot fathom remaining employed after what they have said about their administrators).  There is no aspect of school operations that isn't touched by the need for social distancing, and planning around that feels more difficult than anything we've ever face (even more than teaching virtually).

But here's the thing about adulting.  We don't have to be ruled by our emotional responses.  We get to recognize that what we feel and what we know are two different things.  We get to pause and reflect rather than just react.  So here are some things that I know.

1.  Teachers know how to teach.  I said earlier that I don't feel like my 21 years of teaching experience are strengthening me in the way they have in the past.  I FEEL that, but I KNOW it isn't true.  I may not know the best way to simultaneously address an iPad and a live group of students yet, but I know how to explain scientific principals and have been growing in that knowledge for over two decades.  I still know how the learning brain works, and I can use practices that support the learning brain, even if those practices play out differently with those at home than it does with those in front of me.  As I go into next year, I am NOT rebuilding teaching practices from scratch; it only feels that way.

2.  I have the best administration in the world.  What Twitter has shown me is the difference administrators make in the attitudes of teachers.  Most of those who have posted negative thoughts have done so because they don't feel supported.  The few I have chosen to engage with have reported constantly changing expectations, lack of compassion from their leaders, and either micromanagement or complete absence of support.  If you are one of those teachers, I'm so sorry.  My administration is the best.  They lead with strength but not with a heavy hand.  They are phenomenal planners and problem solvers, but they also listen and even solicit the input from those of us in the classroom daily.  They encourage us to think of this as a way to innovate our practice, but they know some of those innovations will fall flat and will help us clean up any messes we make in the process.  They are not "figuring things out as we go," but they will respond to unfolding needs.  As I go into next year, these are the stable people I get to lean on.

3.  Growth Mindset matters now more than ever.  As teachers, we encourage our students to do things they do not yet know how to do.  When they say they cannot do something, we often respond that they cannot do that thing yet.  We encourage them to learn and grow.  Since March, we have had unprecedented opportunities to model that.  On March 16, I had never taught a single class period on Google Hangout.  I have now taught around 150 class periods that way.  Did they all go perfectly?  Of course not, but if I'd be kidding myself to think that all of my in-person classes are flawless.  (I say this as a person who is on record as a believer in face-to-face instruction, so please don't think I'm saying they are the same.)  We are showing kids that we can take on new challenges, which may be more important than any part of our curriculum.  I hope that by the time school starts, the man who tweeted this will decide to model learning for his students rather than show them that he won't do anything he doesn't already know how to do.

 

4.  We determine our students' responses.  While this particular time is unprecedented, I have taught through more than one crisis, some on a local level  (like a shooting threat in my building) and others on a massive level (I was teaching high school on 9/11).  I've taught through personal heartache and corporate grief.  Here's what I've learned.  How teachers act influences how students feel.  During my second year, there was a threatening letter found in my school in Oklahoma.  I started each class by telling my students that there was a plan and that they do what I told them to do without arguing.  We then went on to have the class almost normally.  There were teachers that day who started every class in a panic, and their students spent that class period in fear.  At the beginning of virtual teaching, my students did see me cry, but they did not see me panic.  There's a difference between being genuine and putting all your feelings on display.  They saw that I missed them, but they didn't see me doubt whether or not I could meet their needs (because even if I felt that, it would not have helped them to know).  I believe in "being real" with your students, but be professional about how much you share.

5.  Imagination is powerful.  The human mind has an incredible talent.  It can imagine things that have not happened.  It can paint pictures of things that don't exist.  It can project multiple scenarios into the future and predict (although not necessarily accurately) what could occur.  This ability is powerful.  It is how we invented.  It is how we made vaccines.  It is how we put men on the moon.  The mind's ability to imagine is how we created the modern world.  It can be and has been a powerful force for the good of the human race.  It can also be a force that hurts us.  Our imaginations can make us fear change (perhaps the reason people get cold feet before their weddings).  It can make us imagine the worst-case scenario and then dwell on it when it is not yet a reality (and may not become reality).  How many times have we anticipated something terrible and then found it not to be so bad when the thing we feared actually happened.  Because next year is filled with unknowns, our imaginations are filling in the blanks.  There's no way to stop that; it's what the brain naturally does.  While we can't stop it, we can remind ourselves that what we have imagined is not real.  It is likely that some parts of it will happen but it is unlikely that all parts of it will.  Let's thank our brains for preparing us for the worst but also recognize that the worst scenario is rarely the most likely scenario.

