ResearchEdd NYC 2026 Raw Notes

 As the title suggests, these notes are raw, unedited, and blended with my thoughts in addition to what the speakers are saying. If you read something you don't like, it may be my interpretation and not their meaning, so don't hold anything against them.

Keynote 1: Using the Science of Learning to Rebuild Students' Learning Power: A Pathway to Equitable Academic Outcomes by Zaretta Hammond

What is the relationship between equity and cognitive science?

She was a writing teacher:  "Math gets you into college. Writing keeps you there." So, if you are a sound reader and writer, you are going to struggle in college. She wanted students to recognize their own errors in their writing. That led her to learning science. That eventually led her to write Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. 

Equity is reduing the predictability of who succeeds and who fails and cultivates the unigifts and talents of every student, regardless of race, color, or zip code. 

In the age of AI, it is more important than it has ever been for student to learn how to learn and think on their own. Without those skills, they are at the mercy of the tech. They will not be ready to evaluate information.

Her next book, Cognitive Redlining, discusses how kids in lower income schools are disadvantaged by the trends in instructional practices. Cognitive science can reduce inequity by working with student brains. Rosenshine's principles of instruction are valid and wonderful, but they have kept us focused on teaching rather than learning.

"How do we leverage the science of learning to help students master the craftsmanship of learning?"

Design principles for craftsmanship

1. Only the learner learns - students' brains must be active (this is not the same as engagement or fun; it's about their thinking with cognitive flexibility)
2. Content must be processed and remembered in order to be retrieved. Retrieval practice is at the end of the information processing cycle. (SHE JUST QUOTED KEVIN WASHBURN!!)
3. Learning requires cognitive friction - Productive struggle is real, but it has to be productive. You have to get them to the place where the struggle can be productive, not just set them off to flounder. This leads to learning for understanding rather than assignment completion. We should not over-scaffold, or they won't become independent. (If you picked up a baby every time they stumbled or lost their balance, they would never learn to walk.) If scaffolds are never removed, they are not scaffolds; they are crutches that lead to dependence on the teacher.

We are "personal trainers" of students' cognitive development. If a personal trainer asks you to do 5 push ups, and you can only do 2, they don't jump down and do the other 3 for you. They give you some water and tell you to get back to it.

One off strategies do not help; these must become routines that are automated. New mental models must be developed. There is a human side of change; recognize that the first attempt will be messy like the first pancake and work that into the evaluation system.

Session 1: Getting Ahead of Behavior: Lightning Fast Behavior Moves by Zach Groshell

Let's face it; behavior is not improving. We have to do something.

The "putting out fires" model is exhausting for teachers and interferes with student learning.

They can't learn anything they aren't paying attention to.

Inattention and attention are contagious - fidgety behaviors spread, so do leaning forward behaviors

How to get ahead of it (adapted from Doug Lamov's TLAC)

1. Give clear directions - clear, umambiguous, sequenced, posted visibly
2. Be seen looking - swivel, tiptoes, hands cupped around ears - exaggerated body motions to show that you are looking and listening
3. Narrate the positive - state what is going right - "Kate, that's what I'm talking about." Acknowledge and praise the things you want to see continue.
4. Correct with the least invasive intervention - nonverbal first, "All means all" reminders to the group, anonymous individual corrections ("Back of the room is almost there" or "Waiting on 2, waiting on 1. Thank you." Then, private individual correction (This is not your go to; it's after other things don't work and after you have everyone else working on something). If nothing else has worked, quick public individual correction (whispered name).

Non-verbal behaviors can be clear and subtle without getting into a kids space and being overbearing.

Will this solve all of your behavior issues? No.  But it will create a better culture in which you can address those.

Session 2: How Can I Help - Using the Science of Learning to Help Students Study by Beth Hawks

I have no notes on this session for obvious reasons, but you can find my slides on thelearninghawk.com

Keynote 2: Knowing What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do: Becoming an Expert Teacher by Nidhi Sachdeva

Did her research with Paul Kirschner 

When something unexpected happens in your classroom, what do you do?  How do you know what to do?

Sully - Miracle on the Hudson - When the bird strike took out his engines, he had 208 seconds to decide what to do before the plane would crash. His expertise guided his decision making when the situation exceeded the checklists and the protocols.

Teachers make 1200-1500 spontaneous decisions every day

The best teachers benefit their students for at least 3 years after they stop teaching them. The effect is the most profound on those most disadvantaged. Expert teachers close the achievement gap because gains are made by everyone, but those who have been disadvantaged will make more gains more quickly.

What is an expert teacher? In some fields (chess, sports, business), there are measurable objective data points to establish rankings. This is less true in education. Much of our impact is not measured in test scores, and a lot of it shows up far after they leave our classrooms.

We need to know how to spot an expert teacher because we cannot develop what we cannot name. 

