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Chartered College of Teaching

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Amy's geography teacher has asked the class to prepare a short presentation about rainforest ecosystems. To plan this, Amy reflects on how she learned best on the last topic - using the school textbooks - and decides to read the relevant chapter before drafting her presentation points. However, when reading it, she decides that the chapter isn't explained clearly enough to improve her understanding. She starts to panic, as she was relying on this. Then Amy remembers a geography website her teacher mentioned. She adapts her strategy and searches the website. This provides a more useful overview, and she uses the information to summarise some interesting facts. She reflects on the experience and decides that next time she will gather a range of resources before starting to research a topic, rather than relying on one source.

This short anecdote about Amy provides a familiar scene of schoolchildren grappling with their homework each evening in homes across England. When you dig beneath the surface of Amy's actions, you begin to consider how she thinks hard about her learning. Here, she is proving to be a successful learner, having internalised some effective strategies for planning, monitoring and evaluating her geography learning.

Most often, such learner behaviours are hidden in plain sight. Students like Amy go on to prove a success in geography and beyond, whereas some of Amy's peers simply flounder and fall away over time. Some teachers cultivate and nurture the metacognitive strategies used by Amy, explicitly naming them, guiding practice and promoting them daily, but many teachers do not do this so explicitly, so pupils may not develop the most effective strategies over time.

It becomes useful then to better define the key characteristics of effective learners, using well understood terms to underpin our practice in schools. The Amy example is a concrete example of ( metacognition and self-regulation. The Sutton Trust-Education Endowment Foundation's Teaching and Learning Toolkit Education Endowment Foundation, 2018) suggests that it is one of the most effective approaches for improving pupils' attainment outcomes. So, how can teachers be helped to understand the terms? And how can the skills be developed and supported in the classroom?

Guiding teacher understanding of metacognition

Ask a staffroom full of teachers for a definition of metacognition and you will likely receive the familiar stock answer: 'thinking about thinking'. The problem here is that such a definition is vague and slippery. It certainly does not help a Year 5 teacher on a wet Wednesday afternoon, or a Year 11 maths teacher tackling trigonometry after break-time! Other definitions, such as 'learning to learn', are equally vague and can actually promote the misconception that metacognition is a generic skill that is not bound to subject knowledge - that we are not actually thinking about something.

There is a wealth of evidence to better understand metacognition so that teachers of every key phase, key stage and subject can support learners like Amy to thrive in and out of the classroom (e.g. (Dignath and Büttner, 2008)). If we can better define metacognition, we can go on to make it concrete for teachers and pupils, whilst dispelling some common misconceptions about what metacognition is, and what it isn't.

Metacognition is a part of self-regulation: those self-directive processes that direct our learning. As shown in the example of Amy, it requires:

Knowledge of yourself as a learner (such as how Amy considers how she had performed successfully on her previous topic)

Knowledge of appropriate strategies (such as how Amy drafts her presentation points and searches the internet)

Knowledge of the task (such as how Amy knows that such a presentation requires the essential information offered by the textbook).

An effective learner will monitor their knowledge and cognitive processes, and use this understanding to make judgements about how to direct their efforts. Let's take the following example. Try this straightforward mathematics multiplication: 155 x 3. You may find it easy, but you will still draw upon some tried-and-tested strategies based on your maths knowledge, and you will have a good sense of whether your answer is correct. Now, how about 145,343,233 x 3? Here, you need to reflect a little bit more. You may know that you have too limited an array of mathematical strategies for this challenge. You may be rapidly searching for a calculator, at least to check your answer. It is in those moments when you are selecting the best strategy that you are behaving metacognitively.

What we learn is that cognitive processes are controlled and adapted constantly. We are always making decisions about our learning in the moment. These decisions happen intuitively but, with explicit teaching and scaffolding, they can be better and more habitually enacted by pupils.

A visual model here is useful, as shown in Figure 1 (adapted from (Nelson and Narens, 1990)).

This not a one-off process of discrete steps, but an ongoing cycle. As you progress through the task, you update your metacognitive knowledge (of yourself, your strategies and tasks), as well as updating your subject knowledge (in this example, Amy is learning about rainforest ecosystems, as well as learning about the best research strategies).