I teach my students about neurotransmitters and their role in our emotions.  I take some of the romance out of attraction, but I think it matters to say feelings are temporary responses to stimuli.  Feelings are valid, but they are not a foundation on which to make decisions.  Take them into account, but don't let them overpower what you know.  Remember that God is faithful and trustworthy, and honor him with your actions.

My principal reads this passage to us 5-10 times a year, and it is helpful, so I will end with it.  If you are a person of faith, I hope you find it encouraging.

        Psalm 127:1-2

Unless the Lord builds the house,

    those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city,

    the watchman stays awake in vain.

 

It is in vain that you rise up early

    and go late to rest,

eating the bread of anxious toil;

    for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Isolation and the Single Girl

Warning:  This post is going to very long.  While I have a lot to do, I don't have anywhere to go, so I am going to keep writing until I have said everything.

Disclaimer:  I have no training in psychology or neurology.  I am an educator and a brain enthusiast, so this is based entirely on my experience and reading, not on actual expertise.  Fact check as needed.

If you are reading this right now with other people in your house, you are having a different experience than those of us who live alone.  You may be irritated with your spouse or child because you have been cooped up with them for too long, but it is a different experience than going for multiple days without seeing another human in person.  Phrases like "apart but not separated" and "physically distant but socially connected" are well-meaning, but they were not written by people who live alone.  In Genesis, Adam was face to face with God on a daily basis, and God still created Eve because he had designed the brain for community with other humans.  Since this aspect of brain health is being deprived, I am using what I know about the brain to make sure it is being kept healthy in as many other ways as possible. 

Familiarity and Novelty
Your brain craves a balance of familiarity and novelty.  It's why we like to binge-watch favorite tv shows but also really look forward to new episodes.  While there is so much that cannot be done the way we normally do it, those things that can remain the same should.  I get up at the same time every morning, and it is only half an hour later than it was when we were in school.  The first day I was home, I wrote out a daily schedule and have alarms set to keep me on it.  (There are days it has required alterations for unexpected faculty meetings or weather, but you cannot alter something that doesn't exist.)  For the past ten years, I have opened class with a scripture passage and prayer, and I am still doing that.  We picked up where we had left off the Friday before.  I work a crossword puzzle every day.  THIS INCLUDES YOUR CLOTHES!  I keep seeing posts from people who have only worn pajama pants for the last six weeks.  That may be comfortable and convenient, but it is not good for your brain.  It is making you feel less like yourself.  I am very grateful that my school asked us to continue dressing professionally for our classes because I get up every day and choose my clothes the same way I normally would (except for shoes, I am wearing sneakers no one can see).  On Fridays, I still put on jeans and a GRACE shirt because it is GRACE Day.  These may seem like small things, but the familiarity keeps your brain healthy.

Your brain also requires the stimulation that comes with novelty, so do things that help your brain.  For me, that includes changing up my walking routes each day (more on outside and exercise later).  For you, it may be throwing a new song into your familiar playlist or, as my art teacher friend has done, learning a new skill.  You don't have to master it for the act of doing something new to stimulate your brain in a healthy way.

Do Not Attempt Multitasking
First, all of the research says multitasking isn't real anyway, but we still attempt it.  As a person who lives alone, you have the benefit of not being required to deal with kids.  There is no benefit in getting ahead of schedule for the day because it doesn't mean you "go home" early.  It can be difficult to concentrate on one thing right now, so don't fool yourself into thinking you can concentrate on more than one thing.

Allow Limited Escapism
Like all "isms," escapism is a bad way to structure your life.  In terms of general brain health, you don't want to make denial a way of life.  However, this is not deniable.  You are in it all day every day, so it is okay to allow yourself an hour or two of immersing yourself in a novel or a movie that takes you away from things for a while.