• Deep content knowledge
• Have fundamental knowledge and understanding of how we learn
• Masters in pedagoy and and instructional tools
• Classroom management
• Ability to adapt
• Create explicit, engaging, equitable, and successful learning environments

Both science and craft

• Science: Deep understanding of theories and principles
• Craft: Practical insight that comes from experience

Five Building Blocks of Teacher Knowledge and Skills

1. Domain Knowledge - You cannot teach content that you do not deeply understand, what examples will illuminate and what examples will mislead, what is coming next
2. Cognitive Psychology - understanding how memory works, how understanding is strengthened, how instruction can support or overload the learner, how novices and experts process information and solve problems differently
3. Didactics - Knowing how to teach your subject is the bridge between content and cognition. "A butterfly forgets that it was once a caterpillar." Translates knowledge into something learnable and usable. Knowing calculus and teaching calculus are two different things.
4. Tools - Be critical and selective users of technologies and instruments, whether textbooks and mini-whiteboards or visualizers and EdTech tools. Beware of the innovation illusion; newer isn't always better. Ask the question, "Does this serve learning?"
5. Pedagogy - How we relate. Underpins instructional decisions and shapes the teacher-student relationship, ensures a positive classroom environment. Without this, the other four building blocks are tools without conscience.

The craft of teaching is accumulated wisdom about content, students, curriculum, and pedagogy.  It's wisdom in action. 

The science of teaching should happen during a teacher's initial preparation. The craft happens through continuous professional development as they teach. Best case scenario: New teachers have the science, but not much craft yet (That's assuming the science is being taught well in colleges).

Developing expertise comes from 

• Experience - learning on the job, helps you develop quickly early, but tends to plateau without the right conditions
• Organized professional development - workshops, courses, conferences, coaching programs - provides inspiration, but tends to prioritize exposure over practice
• Deliberate practice - consciously and systematically improving instruction through repeated practice

Deliberate practice is not routine repetition and isn't accomplished just by teaching more lessons. It is highly structured, purposeful, and effortful with a specific focus for improvement, including feedback and immediate repetition to incorporate the feedback.

Deliberate practice needs a specific goal, not vaguely worded hope. (The difference between a New Year's Resolution and an actionable goal.)

Sully's 40 years of deliberate practice, experience of emergencies, and time spent BUILDING expertise allowed him to act rather than panic. Teachers need schools to provide protected time for practice and feedback, coaching cultures rather than just evaluations, and leaders who value and model improvement.

Session 3: I planned to attend a session, but I decided to catch up with Andrew Watson and talk with Zach Groshell and Gene Tavernetti instead.  This was the right decision, but it means that I, sadly, have no notes for you.

Session 4: “Kids Do Well When They Can”: Misconceptions About Neurodiversity and How You Can Remove Barriers in the Classroom by Kristen Simmers and MB Spencer

Kristen's brother was born without a corpus collosum. He was seen at school as a kid who couldn't, while they saw him at home as someone who very much could. Her sister had no diagnosis until she was an adult, and she was just labeled as difficult. She is now an ER doctor.  MB was a regular classroom teacher with a high number of special needs students. She realized that the primary delivers of special education services had no special education training. 

Neurodiversity is an umbrella term that incorporates ADHD, autism, Tourette syndrome, OCD, dyslexia, and many others.

Neurodiverse conditions are differences in brain wiring. They will have mismatched skillsets; they may struggle in one area but excel in another. The labels are inconsistent, so you can't make assumptions about all kids with autism based on one kid you knew with autism (or any other condition). It's not uncommon for a person to have a great vocabulary and be highly verbal but have poor performance in writing. They might have high math reasoning and low math performance.

Dyslexia - Every civilization has spoken language. Speaking disorders are rare. Reading is an artificial skill. We are not biologically wired to do it. Learning it is incredibly complex and involves many areas of the brain working together in milliseconds. The brain repurposes some of your facial recognition skills to create letter recognition.

Stanislas Dehaene's research is leading toward subsets of dyslexia, 

• phonology based
• grapheme phoneme conversion
• visual code for letters (letter position, mixing nearby words)

Autism - moving away from the spectrum description and making it more of a wheel. Students have different positions in different areas on the spokes of the wheel.

ADHD - Executive function dysfunction

Neurological in origin, asynchronous development of skills

Not about attention or hyperactivity but about executive function (kids generally have trouble with EF). The name came from what were able to see rather than the cause. This leads to problems with self-regulation, self-awareness, self-evaluation, and motivation.

There is a different motivation structure than a fully developed brain. The part of the brain involved doesn't finish developing in most humans until 25. Don't make this an excuse - "They can't do it because their brains aren't fully developed yet." Rather, take advantage of the fact that this is the time of highest neuroplasticity, so it is time to harness that.

For most of us, a balance of rewards and consequences determine our actions.  ADHD brains seek dopamine and fail to predict consequences. They seek out things that are interesting, novel, challenging, urgent, or playful because those things produce dopamine. Sometimes, their argumentative nature happens because conflict produces dopamine.

Everything that is helpful for neurodivergent kids is good for ALL learners. 

Diagnoses happen when it impedes your life. Don't diagnose yourself just because you have a quirky behavior.

Practical Strategies

Recognize variability. They will not all respond exactly the same way to instruction or interventions. Research doesn't give a recipe; it gives ingredients. 

Audit your physical environment for sensory issues, managing choices, visual scaffold, a strength based emotional climate, and explanations of the "why" when it comes to rules.

Resource binders should be available.  Visual cues in their workspace will help them be ready. Don't let them start work until their workspace is ready. Notetaking guides and templates are good scaffolds. Printed copies of the notes are not. They need to write whatever they can. 

Panel: Thinking About Implementation Outside NYC by Zach Groshell, Meg Lee, Ian Kelleher, and Lynn Gaffney

Q:  Can you explain more about the mix of the science of learning and the practical craft?

