Can Prior Knowledge Interfere with New Learning?

This is not one of those posts where I ask a rhetorical question and then answer it. I won't be wrapping this one up with advice to teachers.  I am genuinely just musing here based on something I noticed last week that caused curiosity.

In my part of education land, we talk a lot about connecting new learning to prior knowledge. Out knowledge base is our already existing schema, and new learning finds a place to fit within it.  As Daniel Willingham tells us, we can only learn in relationship to what we already know. Prior knowledge enhances reading comprehension and problem solving; you can only think critically about things you know well.  This is all well established and backed by solid education research.  

Here's what I'm wondering, can new learning and old learning interfere with each other? In particular, I am thinking of things with a high degree of similarity. 

Let me explain what got me started thinking about this.

I attend a liturgical church. If you aren't familiar with that, it involves a fair amount of congregational participation during the service - prayers we say together, call and response, and recitation of the creed and the Lord's prayer - stuff like that, individual churches will vary). 

While all of it is printed in the bulletin, making it easy to read along, I decided that I wanted to memorize the things that are consistent every week. This includes, in my church, the: 

• Collect for Purity (easy to learn with a little retrieval practice)
• Lord's Prayer (I've known that one since I was in kindergarten)
• Confession of Sin (a little more retrieval - got it)
• Doxology (been singing that most of my life - check) 
• Nicene Creed (aye, there's the rub)

So, the Nicene Creed is the one that got me thinking about this.  I grew up reciting the Apostle's Creed, which is a lot shorter. But I don't think the length of the Nicene Creed made it difficult; I think it was that there are some similarities to the Apostles' Creed. Where they were similar, my brain wanted to race straight through the one I knew better.

For example:  The Apostle's Creed begins, "I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord." The Nicene creed takes a little more time with the Father before moving on to the Son, so it begins, "We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God . . ." 

So, I did my retrieval practice work, and I had it down reasonably well.  By reasonably well, I mean I was slightly halting as I thought about whether the next line is "eternally begotten of the Father" or "of one being with the Father." But, I knew it well enough to say in a group without looking down to check the bulletin.

That is, until last week. On the final week every month, we use a different liturgy, known as a Morning Prayers service. That one uses the Apostles' Creed, the one I know so well I could probably rattle it off if you shook me awake in the morning and asked me to say it. Last week, the first week of the month, when we started the Nicene Creed, I completely fumbled it. 

So, my musing is this. Did one week of reverting back to the well known creed interfere with my ability to retrieve the one I know less well?  Will this change once I know it better? Is my already existing schema preventing attachment because they are too similar and trying to occupy the same cognitive space? Is there research on this, or is it too weirdly specific for an adequate experiment? 

So help me, Daniel Willingham, I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but I am going to spend some time this week retrieving the Nicene Creed so I don't feel so lost again this Sunday.

Exam Study and Retrieval Practice

Depending on your school's semester structure, you are either right on top of exam time or will be shortly after Christmas (so I probably should have written this last week).  For those in content knowledge based classes, the best thing you can give your students is the chance to retrieve information from their brains.  

Why?  Because that's how we cement the knowledge in our brains.

It's a technique known as retrieval practice.  It isn't new; it has worked for hundreds of years. But the science revealing how powerful a strategy it is has only been published in the last decade. According to the website retrievalpractice.org, “Retrieval practice is a strategy of deliberately bringing information to mind,” and it is a powerful tool for memory and fluency.

While we typically think of flashcards and whiteboards for retrieval, there are many other methods that we can employ in the classroom.  Using a variety of methods, from brain bombs and summary sheets to Socrative, Quizlet, and clickers to think-pair-share, you can engage students in retrieval practice while preventing boredom.  In my BodyPump classes, Matt will sometimes stop and watch us cary out a movement without his cues. I’ve certainly never been bored when he engages us in this type of retrieval.  On the contrary, I feel empowered to succeed on my own.

Why does it work? Here's where I'll examine just a little bit of neurology.