Establish Physical Boundaries
Again, this is a benefit of living alone.  You have the ability to dedicate a room in your house as the work area.  For me, this an upstairs office that I actually had not used in years before this all started.  My work materials and computer set up are left there so that I don't have to re-arrange things each day.  The healthy brain benefit of this is that I am "at work" when I am in that room.  I go up to at 7:30 each morning to get ready for the day, and I only come downstairs to use the restroom and eat lunch until 3:00 (or later if there are meetings) each afternoon.  Then, I "go home."  It makes a big difference.  I highly recommend it.

Don't Fake Fine
You are not fine.  Some days you are finer than others, but you are not fine all the time.  Pretending that you are isn't positive thinking or optimism or any of that other garbage.  It's denial, and it is bad for your brain.  Now, I'm not saying that you should do the irritating Facebook post, like "Just having a really tough time, y'all.  Prayers appreciated."  That's the same stupid grab for attention it has always been.  I'm saying if someone asks you how you are, be honest.   You have a friend you can cry with.  Reach out to that person and be real. 

Limit News Exposure
Twenty-four-hour news in multiple formats is not good for our brains.  When you see the same news story three times, your brain interprets that as three separate events, leading to an interpretation of things being worse than they are.  Limiting your exposure can be difficult because of people's obsession with posting news articles on social media, so you are exposed even when you don't mean to be, but you have the power to place some limitations on it.  Establish a time or two each day when you will expose yourself to the news.  Delete the CNN or FOX news app on your phone, and don't go intentionally to their websites unless it is during the time you have set for yourself.  You don't have to see the press conference live every day.  The two times that I have were times I wished I had not (they were the President answering a reporter's question about fear with "I'd tell them you are a terrible reporter!" and the bizarre musing about putting UV into the lungs and injecting disinfectant).  My personal boundary is 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening, and I don't feel any less informed than if I had listened to "analysis" all day.

Vitamin D
This is the most important thing I am going to tell you.  GO OUTSIDE!  Depending on the level of lockdown order your state is under, you may be limited to a backyard or balcony, but you have to go outside.  I am, fortunately, in a position where I can walk on city sidewalks every day, so on school days, I walk from 45 minutes to an hour, and I may walk as long as three hours on weekends.  We were all a little Vitamin D deficient when this started because we were just coming out of winter.  There is arguable no more important vitamin for your health.  It is related to energy level, mood, thyroid health, weight regulation, calcium absorption, heart health, blood sugar balance, and regulation of your immune system.  There are even Vitamin D receptors in your brain.  Your body is incredibly efficient at making Vitamin D from the cholesterol in your body under the right conditions.  If you go outside in "minimal clothing" (i.e. shorts and a tank top) for 30 minutes, your body will make all of the Vitamin D it needs for a day.  So go outside (and if you can't, order some supplements online).

Exercise
We all know exercise is healthy of your heart and bones, but you may not be aware that it is healthy for your brain as well.  It increases the flow of oxygen to your neurons and causes a release of neurotransmitters.  The well-known endorphins that you always hear about in relation to exercise are chemical cousins to those released when you hug someone.  It won't replace social contact, but it will mitigate the negative effects.

One part of your brain health is being necessarily compromised and will require recovery when this is over, but you can help yourself and put your recovery in a better position by intentionally engaging in other brain-healthy practices.  You aren't a passive blob in pajama pants that is just absorbing food from the environment.  You have the power to make healthy choices.

The Internet is Not Always Right

This is going to be a short one.  

We teach kids not to believe everything they read on the internet.  Yet:

- Yesterday, I saw full-grown adults posting pictures of their brooms standing up and an "explanation" of gravity and the earth's tilt "from NASA."  
- Two weeks ago, the "Facebook only shows me 25 people.  Copying and pasting this message will change their algorithm." thing started going around again.  Again, these were full-grown adults, who were posting that it really works because they were told to paste it.
- Adults proudly post their results on a quiz, which they took because they saw a post that said most people can't pass it.
- There are a myriad of people passing on things whose numbers could be easily checked, like the next palindrome day won't happen for 900 years, how many full moons will fall on a Monday, etc.  

The internet is a wonderful thing, but it shouldn't replace your brain.  

- There are no days in which gravity is different than other days. You can stand a broom up every day. NASA did not tell you otherwise.
- You cannot change an algorithm by copying and pasting. That's not how algorithms work.
- They completely make up the score that "most people" get on the quiz. You are not special for doing better than that.
- There will be a palindrome day on December 11 of next year.