A:  Zach: Developing teachers in the science of learning is a lot like developing professional athletes. Current NBA players are better at basketball than their coaches, but they still need coaching. Teachers can be well versed in pedagogical knowledge, but they may need coaching in the implementation. It isn't imposed; it's collaborative.  Meg: We need to look at what the science of learning can do for children first, but adults a close second. Balance what we want for every learner with the recognition that teaching is really hard and getting harder, so we can have teachers put down the things that aren't working well (if differentiation isn't working, let them stop).  Lynn:  We haven't been working in an evidence based profession, but that is changing. 

Q: What are three science of learning strategies that have been criminally underused?

A: Lynn: Spaced retrieval. Meg: Both students and adults need time to process deeply. Give more wait time deliberately.  Zach: Focus on design, not just delivery. Train a few people in your school to recognize whether the design of materials use evidence based principles or not.

Q: If you could wave a magic wand and have one thing appear in every classroom, what it would be?

A: Meg: Ian Kelleher's most recent writing about AI.  Lynn: Zach should appear in every classroom.  Zach: Explicit instruction in every classroom

Q: It's better to learn from other people's mistakes than your own. Are there any science of learning principles that are being misused?

A: Lynn: A lot of districts see science of learning as an add on, just another new initiative. Zach: Recognize that coaching is needed, not just one day PD sessions. One day sessions are great for inspiration, but there need to be habits developed in systems.  Meg: People are overwhelmed with a whole lot of strategies without an understanding of the whole picture. Then, teachers don't know how to apply strategies fluidly or across contexts. 

Q: Meg says, "You can wait out a roll out." How does it look to have brain science just incorporated into the fabric?

A: Meg: You can't just have "the year of the brain" any more than a dentist can have "the year of the tooth." You need to incorporate teacher expertise and wisdom, not just lay science of learning on top of lesson plans.

Q: What can you remove of replace in current school structure:

A: Lynn: Remove hand raising; replace with mini whiteboards.  Zach: Principals are following marching orders, even when they conflict with what their teachers are doing. Leadership needs to stand up and say, "It's just too much. We've divided our attention too much. Let's just focus on the essential pieces." Meg: Ask how organizations are spending time and resources, teacher time, student time, and tools that just have a sticker slapped on it that says "research based." Develop a "baloney-ometer."

Q: Who is your academic crush?

A: Lynn: Carl Hentrick, Zach Groshell, Gene Tavernetti, Mike Shmalker, Doug Lamov, Patrice Bain, Karen Chenowith. Zach: Marcy Stein (his college professor and member of Project Follow Through), Meg: Teachers with blogs or who speak at events like this or go on podcasts to talk about what is happening in their classrooms.

The research informed instruction community is altruistic, slightly crazy, love teaching, and love their kids and teachers.  Reach out to them, and enjoy more of their content.

Research Ed - Denver 2025 #rEDDenver2025

This is my fourth Research Ed conferences (3rd as a presenter).  One of the wonderful things about this conference is that everyone learns from everyone else.  Since you can't be here, I am taking notes for you to learn from as well.  (I can't provide notes on the first session since I am giving it, but you can go to my website www.thelearninghawk.com if you want the slides.)  Please recognize that these are notes taken in real time with little to no editing. They will be a mix of what the presenters said and my own thoughts. While I try to note the difference between those two things, I don't always keep up.  Please don't hold any presenter responsible for something you read here.

Keynote:  From Routine to Retrieval by Patrice Bain and Amber Haven

In 2006, she had an average classroom with average scores. Research was done in lab settings but not in real classrooms.  She met a couple of researchers who talked to her about memory.  She realized that teachers are taught how to teach, but few are taught how people learn.

Understanding the learning process is essential for making any kind of impact in the classroom.

Research needed to happen in classrooms that have the messiness that lab setting don't (intercom interruptions, fire drills, etc.)

"Knowing how to teach by understanding how students learn is a matter of instructional equity." - Jim Heal and Meg Lee

If we start teaching them how to learn in elementary school, just think how much better their high school lives will be.

"Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn." - Daniel Willingham

(Personal reflection:  Students have been told that they all learn differently and taught to find their "learning style."  The reality is much more empowering because they only have to find out how to learn, not some mystical idea of how THEY learn.)

We have to put information in, but storage won't be robust without retrieval.  Retrieval strengthens storage.

Power Tools:  Retrieval, Spacing, Interleaving, and Metacognition

Retrieval:  Pulling information out

Spacing: Revisiting retrieval over time - It interrupts forgetting, strengthening memory

Interleaving:  Comparing and contrasting similar items

Metacognition: Discriminating what you know from what you don't

Students spend most of their day shoving information into the your brain. It's hard to organize it or reflect on it unless you retrieve it.  It's like organizing your closet by finding an item and putting it on a shelf.

"When students consistently find themselves in a predictable learning environment, they can let their guard down to engage." Mitch Weathers

Routines are the best way to reduce anxiety in all students, but especially those who are prone to high anxiety.  They know what they are supposed to do, and they know what happens next. Transition times become less chaotic. 

Cognitive Load Theory is important because finding the sweet spot where students can process information impacts their learning dramatically. Can you drive smoothly in England where you don't know where you are going, have a car with the wheel on the other side, are on the left side of the road, and have to use roundabouts.  That is cognitive overload.

Don't be afraid to face your desks forward and reduce the amount of stuff on your walls. 

Working memory is limited (4-7 things that require focus) - How can you lessen their cognitive overload?

(Personal Note:  I see the chunking example with letters all of the time.  I would like to see it with actual content at a conference.)