Your brain cells are surrounded by a layer of fat, called myelin. It serves two purposes:

1. Insulating the nerve to prevent electrical signals from traveling to the wrong place. You wouldn't want a signal intended to contract your heart muscle to go to your bicep instead.
2. Enabling fast, efficient communication of signals. The denser the myelin, the quicker the signal travels.

When practicing a new skill or rehearsing information, the myelin layer around the neuron thickens (myelination), enabling faster communication the next time that pathway is activated.  In physical skills, we call it muscle memory, but muscles don’t remember things as they are just meat.  This thing we call muscle memory is simply a well-myelinated pathway, made of multiple neurons.  According to Stanislas Dehaene, the physical changes in a neuron when memorizing and practicing, strengthen the interconnections between them, “making it more likely that this set of neurons will fire in the future.” 

In the class I take with Matt at the Y, the routine is changed every six weeks or so.  When we first start a new routine, we are an absolute mess.  Hardly anyone in the class is doing the same thing as our instructor, Matt, in spite of the fact that he is cueing it well.  Two weeks later, most of us are getting it mostly right most of the time because we now have pathways that connect one move to the next due to myelination.  The same is true of academic learning.  As we retrieve the memory, we grow the myelin, allowing us to retrieve it more efficiently the next time we need it.  Thus, the old adage, “If you don’t use it, you lose it” is true because when we don’t practice something, we lose myelin or don’t myelinate the neuron in the first place.

I'm not suggesting that we use rote memorization alone.  The learning is obviously "stickier" if we connect the information to meaning.  But that can be done during retrieval.  Encourage students to go through their flashcards more slowly than they usually do, pausing to ask, "Why is this the answer?" or "Why isn't it a different answer?" As Kevin Washburn says in The Architecture of Learning, “Data not processed is short-lived.”  He makes the point that knowledge and thinking cannot be separated from each other if there is meaning to the content, which is why we often talk to ourselves (even if it is only internally) while attempting to learn something new. In How We Learn, neuroscientist and author Stanislas Dehaene describes how brain imaging reveals this “processing depth effect,” explaining that deeper processing activities activate areas of the prefrontal cortex that form loops with the hippocampus.  He does not advise one preferred method of deep processing but says that “all solutions that force students to give up the comfort of passivity are effective.”

It became trendy a few years ago to downplay retrieval and knowledge. People called it "drill and kill" because, for some reason, we believe things more if they rhyme.  As an experienced teacher, you know it works. Research from both neurology and psychology demonstrate that it works. Use it early, often, and without shame.

Since people Maybe we should start calling it "drill for skill."

Practical Advice for Your Student - Part 2 - Studying For Tests

After I began attending Learning and the Brain conferences in 2018, one of my favorite things to do was have individual conferences with students who were not performing as well on tests as they would like.  I knew that I had advice that could help them because of what I had learned about cognitive science and memory.

I started by asking them how they currently study.  Their number one answer was, "I look over my notes."  I asked them what that meant, and it was clear why their study habits were ineffective.  They were basically re-reading the words they had copied from the wall with no context or processing.  For a couple of years, I gave them better advice about studying for tests.  

Then, I realized I needed to start expanding these conversations.  We discussed, first, what they were doing in class while learning.  I then addressed more effective study techniques.  Then, finally, we talked about how to deal with questions during the test.  

So this post is the second of the series.  How should a student study for tests?

First, their intuition is likely wrong.  In surveys, the methods students list as most effective turn out to be the least effective according to research.  My students most common answer, "I look over my notes" does little to improve their memory or understanding of the content.  Highlighting and underlining, as it turns out, have a negative effect on memory and fools you into believing you know it.  It's like your brain says, "Of course I know that.  Look at it; it's yellow."

The simplest way to answer the question about the best way to study is to recognize the power of retrieval practice.  The method is less important than that guiding principle.  Does this method allow me to passively receive input? If so, it is not an effective method.  Does it require me to actively retrieve the information from my memory?  If so, it is likely to be effective.  

So, make flashcards.  Use Quizlet or Anki.  Make flashcards.  Make and play a game of Kahoot.  Make flashcards.  Have your parents ask you questions while you answer without looking.  Did I mention you could make flashcards?  