The cycle of ' plan, monitor, evaluate' and the different aspects of metacognitive knowledge ( learner, strategies, task) are recurrent triplicates that are helpful in making the understanding of metacognition concrete for teachers.

Teachers can then consider these when setting learning tasks and supporting pupils to complete them. In an expert learner (as most teachers are), these processes are unconscious and automatic. In novice learners, however, it can be valuable to make them explicit. For students like Amy, and for teachers, defining and better understanding metacognition can prove a crucial support factor for success in school.

Dispelling metacognition misconceptions

One of the important ways for teachers to better understand metacognition and to teach pupils such strategies is to first dispel some common misconceptions about metacognition.

Misconception 1: Metacognition is a general skill that should be taught separately from subject knowledge

This is perhaps the most common misconception about metacognition. The clue is in the word: without cognition, there is no metacognition. Contrary to the misconception, metacognition is specific to the task and subject, and stronger where learners have a strong grounding in subject knowledge. It is, for example, very hard to have knowledge about how one can learn, such as through applying different strategies, in a subject without solid knowledge of subject-specific content and skills. For example, Amy must have a sound knowledge of the rainforest and its various levels, alongside the notion of an ecosystem, for her to decide the relevant evidence required from her textbook.

Therefore, teaching and practising metacognitive strategies must be done alongside subject content.Generic 'learning to learn' or 'thinking skills' lessons may be able to impart some useful overarching idea, but pupils can struggle to transfer generic approaches to specific subject domains. Self-regulated learning and metacognition have been found to be quite context-dependent, so how you best plan in Key Stage 2 art may have significant differences to planning strategies in Key Stage 4 maths. This does not, however, mean that metacognitive knowledge and skills will automatically develop through content knowledge teaching.

Misconception 2: Metacognition represents 'higher order' thinking and is therefore more important than mere cognition or subject knowledge

We know that metacognition is the knowledge of cognition and the strategies to regulate and control it. However, it would be a mistake to see metacognition as somehow 'higher order', hierarchically, and therefore more important than cognition (as Bloom's taxonomy is sometimes misinterpreted as being a hierarchy that privileges 'evaluation' over 'knowledge'). As has been pointed out, it is very hard to have knowledge about how competent you are in a given subject domain, or how best you can learn, without solid subject knowledge (Pressley et al., 2006).

For example, a student can use metacognitive planning strategies when drafting a GCSE essay about Shakespeare. But without knowledge of Shakespeare's plays, language and the relevant social context, the essay will not be successful.

Metacognition and cognition then display a complex interplay as our pupils learn. We should look to develop both concurrently and not create false hierarchies where they do not exist.

Misconception 3: Metacognition is only developed in older pupils

A common misconception with regard to metacognitive knowledge and skills is that they are only developed effectively in mature young adults and not young children. We know from research that children as young as three have been shown to be able to engage in a wide range of metacognitive and self-regulatory behaviours, such as opting out of tasks based on their understanding of the ease of the task and the level of uncertainty (Whitebread et al., 2009). They also show greater accuracy on tasks that they accept to do than on tasks they don't (Bernard et al., 2015).

There is clear evidence that the level of security and self-knowledge remains rather inaccurate until about eight years of age, with children being overoptimistic about their levels of knowledge (Clark and Dumas, 2016), but the overall trend suggests that forms of metacognition emerge early on in the lifespan.Ultimately, although older children do typically exhibit a broader repertoire of metacognitive strategies, younger children do generally demonstrate metacognitive knowledge, even at a very early age.

Metacognition in the classroom

All pupils develop metacognitive knowledge and skills in their time at school. And yet, some are more adept at doing this than others. They go on to make countless actions and decisions about their learning - many of which the teacher has little control over.

Recommendations from the evidence would suggest that teachers can be much more deliberate about teaching metacognitive awareness in the crucible of the classroom. A familiar example is 'shared writing', where the expert teacher (such as Amy's geography teacher) undertakes a written task. As she walks through an explanation of a jungle ecosystem, she verbalises the questions a geographer would ask of themselves, such as ' How many levels are there in the jungle ecosystem?' and ' How could I organise that clearly in my writing?'