If you don't want your kids to believe everything they read on the internet, you should stop believing everything you read on the internet.

It's not possible to get over 10/10.  They must be hoping 90's kids weren't taught math.

Final Reflection from Learning and the Brain - Putting it All Together with John T. Almarode

There were more sessions than those I have developed in these posts, but some were so involved, you would need to have heard the entire speech because notes (even ones that have been reflected on) wouldn't have done them justice.  If you are interested in the development of the adolescent brain, you should definitely read Sarah-Jayne Blakemore's book Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain, but her talks were too intricate to be explored on this blog.  The same goes for two incredible keynote speeches by Dr. John Gabrieli and Dr. David Rose.  Linda Darling-Hammond presented three day worth of information in just over an hour.  Sorting through their speeches here would not give a good representation of their speeches.  

This is the last of the posts on the Learning and the Brain conference, which is fitting because this was the final keynote speech during the actual conference.  And, if your brain is tired from three days of learning, you want the final presenter to be John T. Almarode.  He's delightful, charming, thoughtful, and practical.  

One of the first things he said was one of the most important things that got said at the conference.  There is no one technique that is universally effective all of the time.  It must be adapted to the local context and timing of your students in your classroom and it must generate evidence of its effectiveness.  The reason education is so fad-driven is that everyone is looking for the magic bullet.  It's hard to realize that there isn't one. 

We Remember What We Encode

There are two types of encoding, rote and elaborate.  Rote encoding involves just knowledge.  Elaborate encoding explains why something is true, allows students to find patterns and relationships, involves emotional engagement, and includes multiple ways of representing the learning.

When people hear this, they want that silver bullet to be elaborate encoding and decide that all rote encoding is old-school garbage.  Life is more interesting than that.  Elaborate encoding should be first, but it can be strengthened by using rote encoding for retrieval practice.   

We Remember What We Retrieve

I did a whole post on spaced retrieval practice, so I won't go into it here.  The interesting part of this session was when he asked us what we thought this image had to do with retrieval practice.  There were so many interesting ideas, including:

• The brain has a capacity, so you can't keep adding to it.
• If you guzzle the entire glass, it won't do much for your body's hydration.  You need to drink it in sips.  Retrieval practice can't be over every single thing you learned all at once.  It must be done in smaller doses.
• A good waiter doesn't refill a glass every time you take a sip from it.  They also don't wait for the glass to get totally empty.  They refill it just before it is empty.  The time for retrieval practice is just before students are about to forget.

When you ask smart people to tell you their thoughts in a free-form way, you may get answers you didn't expect but that reflects excellent thinking.  This reminded me of a story Kevin Washburn tells about a math teacher who put radishes on her students' desks.  She didn't know how it related, so she asked them what they thought.  They gave answers that she didn't expect, but it made their thinking visible.

Some ways to make thinking visible:

• Ask students to observe and describe
• Have them construct examples
• Insist that they give a reason why an answer is right or wrong.
• Ask them to write how things connect to authentic situations.

Learning Takes Time

Interleaving and distributed practice is more difficult for the brain, but that is what makes the learning more permanent.

Teach students that learning takes time and is often uncomfortable.  It's what we call desirable difficulty.  It's desirable because it works.  The struggle is not only real; it is valuable.  Telling students why it is helpful makes it even more helpful.

Give and Receive Feedback

As John Almarode said in both his previous session and his keynote address, "None of this works without feedback."  None of what we learned at the conference means anything without giving feedback to the students and receiving feedback from them.  This is why relationships and classroom climate matter.  

We live our lives with feedback from others, whether they intend it or not.  If someone slips and falls, after you help them up,  you make sure not to walk in the place they just walked.  How can we expect students to operate without feedback in our classes?

For a long time, feedback has been used to say "I gotcha."  In a loving classroom, it should be used to say, "I've got you."  In order to make it supportive, we should ask the following questions.