Most of those are only useful for questions that have very short answers (definitions, examples of concepts, etc.), but they aren't great for questions that require you to explain.  For that, I would make a list of questions, including those the teacher has told you will definitely free response questions and those that just require more explanation to understand.  Then, without using your notes or book, write out the answer to the question as you would on a test.  Only after you have written out the entire answer should you go to the book, video, or other resource and check your answer against it.  Don't just do it in your mind; write it out.  I can't tell you how many times I have had students use most of the right words only to get the concept completely wrong.  In an explanation of how Boyle's Law determines breathing, the wrong answer, "Increasing volume in the chest raises the pressure" will be easy for you to fool yourself into thinking you got it right when you go look it up in the book to find "Increasing volume in the chest lowers pressure."  You see most of the right words and don't realize that you described a direct relationship when there is actually an inverse one.  But if you write it down, it is harder to fool yourself.  

It boils down to this: 

Recall > Reread

Wait some time.  Shuffle your cards / questions.  Recall again.  Wait even more time.  Shuffle again.  Recall again.  This requires planning.  It can't be crammed into one night.  But it is effective.

Some of My Favorite Teachers (They Don't Teach in School)

When I joined the YMCA in March, I knew I was going to be a novice learner in a way I had not been in quite some time.  I've been teaching the same things for 25 years, and even the learning I've been doing about cognitive science was a form of learning with which I am quite familiar (academic learning from reading and listening).  Learning about physical things was going to be very different, and it's not an area in which my klutzy self has ever had much confidence.  I was excited to try new things and learn, but I also knew I was going to be pretty bad at things for quite a while.  (I will talk more about this in my  Thanksgiving post, but one of the great things was the first time I walked into Cardio Kickboxing and asked Matt if there was anything I needed to know.  His answer was "First of all, don't take yourself too seriously.  That was very helpful.)  

So, I knew this would be a learning challenge.  What I did not know was what an exceptional group of educators I was about to meet.  

As a person who reads educational research, listens to evidence-based education podcasts, attends Learning and the Brain conferences about cognitive science, and then teaches teachers how to improve their teaching, my brain is always noticing HOW I am being taught, not just WHAT I am being taught.  Seeing these concepts applied to non-academic teaching has been especially interesting, so let me tell you about those whose classes I take regularly.

 

Liz K - Meet the Queen of Clarity.  According to my friend John Amarode's book, Clarity for Learning, students should know three things at the outset of a learning activity - what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they will know when they have achieved success.  I take Liz's spin class on Monday nights, and she tells us what each challenge will involve and how it will help us.  She gives feedback as we do it, so we know exactly where we are.  She explains where the pace is most important and where the tension is most important.  She uses the tools on the bikes to help us set a standard for ourselves and then match or beat it on the next challenge.  I always know exactly what benefit I will get from each thing Liz asks us to do, which is motivating because what she is asking us to do, climbing a hill on high tension or sprinting at over 100rpm, is usually kind of painful.

Liz also exhibits and instills a Growth Mindset.  Most of the instructors at the YMCA do, but I have noticed it in Liz's class at a particularly high level.  I even have her quoted on my classroom bulletin board.  She says, "Don't say, 'No, I can't,' until you have said, 'Yes, I'll try.'"  (By the way, teachers, if you want a great book on growth mindset, please pick up Andrew Watson's Learning Grows. He does a great job of making a readable summary of the history of this research;  it is more than just Carol Dweck.). Liz gives us a chance to beat our own best during each class, but she supports us even if we don't. She'll say, "Did you meet your goal?  If not, did you stay motivated the whole time?  That's what the goal is for."  Every class starts with the same speech, "If you've got something to sweat about, go ahead and crank up that level. Go for a PR. If, however, just getting here was a workout, guess what? You are already cycling. You've achieved that just by being here."  

I frequently think back to a day in May when I had experienced a particularly rough day as a yearbook advisor, and I came to Liz's class feeling pretty low. I beat the crap out of the bike that night, putting every frustration of my day into the pedals.  When I met her 4-minute challenge, I got to end a day where I felt like I had not done anything right with a serious win.  Since then, I have pushed myself harder in spin classes than I previously had because I realized what I could do when I really wanted to.  I think about that day frequently because it was so helpful to me, so I try to think of ways to provide my students with a way to win as well.   