As well as modelling and scaffolding explicit strategies, cultivating metacognitive talk between students can improve outcomes. For example, the 'dialogic teaching', as devised by Robin Alexander (2017), emphasises dialogue through which pupils learn to reason, discuss, argue and explain. A key element of the dialogic approach is to encourage greater quality of teacher talk, by going beyond the closed teacher question - pupil response - teacher feedback sequence. Importantly, in this and other successful interventions, dialogue needs to be purposeful and not just conversation, with teachers using questions to elicit further thought.

What an evidence-based understanding of metacognition offers us is a shared language with which to describe, define and teach effective learning. By improving their own understanding, teachers will be better able to support pupils to develop their metacognitive skills and knowledge. When we train our students to plan, monitor and evaluate, with conscious awareness within a given subject discipline, we offer them the knowledge and strategies to succeed, not only in the classroom but far beyond the school gates too.

This article is based on an EEFcommissioned evidence review examining these questions, drawing upon the expertise of Professor Daniel Muijs and Dr Christian Bokhove. A guidance report on metacognition and self-regulated learning for teachers and leaders was published by the EEF in April.

References

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Making sense of metacognition | impact.chartered.college

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Amy's geography teacher has asked the class to prepare a short presentation about rainforest ecosystems. To plan this, Amy reflects on how she learned best on the last topic - using the school textbooks - and decides to read the relevant chapter before drafting her presentation points.

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Ways Learners can Transfer their Learning

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Ways Learners can Transfer their Learning

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A Taxonomy For Transfer: 14 Ways Learners Can Transfer What They Know
What is transfer?

In "Using Self-Transfer To Drive 21st Century Assessment," I offered that transfer was "the practice of applying knowledge or meaning from a familiar context to an unfamiliar context." Further,

"This movement requires re-contextualizing what they know, which first requires that they strip "what they know" of all context, consider it in isolation, then adapt it to work elsewhere, a cognitively demanding practice. Of course, this doesn't happen by admonishing students to "transfer their knowledge," but rather is the result of transfer-by-design: continuously providing scaffolded learning opportunities for students to prove understanding-and make deeper meaning-by "moving" their understanding...

Transfer is important, but let's not think just about transfer- let's think first about the learner, then about their native environments. Then, further, let's hope for the self-initiated application of knowledge. Unprompted. Unformatted. The spontaneous, personal, and creative application of understanding in dynamic physical and digital environments."

In "Clarifying Transfer And How It Impacts What We Think Students Understand," Grant Wiggins went into further detail.

"Students are typically required to make four different cognitive moves to transfer learning successfully: 1) independently realize what the question is asking and think about which answers/approaches make sense here; 2) infer the most relevant prior learning from plausible alternatives; 3) try out an approach, making adjustments as needed given the context or wording; and 4) adapt their answer, perhaps, in the face of a somewhat novel or odd setting (e.g. if the unit of analysis demands rounding or simplifying the result, though this is not needed in these two examples.)

So, "content" can involve merely acquisition goals or both acquisition and transfer goals. It all depends upon our goals for learning that content. And vice versa: just because students are asked to do a complex performance does not mean that any real transfer is demanded. If the task is completely scripted by a teacher - say, memorizing a poem, performing a Chopin Prelude that one has practiced many times, with coaching, or writing a formulaic 5-paragraph essay - then there is no transfer of learning taking place. Transfer only is demanded and elicited when there is some element of novelty in the task and thus strategic thought and judgment is required by the performer. "
Why Is Transfer Important?
Transfer is usually framed in terms of assessment, as it is a kind of marker for understanding. But considered differently, transfer can become a powerful framework to design projects, lessons, units, performance tasks, curriculum maps, self-directed learning projects, and more. It forces the student to consider important questions, including:

What do I know?

How do I know it?

Where and how can I use what I know?

(These kinds of questions are central to the TeachThought Self-Directed Learning Model.)