"Background knowledge allows chunking, which makes more room in your working memory, making it easier to do something with that information." - Daniel Willingham

Scaffolds are not meant to be permanent, but they need to know when you are going to remove them so they have a chance to build proficiency in the task.  Everyone should have the same final goal, but scaffolds can be different to meet the needs of students.  "If everyone has a scaffold all of the time, it's not a scaffold. It's your lesson plan."

Atomization - breaking down complex concepts into small pieces.  When teaching weather, break it down into each of the variables that affects the weather before putting it back together.

Direct Instruction is teaching directly, but it is not a lecture. There should be instructions for students to do something (turn and talk, choral response, whiteboard answers, etc.) every two minutes.

Dual coding - provide images alongside verbal information. Have kids "sketch and tell."

Seek evidence. Don't blindly accept.

Rethinking Intrinsic Motivation by Andrew Watson

I was a little bit late to this session because I couldn't find the room.  I may have missed something important.

Intentionally Provocative Questions: 

Why don't student learn fractions with the same joy that they learn the names of colors or animal sounds. (Why is school demotivating?)

Why do schools teach things that aren't intrinsically motivating?

David Geary's Evolutionary Theory - Our species is unlike others in that we have to learn. Other animals are born ready to go without much teaching. A turtle is born ready to turtle.  

We learn things that help with avoiding predators, getting food, or allow us to successfully reproduce. Those things are biologically primary.  Learning animal sounds are obvious in their benefit to helping us avoid predators. Calculating the area under a curve does not fit into any of those categories, so it is biologically secondary.

Because we want our students to learn biologically secondary things because they are culturally valued, we need social institutions to make sure we teach them these things.

Back to the Intentionally Provocative Questions: 

Why don't student learn fractions with the same joy that they learn the names of colors or animal sounds. (Why is school demotivating?) You are intrinsically motivated to learn biologically primary things but not biologically secondary ones.

Why do schools teach things that aren't intrinsically motivating? The point of a school is to teach things that students are not intrinsically motivated to learn.  If they were naturally motivated to learn it, we wouldn't need to teach it to them.

Teachers are often scolded for not fostering intrinsic motivation, but that you should actually foster realism. 

Self Determination Theory - 

Six motivational states - Amotivation, 4 kinds of extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation

Amotivation - Absent

External and Internal Extrinsic Motivations - Internal extrinsic motivation does help students learn more, but external extrinsic motivation does not.  Internal extrinsic motivation is valuable but not enjoyable.

Intrinsic Motivation - Internal - Enjoyable

Example:  Some people truly enjoy exercise (intrinsic motivation). Others do it because they know it is valuable, but they don't enjoy it (internal extrinsic motivation)

You cannot move someone to intrinsic motivation, but you can move them from a motivation or external extrinsic motivation into internal extrinsic motivation (teaching them to value it even if they don't enjoy it) with:

- Autonomy

- Relatedness

- Competence

Any one strategy can had different effects on different students, at different moments, with different content.

Popularizing the 3 Box Memory Model: by Rob McEntarffer

I was late to this one too. I spent too much time talking to Andrew about his topic after his session.

Teachers and administrators must have a learning theory that matches reality. It must predict the outcome of teaching decisions.  No matter how much you believe in it, if it doesn't result in learning, you shouldn't use it.  Operating under an unrealistic learning theory gets in the way of learning.

Are you using this model to help making teaching decisions? Or are you just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks?

Personal Reflection:  To make a model stick at your school, you must have a few teacher "influencers" to keep using the same language with other teachers as well as students. They need to own it, adapt it to your context, and be enthusiastic about it with others.  

The pendulum swings from emphasizing content or skills every few years.

Get the people who know about things and those who are affected by it talking to each other.  In universities, the people in the education department don't ever talk to the people in the psychology department.  Sometimes, there is an educational psychology department, and they don't talk to the other two either.

It's imperative to ask "What is working?  What didn't work?" every time you implement something new. 

Why Students Forget and What You Can Do About It by Marcie Samayoa

I am very excited for this one.  I've been following Ms. Sam on Twitter for years. I'm amazed at how tiny she is.  

You have a great day in class. Everybody is engaged and with you. The next day, you ask them a question, and you just get an empty stare.

Showed the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. You forget a lot of content quickly.  Even a few minutes shows a high percentage of loss unless there is effortful practice. Each act of spaced retrieval results in less forgetting. 

Retrieval strengthens memory, enhances transfer, and always outperforms re-reading.

When you are doing a review, you should ask students questions that they have to answer without using their notes or book. You can't and shouldn't review everything from the previous lesson; you should figure out what they have learned in a previous lesson that connects to today's lesson and have them retrieve those. (If you are going to teach about isotopes today, you need to have them retrieve things about the periodic table and atomic structure, but you don't need to cover electromagnetic radiation that day.) This automatically works in space and interleaving.  Don't take more than 5-10 minutes of class time to do this.

Make sure students know retrievals are not quizzes or tests.  They aren't being graded on them; this is purely for the benefit of their memory.

I want to be in Ms. Sam's chemistry class.

Science or Snake Oil? How to Tell the Difference by Holly Lane

It is lamentable that graduates from schools of education are not trained in how to find education research or how to evaluate it for themselves.  

We are bombarded with snake oil in the field of education. There is a lot of garbage, and if you don't have the tools do distinguish good from bad, you will end up using a lot of garbage because there is just so much more of it out there.