Jay C - I don't have a book to recommend on the Communication of Care, not because there isn't a lot of research on this very human aspect of education, but because no one has written a very readable book on the subject.  We all know that it is important for teachers to care about their students, but not all teachers (particularly teachers of older students) know how to communicate it that well.  Those teachers should come to the Y and watch Jay. When Jay starts teaching, we know that he cares about us. We know it even more than we know what speed we should be pedaling. He calls us by name and asks about our lives.  I ran into him at the water fountain a couple of days ago, and he said "I've been thinking about you this week" and told me how glad he was that I was in his class.  He frequently tells the class, "You all inspire me."  He shares stories about the music he is playing, and the stories are all about the humanity of the artists.  While you are in the toughest part of the workout, he shouts, "You are strong.  You are healthy.  You are a gift."  I have often thought that people walking by in the hall would get contact encouragement from this man.  

In April, I was still experimenting with classes and trying to figure out whose I wanted to take regularly.  I had taken Jay's classes 3 or 4 times when I came one evening feeling a little emotionally raw from the events of the week.  Near the end of the class, Jay told us an incredibly touching story about his son, who had witnessed a car accident that week.  He then played "Bridge Over Troubled Water," a song that has a 97% likelihood of making me cry on a normal day.  So, I am pedaling and sobbing and wiping sweat and tears from my face simultaneously.  Then (I'm not done), he said, "You know, there are a lot of people who feel like they don't have a bridge.  If that's you and you need a bridge, come up after class and we'll exchange numbers.  I'll be honored to be a bridge for you."  I knew then this was someone whose class I would never leave.  One evening, I asked him if he would pray for me about something, and he said, "Yes, let's do it right now" and pulled me aside to pray with me. I'm not the only one he has this effect on; a couple walked into class one afternoon with t-shirts that said "Jay's Jammers" and said they had taken his class when he taught in another city.  Imagine loving your exercise instructor so much that you have shirts made and then, when you happen to be in his town, you come to his class.  That doesn't just happen because an instructor teaches the technical aspects well or plays good music.  That happens because he communicates how much he cares in a genuine way.

Stacey A - Stacey is an exercise machine.  I take her outdoor spin class every Saturday, but I have also taken her cardio step class a few times, and she teaches a strength training class.  Although she says this isn't true, I feel like she would work out in the red zone for an hour if she weren't teaching.  She is a force to be reckoned with, and so is her class.  Whether it is an endurance ride or a challenge ride, I know she is going take me right to my maximum ability.  Just when I think I can't take one more minute at this pace, she'll say, "20 more seconds until recovery."  To educators, this is known as Desirable Difficulty - keeping people in the sweet spot where it is difficult enough to be worth doing but not so difficult that they give up.

For those who take her class regularly, Stacey remembers what we have said and checks in.  If she knows a person's dog has been sick, she will ask about it the next time she sees them.  If they've been on a trip, she asks about it.  One day, I told her I would leave 5 minutes early because I was going to experiment with taking two classes back to back.  The next time I saw her, she asked me how it went and whether I thought I would do it again.  Two months later, she asked me how it was going.

Stacey's great strength as a teacher is, not only pushing us to a place of "desirable difficulty," but giving us an intuitive sense of what that is.  (Teachers, if you want to know more about desirable difficulties in the classroom, see this list of research articles by Robert and Elizbeth Bjork on Google Scholar.) Our bikes come with color zones that are meant to let us know how hard we are working out, but if we haven't set the numbers accurately or don't know what it should be, the colors won't mean anything.  She describes what we should be feeling at each stage.  Because of Stacey's descriptions (Green should feel like work, but you can still breathe; at yellow, your mouth will be open.  Red is all you've got; if you don't feel the need for a break, you weren't in your red zone), I could know how hard I was working on any bike, choreograph my own workout, or adjust my input number if I don't feel the way I should feel in each zone.  I have adjusted my input number twice as I've gotten stronger based on her descriptions.