In short, at the core of transfer is understanding the value of information. We can push this idea further, then, to include the concepts of the adaptation and 'movement' of knowledge. Since transfer is, at its essence, about applying knowledge to new and unfamiliar contexts, we can personalize that transfer by seeing it differently-breaking it apart into 'types' of transfer. The net result, done well, is a more personalized, authentic, rigorous, and creative learning experience for students.

Below I created 14 types of transfer-that is, 14 ways students can transfer their understanding. There are, obviously, hundreds more; if you begin to come up with some on your own, you'll see what I mean-and maybe understand transfer a bit better yourself.

In a follow-up post this week, I'll provide examples of each. I wanted to for this post, but ran out of time and didn't want to hold it until then. I'll also create a visual for the Taxonomy/examples only.
A Taxonomy For Transfer: 14 Ways Learners Can Transfer What They Know

Near: Near transfer occurs when there is little 'distance' from how the content was learned to where it's applied (the transfer target)

Far: Far transfer occurs when there is great 'distance' from how the content was learned to where it's applied

Clear: Clear transfer is when the opportunity for transfer is obvious.

Obscure: Obscure transfer is when the opportunity for transfer is not obvious.

Prompted: Prompted transfer occurs when the learner is reminded or required to attempt transfer

Unprompted: Unprompted transfer occurs when the learner is reminded or required to attempt transfer

Unpublished: Unpublished transfer is when the act or product of transfer is not made public

Published: Published transfer is when the act or product of transfer is made public

Creative: Creative transfer occurs when the student has or chooses to creatively adapt or alter the what's being transferred

Unchanged: Unchanged transfer occurs when the student simply apples what has been learned to a new and unfamiliar situation

Academic: Academic transfer occurs when the transfer is from one academic context to another

Authentic: Authentic transfer is when the transfer is from an academic to an authentic context

Part: Part transfer occurs when only a portion of what was learned is transferred

Whole: Whole transfer occurs when the content transferred is done so in whole

A Taxonomy For Transfer: 14 Ways Learners Can Transfer What They Know *previously published at TeachThought.com

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A Taxonomy For Transfer: 14 Ways Learners Can Transfer What They Know - TeachThought PD

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A Taxonomy For Transfer: 14 Ways Learners Can Transfer What They Know What is transfer? In "Using Self-Transfer To Drive 21st Century Assessment ," I offered that transfer was "the practice of applying knowledge or meaning from a familiar context to an unfamiliar context."

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by Terry Heick

How can you tell if a student really understands something?

They learn early on to play the game-tell the teacher and/or the test what they 'want to know,' and even the best assessment leaves something on the table. (In truth, a big portion of the time students simply don't know what they don't know.)

The idea of understanding is, of course, at the heart of all learning, and solving it as a puzzle is one of the three pillars of formal learning environments and education.

1. What do they need to understand (standards)?

2. What (and how) do they currently understand (assessment)?

3. How can they best come to understand what they currently do not (planning learning experiences and instruction)?

But how do we know if they know it? And what is 'it'?

On the surface, there is trouble with the word 'it.' Sounds vague. Troublesome. Uncertain. But everyone somehow knows what it is.

'It' is essentially what is to be learned, and it can be a scary thing to both teachers and students. 'It' is everything, described with intimidating terms like objective, target, proficiency, test, exam, grade, fail, and succeed.

And in terms of content, 'it' could be almost anything: a fact, a discovery, a habit, skill, or general concept, from mathematical theory to a scientific process, the importance of a historical figure to an author's purpose in a text.

So if a student gets it, beyond pure academic performance what might they be able to do? There are many existing taxonomies and characteristics, from Bloom's to Understanding by Design's 6 Facets of Understanding.

The following actions are set up as a linear taxonomy, from most basic to the most complex. The best part about it is its simplicity: Most of these actions can be performed simply in the classroom in minutes, and don't require complex planning or an extended exam period.