We don't have an FDA in education. You can sell anything you want and claim that it is based on science.

Every program currently sold that is related to reading claims that it is based on "the science of reading." Social media makes it even worse by amplifying popular but non-scientific programs. 

Because there is so much misinformation, there is still a huge gap between research and practice.

The scale of evaluating evidence (1 is the lowest quality)

1. Anecdotal
2. Expert opinion
3. Case study 
4. Correlational study
5. Quasi-experimental design
6. Randomized control trials
7. Systematic review
8. Meta-analysis

Indicators of effectiveness

• Statistical significance
• Effect size - How many standard deviations above the mean is the experimental group compared to the control group

Indicators of trustworthiness

• Publication source
• Research Journals
• Practitioner Journals
• Magazines and blog (no vetting)
• Books 
• Commissioned reviews usually go through substantial vetting.
• Research handbooks usually have knowledgeable editors
• Commercially published - some are gold, and some are garbage

Teach How Students Learn by Gene Tavernetti

This is the third conference I've been to with Gene, and I have had breakfast with him twice, but this is the first time I've gotten to attend his session, so I've been looking forward to it all day.  His book Teach Fast has been referenced by three other presenters today.

The instructional paradox:  Learning is complex! But we must simplify instruction.

FAST Framework:

Focused Adaptable Structured Teaching

Focused - Eliminating extraneous load

Adaptable - One lesson structure for all content areas

Structured - Follows the same order for each lesson

Preview - accessing prior knowledge from long term memory and/or provide relevance (relevance doesn't mean "to their lives." It means relevant to the lesson.

Learning Objective - deconstruct the standard into learner friendly language that is still academic, what is the new learning today? (Have students read it as a choral response)

Review - Sub skills necessary for the lesson in the same way they are about to use the information

Explain the Key Ideas - Definitions embedded in the context of the concepts, procedures, etc. This is the "what" of the lesson.

At this point, the fire alarm went off in the museum. We didn't leave, but it slowed us down significantly.

Explain Expert Thinking - This is the "how" of the lesson. (You should model two times. If there is only one, there is no pattern.)

Gradual Release of Responsibility - I do, we do, you do - You have already modeled 2 times. Then, they do it with your guidance and questions. Then, they can practice.

Closure 

Independent Practice

We remember best what we learn first and last. The bulk of instruction should be first.  Then, do inline practice in the middle of the lesson. Do a closure at the end to engage in retrieval practice at the end of the lesson. 

How GOOD PD Can Reset Your Equilibrium

"Over ten years ago, I had a simple idea: that education should be informed by evidence whenever

it was possible, rather than hunches and intuition.  Lots of people agreed and we started to hold conference days with a twist: teachers were welcome to present, along with leaders, academics, policy makers, and anyone with a stake in actually helping children to flourish and learn."

- Tom Bennett - Founder of ResearchEd

I was sitting on an airplane Friday.  We had been sitting on the taxiway for a while, and I had fallen asleep.  When we finally began taking off, I experienced the most interesting part of take off. It was likely exaggerated by my having been asleep, but it is weird.  It’s the feeling that you are lying on your back and taking off vertically, in spite of the visual evidence that you are at a fairly low angle.

You have experienced the same feeling if you have ridden a roller coaster with twists or a Graviton ride at a carnival. It is the feeling that “down” has changed direction.  It’s an odd feeling because if there is anything we think we know well, it is gravity.  Gravity points down, and we have been feeling that for our entire lives.

Why does this happen?  Well, since I’m a physics teacher who hasn’t gotten to teach any physics in a while, I’m glad you asked.  

The answer is that acceleration is caused by external force.  When the airplane is taking off, it is accelerating at a rapid rate, both requiring a lot of force and, through the magic of Newton’s 3rd law, exerting a lot of force. The back of the seat you are sitting in is accelerating and placing force against your back in the direction of that acceleration.    

The rest of the effect is psychological.  You are used to the most common force acting on your body pointing down, so when this greater force overcomes it (in a Graviton, they drop the floor out from under you, so you know the other force is much larger), you brain interprets that feeling as a shift in the direction of down.  It’s not permanent.  Once the forces stabilize again, you remember what direction down is, and gravity has not been changed, merely temporarily overcome.

“What does this have to do with an education blog?” I can hear you asking.  Well, this brings me back to the reason I was on this plane.  I was headed to New York to speak at a ResearchEd conference.  ResearchEd is an organization that began in the U.K. but now operates in 19 countries to bring the evidence of educational research to the average teacher. Most of us weren’t exposed to the science of learning in our education degrees; and many still aren’t.  Organizations like ResearchEd and Learning and the Brain exist to help those in the classroom apply techniques that have been shown to work rather than trying to figure it out through trial and error.

As teachers, we are pushed by MANY external forces.  If you have been teaching longer than a week, you have had a fad pushed on you.  Whether it is inquiry learning, catering to individual learning styles, skills-over-content teaching, personalized learning, gamification, Brain Gym, three-cueing, or alternative seating, you have been told a lot of things are “the direction education is headed.”  

And, like the airplane seat pushing in one direction, it becomes easy to lose your understanding of what good instruction looks like.  This is amplified even more if you have an administration or district that wants you to buy into the fads because it makes them look good or makes your school’s website more appealing.  If you are a teacher who cares about doing a good job, you feel guilty every time a new thing appears because you think you have been doing it wrong until now.  Then, you scramble to revamp your lessons, even those that work well already, only to have this experience again a couple of years later when the newest fad comes down the line.

