Lasting learning: class and homework options

A teacher, a neurosurgeon, and a football coach or how about a actor, pianist, and pilot … the start of a good joke or some useful, well rounded research.

How about two cognitive scientists and a writer?

Peter Brown, Mark McDaniel, and Henry Roediger in Make it Stick, the Science of Successful Learning (2014) describe some of the latest research about learning and memory. Most of this information is not new to us at MVLAUHSD but it can inform our discussions about teaching and learning and could help us as we focus on best practices for both classwork and  homework.

A few ideas from their research to consider, including their learning from that teacher, neurosurgeon, coach, pilot, pianist, and actor:

Reflections:  In Make It Stick, the authors describe how successful professionals who are lifelong learners all require reflection of themselves and of their students. Two examples given are the daily free recall (requiring students to write for 10 minutes daily on what they learned) and weekly summary sheets instead of more traditional homework questions.

These directed summaries or reflections can require or recommend:

• retrieval of information and knowledge
• visualization
• diagrams
• lyrics and poetry
• generation: rephrasing in new words
• elaboration: connections of new information to previous learning
• plans on how to use new information differently

The authors’ discussion of reflections echo the work we have done in this district on using the best practice of summarizing, described in Wormeli’s and Marzano’s research and texts. I was surprised at how allowing some of my students to create a song as their summary to a few nights’ reading showed their ability to use many levels of learning and thinking. Having all of us in the class sing their lyrics (to the melody of the Addams family, including finger snapping) probably helped some students learn the content better than my categorization chart.  Certainly one of my students learned more from composing a law of supply rap than completing another vocab graphic.

Quick quizzes: To counter the “illusion of knowing” or a false familiarity that comes when students reread, highlight, skim, or work without owning a purpose, use low stakes testing as a “tool for learning.”  

Old school: flash cards.  New edtech: Flubaroo, Quizlet, Kahoots, Socrative

Testing groups instead of study groups.


Collaborative item analysis: A biology professor described in Make it Stick provides a few structures that support this type of learning: She has students (or you can provide) a few different answers to questions and asks students to raise fingers that match the number of the answer they chose. Students are directed to talk to another student who raised a number of fingers different from their own choice and share their reasoning.  
This activity can be also done with a shared document, using index cards, or random or teacher chosen pairings.

Combining content coverage with metacognitive skill development

At times our most diligent students “do the work” but don’t know what they don’t know.  Frequent informal quizzes can address this problem and model an effective learning strategy. Being transparent about your pedagogy and providing students with your reasons for for using quick quizzes instead of or as a supplement to traditional homework or classwork will teach our students how to learn and metacognitive skills.  

The biology professor also provides vocabulary to assist her students’ metacognition. Her students alert her that they have an “illusion of knowing” and ask how they can do better.

(page 230).  I ask my students to “continue their learning” rather than do test corrections.

Low stakes quizzes and formative assessments take time to generate but, with the help of your course teams and giving yourself a few years teaching your course, over time you can build a bank of quiz questions.  You can also substitute traditional homework questions for these quick quizzes. And more and more textbook publishers, data management, and testing services are providing assessments that can be used to support this work.

This type of retrieval activity does not limit our students’ critical thinking skills, but will build the knowledge they need for higher ordered learning in our disciplines.

Please comment and share your own strategies that help your subject stick for your students.

Thank you to Joanne Miyahara and Carol Evans for encouraging me to read Make It Stick.