By using a quick diagram, concept map, t-chart, conversation, picture, or short response in a journal, quick face-to-face collaboration, on an exit slip, or via digital/social media, understanding can be evaluated in minutes, helping to replace testing and consternation with a climate of assessment. It can be even be displayed on a class website or hung in the classroom to help guide self-directed learning, with students checking themselves for understanding.
How This Understanding Taxonomy Works
I'll write more about this soon and put this into a more graphic form soon; both of these are critical in using it. (Update: I'm also creating a course for teachers to help the, use it.) For now, I'll say that it can be used to guide planning, assessment, curriculum design, and self-directed learning. Or to develop critical thinking questions for any content area.

The 'Heick' learning taxonomy is meant to be simple, arranged as (mostly) isolated tasks that range in complexity from less to more. That said, students needn't demonstrate the 'highest' levels of understanding-that misses the point. Any ability to complete these tasks is a demonstration of understanding. The greater number of tasks the student can complete the better, but all 'boxes checked' are evidence that the student 'gets it.'

36 Thinking Strategies To Help Students Wrestle With Complexity
The Heick Learning Taxonomy Domain 1: The Parts Example Topic
The Revolutionary War
Sample Prompts
Explain the Revolutionary War in simple terms (e.g., an inevitable rebellion that created a new nation).

Identify the major and minor 'parts' of the Revolutionary War (e.g., economics and propaganda, soldiers and tariffs).

Evaluate the Revolutionary War and identify its least and most important characteristics (e.g., caused and effects vs city names and minor skirmishes)
Domain 2: The Whole Domain 3: The Interdependence Domain 4: The Function

1. Apply it in unfamiliar situations

2. Create accurate analogies to convey its function or meaning

3. Analyze the sweet spot of its utility

4. Repurpose it with creativity

5. Know when to use it

6. Plausibly theorize its origins

Domain 5: The Abstraction Domain 6: The Self Advanced Understanding

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6 Domains Of Cognition: The Heick Learning Taxonomy

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The Heick Learning Taxonomy can be used to guide planning, assessment, curriculum design, and self-directed learning.

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In my previous blog I explained about how memory works, and how teachers can use strategies from cognitive science such as retrieval practice to promote long term learning. After all, the learned curriculum is the only curriculum that actually counts in the end.

The curriculum is the means by which we ensure that all our children get their fair share of the rich cultural inheritance our world affords. A good curriculum empowers children with the knowledge they are entitled to: knowledge that will nourish both them and the society of which they are members. Because, as Angela Rayner, Labour shadow education secretary says, knowledge belongs to the many, not the few.

But if children don't remember what we have taught them, then even the richest curriculum is pointless. Knowledge can't empower if it is forgotten. So as well as thinking about what is the richest, best material to put into our curriculum, we also have to structure our curriculum in a way that make remembering almost inevitable. This blog relies very heavily on the thinking of Christine Counsell, so much so I did ask her if it was alright to use her ideas about building a memorable curriculum. She was much more concerned that the ideas got 'out there' than to claim ownership of them, but much of what follows is a result of her sharing her vision of a memorable, knowledge rich curriculum with me. The actual examples from different year groups come from me, so if you find the specifics lacking, that's my fault, not hers.

Schools tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how children are going to learn, rather than what. Then when schools start to think about what they want children to learn - when they start to think hard about their curriculum - they overlook planning systematically how they can build their curriculum so that children remember it.

When I first started teaching there was no National Curriculum, or SATS and no Ofsted. Schools were completely free to teach whatever they liked. Indeed, it was often down to the individual teacher to choose what they wanted to teach. My mother was a primary teacher and her colleague said she didn't like maths so didn't teach it. That's pretty extreme. But it really was more or less up to you. The school I started in was more prescriptive than most - we had maths scheme and a reading scheme which means it was ultra-traditional for its time, but I was still asked what I wanted to teach for my first 'topic'. Your topic drove the curriculum. The idea was that under the umbrella theme, you tried to find bits of learning from each subject that linked with it. So, for example, I decided for my first topic that I would do 'the weather' - actually quite a good topic, as it goes. So we made rain gauges and wind socks and measured rainfall, wind direction and temperature, we learnt about wind speeds and the Beaufort scale in a geography/science combo. We made mobiles with the symbols from weather forecasts. (I think that was art but it might have been DT). We wrote stories about storms. We played percussion instruments to make a storm. RE? well Noah's Ark, obviously. We didn't do any history that term. Not in a deliberately planned way, but just because it didn't fit. Well I suppose I could have done the history of umbrellas or something.