There are a lot of teacher conferences and professional development seminars out there, but what makes Research Ed special is the value you get for a small amount of money.  Registration for a one day event is only $45, making it accessible to a large number of teachers even if they were coming on their own, and they take place on Saturdays, so there is no need to worry about leaving your classroom and creating sub plans (because we all know that is harder than being at school).  You hear from people who truly value research and evidence in education.  When I pitched my session, I had to list the research that supported it. You can't get away with the phrase "research shows;" you have to be explicit about what research shows it.

In October, my friend Meagan and I took a road trip to ResearchEd Delaware and heard from some great people.  Andrew Watson talked about attention; David Daniel on developing a "science of teaching."  Steve Hare shared his Teach Yourself methods, and Kristen Simmers addressed adaptive teaching.  

In November, I had the honor of presenting at their conference in Denver, and this weekend, I presented the same session at ResearchEd New York.  I actually got to meet Tom Bennett, which made me happy because we have been connected on Twitter for several years, and he gave an excellent keynote presentation at the end of the conference.  Dr. Jim Heal of Deans for Impact and Meg Lee gave an amazing opening keynote as well. 

Bad PD can get you all turned around, wondering which way is up and which direction gravity points.  At best, a good teacher leaves feeling guilty.  At worst, a good teacher become overwhelmed enough by the ever-changing initiatives to leave the profession altogether. Being at ResearchEd yesterday reminded me that gravity points down.  Well designed, interactive direct instruction IS good instruction, even if it doesn't sound innovative to your district leaders.  Using mini-whiteboard isn’t sexy, but it works.  Engaging in formative assessment, spaced retrieval practice, cold calling, and working memory management isn’t photographable for your school website or yearbook, but it results in long-term learning and the flourishing of students.  

ResearchEd is not the only organization out there, of course.  Anyone who knows me knows that my heart belongs to Learning and the Brain, and I'll be speaking at their spring conference at the end of April.  If you live near Maryland, the St. Andrew's School hosts Festival of Ed every year, another gem in the world of evidence based education training. 

In general, teachers hate PD, but it's not because they don't want to develop professionally.  It's because they do, and much of what is out there is PD doesn't facilitate that.  The key is finding the good ones, the ones that aren't selling you a product or a fad, the ones that reset your equilibrium when the world seems unbalanced, the ones that give you practical, useful advice from an evidence informed lens.  It exists.  Get in touch with me at beth@thelearninghawk.com, and I'll help you find it.

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.

I Tried it Once. It Didn't Work.

Recently, I tweeted that I was creating a Study Skills elective and asked people to tell me what they thought was the most essential to include.  In case you were wondering, this was not, for the most part, a helpful exercise.  Some people suggested the two books I was already using.  Some gave me really weak things that I wouldn't likely spend time on (I'm not telling a high school student to organize a notebook in a specific way).  By far, the weirdest piece of advice I got was this (She meant well, so I've blotted out her name).

First of all, are any of these study skills?  You might be able to make a case for note-taking (and I will be spending a little time showing them Daniel Willingham's advice about figuring out the thematic hierarchy in a lecture in order to make connections in your notes), but again with organizing?  Have you ever tried to impose someone else's organizational method on yourself?  It doesn't work.

But here is my real beef with this advice.  "I'd teach different ways to do each thing and then have them try each way for a week or so."  This feels like the least effective strategy I can possibly imagine.  There is no world in which a week is enough time to know if something will work.  That's not even enough time to cover one chapter in a class and see the results of your method on a test.  

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why an educator would give me this advice, so I finally went to look at her profile.  She isn't an educator.  She works in machine learning, a field in which "fail early" and "multiple iterations" are prized.  That helped it make some sense.  The tweet has a bit of a learning styles vibe to it with "so they can see what works and doesn't for them."  People who are up on education research know that the idea that we all learn differently and must find our personally preferred method or it won't work for us is not true.  While it is true that every brain is different, most of them function in similar ways to the rest, so we need to find what works, not what works for us.

But mostly, I think it rubbed me the wrong way because it reflects the short attention span, multi-task-attempting, commitment-dropping culture in which we live.  If I don't see results in the short term, they must not yield results in the long term either.  Instant gratification or nothing.  I'll try this for a week and the judge it inadequate.

When I was a yearbook teacher, students were required to sell two ads to offset the cost of book production.  While I admit this is a daunting task and difficult to do (which is why I only required two), students often had little endurance for it.  One year, a delightful young lady said to me, "I don't know what to do.  I've tried a lot and haven't been able to sell one."  I said, "How many people have you asked?" and she replied, "Like two!"  I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my seat, not because she wasn't adorable but because she had described her efforts as having "tried a lot" only to answer with the number two.  It's a good thing sales is not her future career.  I said, "You are likely to get several no answers before you get a yes.  Keep trying."  

Whether you are attempting to drop an old bad habit or develop a new good habit, one week is not enough to judge if it works.  It is possible one month will not be enough.  Often, there is actually a temporary drop in performance while making the switch.  The illustration below comes from Peps McCrae's weekly newsletter Evidence Snacks.  In this one, he discussed our misconceptions about trying something new.  He said most people believe that if something works, our growth in it will be linear.  It will start working right away, and we will keep getting better at it as we practice.  Yet, this is not the case.  When first implementing a new policy or technique, you may see a drop as you adjust from the way you used to do things to the new way.  For example, my brother took Bowling as a PE class during his freshman year in college.  They taught him a different method than the one he had grown up using.  For a short time, he was a terrible bowler because he hadn't learned the new way very well yet, but he could no longer do it the old way.  It isn't until the new way becomes a well-myelinated pathway that automation allows us to judge the effectiveness of a new method.