Matt M - I don't have words to describe what an incredible teacher Matt is.  He has an extraordinary ability to accept me exactly where I am with whatever I have the ability to do (or not do) while simultaneously challenging me to do more.  That's a pretty special gift.  I also just enjoy watching him teach because he gets all lit up inside in a way that shines through his eyes, so it makes me feel happy, like I'm sitting in a window with sunlight coming through it.

I assume Matt doesn't spend his free time reading books about Cognitive Load and working memory (teachers, the best one you can read is Learning Begins by my friend, Andrew Watson), yet he manages cognitive load like a professional educator by teaching each part of a move in slow steps before speeding it up.  I'm willing to bet he hasn't studied up on the last decade of research into Modeling and Scaffolding, yet every kickboxing and weightlifting class is filled with those exact techniques. Every week, in his Cardio Kickboxing class, Matt stops and watches us do a combination without his cues, joking that we won't need him anymore.  He doesn't know it, but this is our most powerful educational tool, Active Retrieval Practice (teachers, pick up Pooja Agarwal's book Powerful Teaching or go to her website, for more on this important concept).  Matt is a joy to learn from, so I take his classes whenever I can, hoping he doesn't get tired of seeing me.

These four aren't the only teachers I have had at the YMCA who use sound educational practices.  Gwen tells us "Get your mind right" to remind us of the purpose of what we are doing.  Greg uses imagery like "your feet should feel like you're scraping gum off your shoe" and "it should feel like you've got half a Snickers bar under your tire" to make these abstract concepts into concrete thoughts in our minds.  Julie takes up space in our working memories by telling dad jokes, so we don't have room in it for thoughts of quitting (distraction is just filling working memory).  Thomas gets off his bike and walks around, an act of formative assessment. There are more, but I didn't want this post to be a mile long, so I only thoroughly discussed those whose classes I take every week.  These outstanding educators may not teach in school, but they are amazing and impactful teachers nonetheless.  

Retrieval Notes - An Experiment

Ever since the 2019 Learning and the Brain conference and reading Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain's book Powerful Teaching, I have been all in on the idea of retrieval practice.  I recognize the benefits that come from retrieving information from your mind rather than putting it in again, myelinating the neuron and making it more efficient.  As I tell my students, if you are in a play, you don't learn the lines by reading the script again.  You learn them by trying to remember them.

But there was one thing I was afraid to try until this year.  It's a concept known as Retrieval Taking.  Rather than taking notes during class, students summarize the class at the end.  The research on this is compelling.  Students who summarized after learning performed 12 % better on a post-lecture exam than those who took notes during class.  But I was hesitant.  What if it doesn't work?  How do I tell parents that I told their students not to take notes in class?

For the past two years, I have had a lot of individual meetings with students.  If they don't do well on a test, I send them a note to come see me during lunch or study hall.  We talk about their study methods, and I give them advice on how they might revise them to be more effective.  Then, I looked at their notes.  What I found was that the students who were the very best at note-taking were still really bad at note-taking.  They either had what I had projected on the wall and nothing else or they had attempted to take down every word verbatim.  Neither of those methods is helpful, so I thought I would teach them to take better notes.  That didn't work because change is uncomfortable, so, if I wasn't going to collect their notes and grade them (and I wasn't), they would just go back to what they were comfortable with after about a week.  Their computers were also an issue.  While I am totally supportive of our one-to-one program, students do an awful lot of shopping and game-playing that is difficult to manage as a teacher.  One of the purposes of note-taking is to maintain student engagement in class, and that was kind of a wash if they were taking them on their computers.

At last year's Learning and the Brain conference, I was in a session with John Almarode.  He gets you to stand up and walk away from your table and find a partner; as a result, I am nowhere near my computer for over 20 minutes.  He is intentionally trying to keep us from taking notes.  After the session, I was joking with him and said, "Well, I am going back to the hotel room and writing up these notes, and you can't stop me."  He laughed and said, "Yeah, that's what you should do.  That's what students should do; it's just that they won't."