Reflections on The Science of Memory - Spaced Practice

The Learning and the Brain conference is an overwhelming experience.  That’s not a complaint.  It’s the best professional development I’ve ever participated in.  It’s overwhelming in the way a magnificent artwork is overwhelming, just too much to take in.  It’s overwhelming in the way meeting a beloved public figure would be overwhelming, just wanting to remember every part of the moment but also knowing that you won’t.  I have attended this conference twice now, and I have come away both times with the same mixture of feelings.  First, I feel mostly affirmed that much of what I and my colleagues are doing is in line with how student's brains work.  Even though much of it has been developed through trial and error or intuition, we seem to have done a lot right.  Second, there are some changes we need to make to some of our practices.  Holding those two thoughts simultaneously weighs down my luggage on the trip home.

The only way I have found to deal with the sheer volume of information I get from this conference is to reflect on parts of it a little at a time while I figure out how I might like to apply them.  Since this blog is for me to reflect and process my thoughts and let you read them if you wish, I’ll be dealing with those here for a while. They might come out in weekly posts or I might post several over the course of a few days.  Who knows?  If you just want straightforward notes (with a few personal thoughts because that’s how I take notes), you can find them at these three posts (Friday, Saturday, Sunday).  These posts will be both more and less than the notes.  More because I will be working out my own thoughts but less because I will likely choose small parts to reflect upon.

I started reading about this over the summer in the book Powerful Teaching by Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain.  While I don't recommend reading the book from beginning to end (the writing is distracting because they make jokes that don't work in text and over-use exclamation points at an alarming rate), I totally recommend going to the end of each section and using the techniques.  It is based on the current research into remembering and forgetting and advocates for a concept known as Retrieval Practice.  This concept came up in at least four different sessions at the Learning and the Brain conference because it is powerful.  To be most effective, it should be

• Spaced
• At a level of desirable difficulty
• Mixed (interleaved)

Spaced - We all know that cramming is a bad idea if we want long term learning.  It may help you perform well on the quiz you have 10 minutes from now, but it will not help anything go into long term memory.  Adults, you know this.  The all-nighter may have helped you pass the test the next day (although you kind of cancel it out from the lack of effect that sleep has on memory development), but you probably don't still know the stuff you studied that night.

Spaced retrieval is the most effective way to study, and increasing the spacing each time is necessary.  If you teach something on a Monday, ask a few questions on Tuesday.  Your students will probably remember it well, but that is misleading.  It hasn't been long enough for spaced retrieval practice to be helpful.  Wait until Thursday before asking again.  The weird key is that you want them to have ALMOST forgotten it but not quite.  Only you can use your professional judgment to figure out the exact spacing that works for your class.  If they answer really quickly, you haven't waited long enough.  If they have to go look it up, you have probably waited a day too long.

The diagram below is a powerful illustration of how much you retain with each spaced review. 

 

As you can see, the forgetting curve gets shallower with each revisiting of the material.  A line connecting the dots of each revisit becomes a remembering curve.

Desirable Difficulty - As teachers, we often want to make things easier for our students.  Their parents certainly want us to do that.  The problem is that our brains don't remember things that are easy to learn.  When you have to search around for the answer, you tell the brain that remembering this is worth the effort you are putting into it.

Again, this is a matter of professional judgment and experience.  We always know when we have made something too hard.  It's not from student complaints; in fact, if you never get complaints about your level of difficulty, it is probably a sign that you have made things too easy.  We know it is too hard when a student cannot proceed at all, not even with a little prompting.  It's harder to diagnose too easy, but the guiding principle is this.  There should be some need to think, some little bit of searching to remember.  

Interleaved - I used to do this wrong.  I taught velocity on Monday and gave velocity problems for homework.  I taught acceleration problems on Tuesday and gave acceleration problems for homework.  Then my school instituted a policy that we would only have homework in a class for a maximum of three nights each week (exceptions for math and AP classes).  I already couldn't give homework on Wednesdays (Christian school), so I had to figure out a way to consolidate some assignments.  (It sounds like I give a ton of homework, but I promise I don't.  Some things that require it (like math practice) just end up near each other in the same week.)

To deal with this issue, I started consolidating homework assignments.  I began teaching two or three concepts and then giving a homework assignment with mixed practice on all three.  What I had stumbled upon was a better understanding of how to choose the right equation to solve the problem.  When I first read an article about interleaving, I realized that I had accidentally done was a research-proven method.