Because we expect progress to be linear, we misjudge any drop in performance, but we don't see benefits until the new way of doing things becomes automated.  We often don't like something in the beginning for no other reason than we resist change.  Sometimes, we know something isn't the best way to do it, but it is the way we are accustomed to, so the new way feels like it isn't working.  Daniel Willingham's book Outsmart Your Brain discusses the reasons why you often misjudge something as not working when it really is because the difficult way is yielding long-term benefits rather than short-term feelings of improvement (Google his brilliant pushup analogy).  If I were to follow the advice in this tweet, my students would end the year believing no method worked for them, and I would have failed them as a person who knows how to dig into studies and provide research-based advice.

So, I'm clear on that not being the way to go.  What will I do instead?  Well, first, let's not look at a bunch of ways that might work for us.  Let's look at what the research says works generally (spaced interleaved retrieval practice with feedback).  While individual students may have to adapt methods to fit their schedules and context, the advice we give them should start with research-backed practices.  For that, I am using Barabara Oakley's classic book, Learning How to Learn, and the new book by Daniel Willingham, titled Outsmart Your Brain as well as the amazing website retrievalpractice.org with advice from the lovely researcher Pooja Agarwal.  These sources will allow me to deliver advice with confidence and explanations about why techniques work.  They will practice them for the entire year.  I will add techniques for different thinking levels, but I will not give multiple techniques for the same thing in the hopes that one might land.  

This is not just an important concept in education, so let's look at it in everyday life.  If you have a goal to achieve, it is going to take time.  Let's say you want to lose 15 pounds.  You can't go to one spin class and 

say, "Well, I am not 15 pounds lighter, so exercise clearly doesn't work."  If you want to improve an artistic skill, you can't spend an hour watching YouTube tutorials and say, "Well, I am not any better at this now than I was an hour ago, so these tutorials are garbage."  We need to recognize that nothing in your brain changes instantly.  Trying something one time will not allow you to adapt or even to accurately judge whether you are good at (or like) what you are doing.  

Don't just say, "I tried it once.  It didn't work."  Keep doing it until it becomes an automatic routine in your life.

Educational Book Recommendations to Start the New Year

If you are a teacher, there are a lot of books available to you for professional development, but it's hard to know which ones are worth your time.  Some of the most popular ones should not be, and there are some gems that you might not ever hear about.  I read a lot of these, and I will soon be reading even more, so I thought we might wrap up this year and start the new semester with a few recommendations.  This is by no means a complete list of great education books, but you don't have time to read about my complete list.  I'll do another recommendation post in May, so you can read something great over the summer.

Learning Begins by Andrew Watson
If you want a very practical book about working memory and attention, this is the book for you.  Andrew Watson is an incredibly nice guy, and that comes across in his writing.  He was a high school English teacher before going into consulting work, so he understands the challenge of balancing curriculum requirements with student needs and understands this particular part of how the brain works better than anyone I know.  (Bonus recommendations:  Andrew has two other books:  Learning Grows is about growth mindset and stereotype threat.  The Goldilocks Map is a book I have not yet read, but I plan to read it this summer because it is about how to evaluate which research is valuable for implementation in your classroom.)

The Architecture of Learning by Kevin Washburn
This was my introduction to the world of brain science (except for some seminars on Brain-Based-Learning, which seems to have disappeared).  I saw Kevin at an ACSI conference and found him both credible and fascinating.  I bought this book and became Facebook friends with him.  He's another super nice guy, and this book will change how you view lesson planning.  It's not something you can do with every lesson; even he says you wouldn't have time for that.  What it is great for is to have a structured approach to those topics you always struggle to get across, the one that every class seems to have difficulty with.  I learned a lot from this book, and it primed me for my future love of cognitive science.

How We Learn by Stanislas Dehane
I picked this one up because my Learning and the Brain friend, John Almarode tweeted that he could not put it down.  At first, I wasn't sure how I would feel about it because there is a lot of stuff in the first quarter of the book about Artificial Intelligence and how it compares or contrasts with human intelligence.  That's not bad, but it wasn't what I was looking for.  Once you get past that part, however, this is a fabulous book on how our brains work.  There were parts that stopped me cold, and I had to post the quote right away.  If you want to understand your brain and how this collection of cells between your ears acquires and assimilates information, then 75% of this book is for you!  

A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley
Of all the books on this list, this is the best one for learners.  Barbara Oakley has a great story of believing that she wasn't good at math. Don't let the title confuse you, though.  This book isn't actually about learning math; it's just about learning.  She figured out how to learn so well that she is now a professor of Engineering and teaches a MOOC on Coursera called Learning How to Learn. (Another bonus recommendation:  If you think the title of this one would put a student off, she also has a book geared toward teenage students that is also called Learning How to Learn.)

