Today I have the great pleasure of bringing you a very special episode featuring two of my podcasting rivals, Craig Barton and Ollie Lovell. This episode is brought to you by John Catt Educational, which publishes some of the absolute best books in education. In addition to publishing Craig’s How I Wish I’d Taught Maths, and Ollie’s Tools for Teachers, John Catt Educational has recently released an excellent instructional coaching book titled, “Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles” by Gene Tavernetti.
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Takeaways
- Standardizing entry and exit routines can improve behavior and create a calm and focused learning environment.
- Holding high standards requires relentless precision and a commitment to excellence.
- Obstacles to understanding, such as poor explanations and extraneous load, can hinder student comprehension.
- Effective coaching and ongoing support are essential for sustaining high standards and improving teaching practices. Obstacles to understanding include kids not listening, lack of prerequisite knowledge, poor explanation from the teacher, extraneous load, not breaking things down in the explanation, unreliable check for understanding, ineffective response to the check for understanding, no opportunity to embed and consolidate the idea, and no opportunity to retrieve the idea.
- Effective explanations should be clear, concise, and avoid unnecessary and irrelevant information. Teachers can use checks for listening to gauge the clarity of their explanations.
- Gradual release of responsibility involves shifting from teacher-led instruction to student-led problem-solving. This can be achieved through six direct instruction shifts: emphasis on the learner’s role, transition from out loud to in their head problem-solving, shift from massed practice to distributed practice, shift from immediate to delayed feedback, transition from heavily prompted to unprompted problem-solving, and shift from simplified to complex contexts.
- Self-explanation can be a powerful tool for meaningful learning and connecting new knowledge to prior knowledge. It is particularly effective when students can make unique connections based on their personal experiences and prior knowledge.
- Pre-testing can be an effective learning strategy, but it may seem counterintuitive. It involves testing students on material they have not yet learned, which can enhance learning and retention.
- The MAST (Massed and Spaced Testing) effect suggests that testing immediately after learning can be more effective for short-term retention, while spaced testing can be more effective for long-term retention. Pre-testing can improve learning outcomes by increasing attention and motivation.
- Mass practice can be valuable before interleaving to build competence in a specific skill.
- Interleaving is most effective when there is discriminative contrast between the concepts being mixed.
- Similarity between interleaved concepts should also be considered to help students make connections.
- Personal productivity can be enhanced by understanding individual preferences and routines.
Zach’s stuff
Ollie’s stuff
- Sign up for Ollie’s newsletter here: edthreads.ollielovell.com
- On Twitter, Ollie is @ollie_lovell
- Ollie’s website is ollielovell.com
- You can check out Ollie’s podcast, The Education Research Reading Room here
- Ollie’s first book, Cognitive Load Theory in Action, is available from Amazon
- Ollie’s second book, Tools for Teachers, is available from Amazon
Craigs stuff
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