After reading this, I started teaching it to students as a study method.  Shuffle your flashcards between each round.  Better yet, flip it around and put it back at a random spot in the deck.  Based on the suggestion of the book Powerful Teaching, I have a basket of questions in my room that I add to with each chapter.  When we have those five minutes of time you sometimes get at the end of a class, I pull them out and start randomly asking them.  Sometimes, we play it family feud style with a bell.  The spacing is a little random, and the method of pulling them from a basket automatically mixes them.  Sometimes at the beginning of class, I'll ask students to take out paper and write down five things they remember from the day before or the week before.

We are all pressed for time, but we usually have a few minutes here or a bellwork there that we can use for retrieval practice.  Since we know it has powerful effects, we should take advantage of that time.

Reflections on the Science of Memory - Dual Coding

The Learning and the Brain conference is an overwhelming experience.  That’s not a complaint.  It’s the best professional development I’ve ever participated in.  It’s overwhelming in the way a magnificent artwork is overwhelming, just too much to take in.  It’s overwhelming in the way meeting a beloved public figure would be overwhelming, just wanting to remember every part of the moment but also knowing that you won’t.  I have attended this conference twice now, and I have come away both times with the same mixture of feelings.  First, I feel mostly affirmed that much of what I and my colleagues are doing is in line with how student's brains work.  Even though much of it has been developed through trial and error or intuition, we seem to have done a lot right.  Second, there are some changes we need to make to some of our practices.  Holding those two thoughts simultaneously weighs down my luggage on the trip home.

The only way I have found to deal with the sheer volume of information I get from this conference is to reflect on parts of it a little at a time while I figure out how I might like to apply them.  Since this blog is for me to reflect and process my thoughts and let you read them if you wish, I’ll be dealing with those here for a while. We are nearing the end of these.  I have two more after this one.

In the last post, I poked at education's sacred cow of learning styles.  Even when presented with evidence, there are many teachers who still hold on.  I think it is because they have found that teaching in multiple styles is helpful.  That part is true.  Teaching in multiple ways creates a rich environment for the coding of information in the brain.  This is called the science of Multiple Modalities.  It's not just a semantic difference.  Teaching in multiple modalities frees you from thinking that you must address three different learning styles for every single thing you teach (which I found overwhelming for the first decade of my career).  Pairing visuals and words is good for everyone.  You don't have a "visual" student learning from the pictures and "verbal" student learning from the words.  Also, text words on a page are processed by the same part of your brain as spoken words, so it isn't about the path of input.  Having kids play with content specific manipulatives helps all of your students when paired appropriately with content.  It's not just for a mythical "tactile" student.

While this is initially upsetting to teachers, it should ultimately be freeing.  Incorporate multiple sensory inputs where you can, and relax about not being able to include the others.   The reason teaching in multiple modalities works is because of something called Dual Coding.
The idea here is that when words are combined with visuals, we have two pathways into the brain being processed for meaning by two parts of the brain and then being integrated and connected.  Your brain can assign meaning in a richer way.
The processing of words happens sequentially as you must hear or read one word at a time.  When looking at an image, your brain takes in a lot of information at once.  Combining them has a powerful effect on the brain as it processes them separately and puts them together.

There is more than one way to accomplish this.  As an input tool, it involves simply including images while you are talking.  Most of us do that already, but it could be done better by carefully choosing the images you use.  The image should not just be related, but one which assigns meaning to the concept or definition.

The second use of this is having students draw pictures to go with the words or concepts they are using.  Using these six steps could result in better learning of vocabulary.

1. Show or say the word.  Ask students if they have ever heard it before or any word that sounds like it (Words with similar roots often have similar meanings, so if they know a similar word, it could be a good connection.
2. Show or tell the definition - The brain reacts to spoken and visual words the same way, so it does not count as dual coding to read the words while projecting them.  They are both being processed in the verbal center of the brain.
3. Ask the students to use the word in a sentence they create.  
4. Ask students to draw a picture that represents the definition or concept.  It's important that the drawing be simple, so artistry is not an advantage.
5. Explain the picture to a neighbor. (This involves retrieval and the social aspect of learning which will be addressed in another post.)
6. Label the picture with words from the definition.

If your students are including these in their notes, the words and pictures (including the labels) should be as close to the image as possible.  