Why Don't Students Like School by Daniel Willingham
Teachers, if you are going to read only one book about education, make it this book.  While I have found great value in every book on this list and many others, this one floored me.  There are valuable books that are hard to read, and there are easy-to-read books that aren't that valuable.  This one is the best of both worlds.  For years, I had seen it on lists of must-read books for teachers, but I let the title put me off.  I think I believed it would be about personalized learning, but when a trusted friend told me "Run. Don't walk" to read this book, I ordered it.   I read it over a three-day weekend, and I found myself stopping every few minutes to post notes from it.  It explains cognitive science and its impact on student learning better than any book I have read. 

Sometimes - Intuition Is Wrong

Last week, I wrote about normal classroom practices that are completely backed up by scientific research in the hopes that you could be encouraged in what you are already doing and also be more intentional about doing it, knowing that it is effective.  Today, I want to talk about some things that we've been doing wrong (or just as importantly telling kids to do wrong) because, when studied scientifically, they turned out to be ineffective.

Read the chapter again - When a student doesn't do well on a test at the beginning of the year, I ask them to come in and talk with me about studying.  I always start with the question, "What do you currently do to study."  There answer is almost always, "I re-read the chapter" or "I go over my notes."  We all know this isn't how to memorize something because we don't apply it to anything else we want to remember.  If you have to type in a number in a few seconds, you don't just look at it again.  You repeat it over and over out loud as you walk across the room to your computer.  If you are in a play, you don't read the script again to learn your lines.  You put the script down and try to remember the line.  Then, you pick it back up to check and see if you were right.  It's called retrieval practice, and it is highly effective.  I tell my students RECALL beats REREAD every time.  

Group by learning style - This is the myth that will not die.  It started when I was in middle school.  You had to take a test to learn your personal style, and teachers felt pressured to cater each lesson to each style, which is completely untenable.  I remember being in groups that were specifically designed to have one person from each learning style in it, even though no research had ever remotely suggested that teachers do that.  Parents still tell me their child's learning style when I meet with them, and many teachers still believe in it.  Brain science, however, is clear.  There is no such thing as a person whose brain behaves differently if they prefer to learn from visuals than if they prefer to learn from listening.  Their brains are not more active when being taught in their preferred style.  One of the reasons for the staying power of this myth is that dual coding (teaching with multiple modalities at the same time) IS effective.  That's why many teachers will tell you they see benefits when teaching with multiple styles.  The conclusion they are drawing is wrong when they could stress less by understanding the difference.  Teaching with strong visuals attached to our words helps all students.  You can create one strong lesson that pairs visuals with words (whether written or auditory) and give every brain a chance to process the information through two different parts of their brain.  You don't have to cater your teaching to individual students when catering it to the material is so much more effective.

Brainstorm in groups - Since we starting making group work the gold standard of education (which it is sometimes, but not always), we have encouraged group brainstorming with the belief that we can get more ideas from a group than we can from individuals.  The research shows the opposite result.  When people brainstorm together in groups, there are fewer unique ideas, and the idea that the group ends up going with is usually the least creative idea.  This comes from social pressure.  A more introverted person is less likely to present their ideas to the group and more likely to go along with the majority even if they don't agree.  Once a person perceived as a leader puts their idea into the mix, the group tends to go along with it and stop presenting anything else.  This doesn't mean work can't be done in groups, but if you want more ideas and more creativity, it is best to let people brainstorm on their own for fifteen minutes, to write down their ideas, and then to have all ideas read to the group without responding to any of them until they have all been heard.  The research shows that this practice will result in more solutions and that the group will be more likely to gravitate to the best one, not just the one presented by the most vocal person.

Highlight and underline - I'll admit that this one surprised me.  I was shocked to learn that it is not just ineffective, it has a negative effect (meaning highlighting and underlining makes it less likely you will remember it).  I've always been a person who read information texts with a pencil in my hand, ready to underline anything I liked and wanted to revisit.  That's a good practice if you are going to have a discussion on a book or plan to write a blog post on it and need to be able to find material to reference.  It's a bad practice if you are going to have a test on what you are reading.  By underlining the text, you have told your brain that it doesn't need to remember the information because it will be easy to find when you need it again.  Meanwhile, it instills a false sense of confidence because since you highlighted it, you believe you confirmed its importance and know it well.  

Extensive and detailed note-taking - Should students take notes?  Yes.  When done properly, it helps them maintain focus and gives them a guide for later study.  Do most students take notes well?  No.  I don't know about your students, but mine come to me with a belief that copying every word I project (and nothing else) is note-taking.  I sometimes intentionally move on from a slide before they can get everything down in order to break them of this habit.  When they ask, "Should we write this down," the answer I give is less than satisfying because it is, "You might."  On the rare occasion that I do want to students to copy an entire slide, I stop talking and give them time to do so.  When I tell students they should have things I said in their notes, they are surprised because it wasn't projected.  There is one lesson of the year in which the only thing I project the entire period is a diagram of the human ear.  We spend thirty minutes talking about each part's function and how it relates to the other parts, symptoms of problems with each part, and how the ear is also responsible for our sense balance.  One year, at the end of this rich conversation, my students said, "We didn't take any notes today.  What are you going to ask about on the test?"  They should have been taking notes the entire time, but because I had only projected the diagram, they thought they didn't need to write anything down.  Proper notes should point students back to the detailed information.  They should not be able to study using their notes alone.  It should point them to page numbers and reference videos on the LMS.  It should prompt their memory, not replace it.

Last week's post was meant as an encouragement.  This one is not intended to be discouraging, but it should serve as a challenge to keep current on the best research about education and not assume that just because you did things a certain way that it is the only way or even the best way.