This approach hasn't completely died out either. Not long ago, some poor year 6 teacher on Twitter asked for help in planning what to teach in history that term to fit with her topic. Her topic was roller coasters. A topic chosen not by her but by some senior manager who decided that since going on a roller coaster was fun, learning about them would be too.

Actually planning a topic like this was quite fun and the best teachers were really inventive and taught good stuff. The rationale behind this approach was that by linking stuff together, it would be more interesting and hence more memorable than teaching a series of atomised, unrelated subjects. Strong links between the subjects was its raison d'etre. The problem was that it was just so arbitrary. It was quite possible for children to do the same topic twice (or even three times) because it was just down to the individual teacher. Whole subjects could be left untaught for term after term after term, just because they didn't 'fit' with the topic, and not because a strategic decision had been made to concentrate on something else. Or, in a desperate attempt to shoehorn a subject into a topic, tenuous links were made. I once joked that my topic that term was 'tenuous links across the curriculum'. I was chatting to Christine Counsell the other day about this and she told me about a teacher who was doing a topic on colours. Desperate to fit in some history, the teacher plumped for teaching them about the Black Death!

But actually, this emphasis on links wasn't completely misguided. If we want to build a curriculum that promotes remembering, we will absolutely need to build links in. In fact, we will need to build in those links in a far more systematic and structural way than the 'topic web' approach ever imagined. The very bones of our curriculum across the years and across subjects will need to link up in a highly well thought out way, so that knowledge taught in one subject is explicitly reinforced and revisited in a not only in other subjects, but in subsequent years. In this way, key concepts and vocabulary are reinforced because new words and concepts are encountered repeatedly in meaningful contexts. I am calling this way of building a curriculum a 3D curriculum, for reasons which I hope will become obvious.

First of all, vertical links should be deliberated constructed within a subject so that over the years, key 'high yield' concepts are encountered again and again. Not only are these concepts practised again and again through retrieval practice while the unit of work is being taught, the curriculum design provides planned opportunities to revisit the concept in subsequent years.

So, for example, let us consider the word 'tyrant' and its associates 'tyranny' and 'tyrannical' in the context of teaching history.

We first meet a 'tyrant' in year 1, when our students encounter King John (of Magna Carta fame) and learn that he was (until the barons got him) a tyrant. We don't meet any tyrants in history again until in year 5 when we encounter Dionysius of Syracuse (the definitive tyrant) where his tyranny is counterpoised with the democracy of Ancient Greek city states. While its quite a stretch to expect that children will remember the word 'tyrant' from 4 years previously, it provides an opportunity to remind students about the Magna Carta and how power is limited in Britain. Then in year 6, we can compare Hitler with Churchill. By now, we also know the adjective 'tyrannical.'

Alongside this, we need to develop horizontal link s between subjects in a year. These are the sort of links we loved back in the old days of topic webs. In year 3 students learn about rivers in geography and the importance of the river Nile when learning about the history of Ancient Egypt. In year 4 we learn that Vikings invade England, microbes invade bodies and about invasion games in PE.

Important grammar concepts, such as nominalisation - so important for academic writing - are also addressed when children write a non-chronological report or an explanation about something they have learnt in another subject. For example, children are taught that rather than writing that the Nazi's invaded Poland we teach it is more effective to write about the invasion. Instead of saying the French were defeated we write about the defeat of the French and later about the opposition and resistance of the French.

Finally, we need to map out the diagonal links. That is to say, links that join concepts across both year groups and across subjects. So when in year 3 children learn in RE the story of the Exodus and encounter the brutality of Pharaoh they are reminded that he is behaving like a tyrant - a term they learnt in history in year 1! To give another example, the word 'source' is the place where a river begins when studying the River Nile in year 3, but is also the person or book that provides information for a news story or for historical research when we discuss primary and secondary sources in later years. In English in year 6, students revisit our beloved word 'tyranny' when they encounter the Warden in 'Holes' and her tyrannical regime. A later study of the biography of Harriet Tubman affords the opportunity to describe slavery as being a form of tyranny, but of one group of people who 'rule' over another.