This is a great way to make thinking visible as well as making the knowledge sticky.  I'd start by doing this in class the first time you try it because you will be available to answer questions and make your expectations clear.  After that, this seems like a great homework assignment for the vocab list at the beginning of each new chapter.

Reflections the Science of Memory - What is Thinking?

The Learning and the Brain conference is an overwhelming experience.  That’s not a complaint.  It’s the best professional development I’ve ever participated in.  It’s overwhelming in the way a magnificent artwork is overwhelming, just too much to take in.  It’s overwhelming in the way meeting a beloved public figure would be overwhelming, just wanting to remember every part of the moment but also knowing that you won’t.  I have attended this conference twice now, and I have come away both times with the same mixture of feelings.  First, I feel mostly affirmed that much of what I and my colleagues are doing is in line with how student's brains work.  Even though much of it has been developed through trial and error or intuition, we seem to have done a lot right.  Second, there are some changes we need to make to some of our practices.  Holding those two thoughts simultaneously weighs down my luggage on the trip home.

The only way I have found to deal with the sheer volume of information I get from this conference is to reflect on parts of it a little at a time while I figure out how I might like to apply them.  Since this blog is for me to reflect and process my thoughts and let you read them if you wish, I’ll be dealing with those here for a while. They might come out in weekly posts or I might post several over the course of a few days.  Who knows?  If you just want straightforward notes (with a few personal thoughts because that’s how I take notes), you can find them at these three posts (Friday, Saturday, Sunday).  These posts will be both more and less than the notes.  More because I will be working out my own thoughts but less because I will likely choose small parts to reflect upon.

I am going to say something that will make many teachers angry.  Learning styles are a myth.  They are a kind, well-intentioned, and humane myth.  I know you can tell me about a kid in your class who suddenly started doing better when you . . . In science, we call that anecdotal evidence, and I teach my 8th graders that it is poor science.  I can give you evidence of people who died after drinking water, but it doesn't mean water kills people.  Science is based on research, not an isolated story.  MRI scans show that there is nothing different in the brain of someone who is a "visual learner" and someone who is an "auditory learner."  It is a preference in the same way favorite colors are preferences.  The reason you can point to classroom practice and say it works is because the brains of all students respond to teaching in a richer learning environment that includes multiple modalities.  It's called dual coding, and there will be a separate post about it.

This post is to explain the cycle of thinking and learning.  Let's start with a few terms.

• Sensory memory - What happens as you take in data from any of your senses.  It lasts microseconds while you decide what to attend to.
• Working memory - What happens in your brain while you are learning something.  When you rehearse a phone number over and over so you can remember it when you get to the phone, you are holding things in working memory.  It can hold an average of 4 items at one time. 
• Cognitive load - When the working memory reaches the maximum it can hold.  
• Retrieval - This is the intentional process of remembering.  When you have to think about a question in order to answer it, you are engaging in retrieval.
• Long term memory - These are the things you can still remember a week, a year, a decade after learning them.  When someone says, "Who you gonna call," and you respond with, "Ghostbusters," it's because it is in your long-term memory.

This cycle happens every time you learn something.  

• First, you take in thousands of pieces of information through your senses.  
• You choose one to pay attention to.  You can only pay attention to one thing at a time.  Multi-tasking is just rapid switching between single tasks. Something is always lost in the switch. 
• What you pay attention to goes into your working memory, where you make meaning of the relationships between the items.  You rehearse the information by writing it down or repeating it to yourself.  As you do, it makes its way to your long term memory.  If you relate it to things you already know, your brain makes connections to those neurons, creating richer meaning and increasing the likelihood that it will stay in your long term memory.
• Occasionally, you retrieve information to tell someone else about it or write it on a test or use it in some meaningful way.  The act of retrieval thickens the myelin on the neuron, which causes it to work faster.

The bad news is that you 

• Have limited working memory.
• Only remember things you work hard at.

The good news is that

• Pictures have power
• Spaced interleaved retrieval practice is the way to work hard.
• While you cannot increase your working memory capacity, you can trick it through chunking.

Let's talk about chunking for a minute.  Much of what you teach is related in a way that can be categorized.  Asking kids to do that will make their brains think of each category as an item.  

Since this post is getting a bit long, I'll do separate posts on dual coding and spaced and interleaved retrieval practice.