So, I found myself at a tipping point where I thought it was time to attempt this method of note-taking.  Also, between the textbook that perfectly matches my class and the many videos I have made, the students have plenty to study if this doesn't work.  At parent orientation, I introduced this idea to parents, a little worried about what their response would be.  It was overwhelmingly positive and hopeful.  The only concern one parent had was "What if my daughter wants to take notes."  I replied that if she was taking them on paper, I would not take the pen from her hand, but she would not be allowed to do it on her computer, and I would not wait for her to write.  He seemed satisfied with that.  So, here is what I have been doing.

First, I needed something to keep student attention and engagement in class.  There are mini-whiteboards and markers on every desk (thank you Craig Barton for so much advice for their use on your podcast and Zane Smitley for spending two years doing this so well while I observed you).  I ask frequent questions in class anyway, so rather than calling on a student with their hand raised, I now get an answer from every student on their whiteboards (I may need to buy stock in the Expo company).  I am realizing that I need to ask a lot more questions because when there is a large gap between them, students are starting to drift; but I'm working on that.  Second, I stop whenever the part of the class that is primarily me speaking and say "Go back to GoFormative for the notes summary."  They begin almost every class on that platform for their bellwork, so it made sense to use it for the summaries as well.  When they go there, I have put in several questions that I would hope notes would have answered if they had been taking them.  I based that on the advice from this blog post by my friend Andrew Watson from the Learning and Brain website.

It's a little too soon to know how this going.  As far as classroom practices go, it seems to be going very well.  But, is it helping them learn?  It's too soon to tell.  They did perform exceptionally well on their first test, but the material on the first test isn't very hard.  I may not be able to make meaningful comparisons between this year and other years until tests two and three, when I traditionally see a drop in performance.  (Yes, I know performance and learning are not the same thing, but for the moment, it's the only metric I have.)  At this point, I can say for certain that it has not harmed their performance on the first test, but I'll keep you updated as the year goes on.

Waiting Out the Silence

"I'll ask the questions, or I'll answer them, but I won't do both."  

I say this a lot in my classroom.  It is usually 30 seconds or so after I've asked a question, and a room full of physics students stare at me, hoping someone else will answer so they don't have to.

There was a time when this wouldn't have happened.  In fact, one of the first pieces of feedback I ever got after a classroom observation was that I didn't give kids enough wait time after asking a question.  Like most Americans, I was uncomfortable with silence; so I filled the time with hints and guidance (in a way I now know was interfering with their thinking).  This isn't unusual.  I observed this morning in church.  Between the first and second songs, there is a time in which we are meant to spend time in silent reflection and repentance.  The music leader spent the entire time talking about what this time should and should not be and then went right into the next song.  Even in what was supposed to be a time of silence, he was so uncomfortable with silence that he filled it with words.  

Silence is uncomfortable, but I now know that it is the most important part of the time I spend in retrieval practice with my students.  If they answer too quickly, it likely means that I have asked them to retrieve information too soon after their exposure to the material for it to be effective.  The best time to ask a student to retrieve information is just before they have forgotten it (knowns as the spacing effect).  The time it takes to search for the answer is important to the myelination of the neuron.  If I interrupt that process by filling the time with words, I am wasting my time and theirs because they won't have time to engage in the act of retrieval.

The advice I was given after that observation 23 years ago was to count to three after I asked a question.  That was good for young me.  I had no intuitive feel for how long was long enough, so counting to three was helpful.  Now, I have a different method.  I look at the kids.  I can tell when they are thinking, and I can tell when they have given up on thinking.  There is a moment in between those two times, the moment of awkward silence.  What I have found is that is the time when I should reword the question or give a guiding thought.  It's just before they have stopped thinking about the question.  I don't know how to explain what that moment looks like to younger teachers, but if you do it right, you might not need to use it much.  if you are willing to wait longer than the students' comfort level, you will usually get an answer before that point.   They will fill the silence for you, and they might do it by giving the correct answer.  If not, they might at least give an answer you can help them build upon.  

Learn to wait out the silence, and there will be more thinking in your classroom than all of the words could ever produce.

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.