Each time a concept is encountered within a different context, not only is the concept more likely to be remembered, the understanding of that concept becomes more nuanced.

What is really important is that this revisiting is done in a deliberate, planned way and not as an inconsequential aside along the lines of 'remember when you learnt about plants' without explicitly reminding the students exactly what it is about plants that you want them to link with what they are learning now. So for example, explicitly revisiting the different types of plants that grow in different biomes when learning about adaptation. References to previously studied content need to build on or develop previous learning, as well as strengthening students' ability to remember the terms. None of this should be ad hoc. These links form the bones of the curriculum. That's why we can talk of the curriculum as the progression model.

I'm not saying building such a curriculum is easy. Primary school teachers are not used to knowing what children have learnt in foundation subjects in previous year groups, let alone which key concepts might provide fruitful opportunities for development. In other words, which key concepts really are 'key'. Indeed, in my experience, most primary schools are only just beginning to map out the kind of knowledge they think children should be learning, let alone thinking about the route map of key concepts within and across years and subjects.

Yet imagine the incredible head start our children would have if they arrived at secondary school will a sophisticated understanding, grounded in different contexts of the following concepts that I've lifted from our knowledge organisers: I've tried to give the word in its nominalised form where possible but obviously we need to make sure they know the other words in the 'family' too.

(Primarily from history) Ruler, king, monarch, monarchy, reign, democracy, election, tyranny, dictator, opposition, resistance, rebellion, invasion, conquest, triumph, parliament, government, tribe, emperor, empire, defeat, occupation, exploration, taxation, civilisation, citizen, culture, state, military, conflict, alliance, treaty, coalition, surrender, warrior, poverty, flee, exile, hostility, community, migration, persecution, oppression, liberation, neutral, eye-witness, source, archaeologist, expedition, navigation, exploration

(Primarily from RE) Creation, gratitude, compassion, victim, sacrifice, sacred, holy, pagan, monotheism, polytheism, immortal, salvation, forgiveness, sin, incarnation, reincarnation, prophet, liberation, obedience, commandment, prayer, worship, wisdom, commitment, faith, belief,

(Primarily from geography) Climate, weather, temperature, erosion, fertile, irrigation, meander, crop, trade, settlement, environment, abundance, scarcity, resources, habitat, adaptation, population, predator, prey, immigration

(Primarily for science) Flammable, conductor, insulator, dissolving, soluble, solvent, evaporation, condensation, pitch, volume, circuit, particle, reversible, irreversible, extinct, orbit, reflection, reproduction, sexual, asexual, friction.

This list is self-evidently far too long. We are only at the beginnings of building our 3D curriculum.

I gave a talk partly based on this blog at the conference at Reach Academy last Monday and someone asked me the very sensible question, am I talking about Isabel Beck's tier two words? In case you haven't read her work (and you really should, it's all about vocabulary), Beck divides words into 3 categories; tier 1 are everyday words like table, cup, house; tier 3 words are technical, subject specific words such as photosynthesis or glacier; tier 2 are where we find words that provide a more precise or mature ways of referring to ideas they already know about. For example, knowing the word benevolent as well as kind or fortunate as well as lucky. See here for more. Tier 2 words are the words teachers should really concentrate on, argues Beck, because they lend a sophistication and maturity to communication that many child may not encounter at home and hence need explicit instruction.

While I agree with this, I think the key concepts we need to build a 3D curriculum from a set I'm going to call tier 2.5! I'm still reflecting on this but I think the key concepts we need are ones that although often grounded in a specific subject domain (so tier 3) are also used in a metaphorical or looser way outside that domain (so tier 2 possibly?) For example, meander has a very specific - in fact tier 3 - usage in geography yet is useful word to use to describe thoughts or route through shopping malls. It's probably not quite rich enough to from part of the endoskeleton of our curriculum, though ideally all our teachers will know that in year 3, children learn about meanders so that should the occasion occur where meander would be a useful verb, they will explicit reference river bends in their explanation.

Looking at my long list, it seems that the humanities afford more words able to be co-opted for use in other domains, whereas science vocabulary is more likely to be hyper-specific and domain bound. I also note that most of my history words tend to be about power and a fair few geography words about economics. I'm not sure if that's by lefty bias coming into play or not? But since power and money are such powerful drivers, it is no wonder that words which formally mean one thing in once context - empire, for example - are pressed into service to describe more the commonplace human interactions of the power crazy. English teachers, I presume, would look on that long list of words first encountered in history lessons and be delighted to think that children would come to English lessons already with an understanding, albeit in a very specific context, of the word; an understanding is exploited when authors use words figuratively. This is much less likely to happen with scientific words such as isotope. There are however still links to be made: coalition/coalesce for example.

Much of the detail of this approach is still tentative. I welcome comments.

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The 3D curriculum that promotes remembering

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In my previous blog I explained about how memory works, and how teachers can use strategies from cognitive science such as retrieval practice to promote long term learning. After all, the learned curriculum is the only curriculum that actually counts in the end. The curriculum is the means by which we ensure that all our...

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Visible Thinking Routines Posters @scitechyEDU

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Visible Thinking Routines Posters @scitechyEDU

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Visible Thinking Routines - DEEP design thinking

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NEW POST: Visible Thinking Routines: Visualized The following Visible Thinking Routines are designs I created so I could understand VTRs ...

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While much discourse relating to teaching in the 21st century revolves around content, programmes, methods and approaches etc. there appears to be a gap in how teachers can equip students with the skills they need to deepen their understanding of the world around them as lifelong learners.
Thinking dispositions
Learning is the outcome of thinking, and as such gaining insights into the ways students think is crucial for teachers, allowing them to alter students' thinking dispositions. Thinking dispositions (Ritchart et al, 2011) are the habits of mind that develop:

1. Observing closely and describing;

2. Building explanations and interpretations;

3. Reasoning with evidence;

4. Making connections;

5. Considering different viewpoints and perspectives;

6. Capturing the heart and forming conclusions;

7. Wondering and asking questions;

8. Uncovering complexity and going below the surface of things.

But how do we know what kind of thinking is taking place and how can we be sure that all our students are developing these thinking skills? What insights do we have into how our students are thinking and learning?

These questions stimulated our curiosity to experiment with Visible Thinking Routines (VTRs) in our EFL classrooms and take up the 21st century challenge: "Build a culture of thinking" in our learning community.

"Every committed educator wants better learning and more thoughtful students. Visible Thinking is a way of helping to achieve that without a separate 'thinking skills' course or fixed lessons."
Visible Thinking <http://www.visiblethinkingpz.org>

But what are Visible Thinking Routines (VTRs)?

Visible Thinking Routines were developed by Project Zero, an educational research group at Harvard Graduate School of Education. The routines consist of a few short steps which scaffold and guide students' thinking. They awaken curiosity and encourage students to dig deeper, taking their thinking to a more sophisticated level (Ritchhart et al, 2011).

We can demonstrate the potential of VTRs by illustrating our mini-research project carried out with two classes of 13-year-old students, in a state secondary school in Italy. The average English competency level of the students was A2 (CEFR) with 3 hours a week of EFL instruction using a mainstream textbook. The routines were chosen according to the thinking dispositions we were aiming to develop, the content being presented in the textbook, and how suitable we felt the routines would be in the given teaching context.

We focused on three different thinking dispositions linked to three VTRs.

A routine for capturing essence.
Materials:
An article about fundraising and charity concerts.
Process:

Topic-specific vocabulary had been pre-taught. The students had been working on making deductions, expressing agreement/disagreement, and probability.

They worked individually on the texts, highlighting key phrases to help them create their headlines, and then shared their ideas on the poster.

They shared their thinking in small groups, read the other headlines, and made comparisons.

Reflections:
The Headlines routine encouraged students to think more deeply about the content and develop their ability to synthesise. Through sharing their thoughts they developed meaningful conversations around the content of the poster.

See-Think-Wonder (STW)

A routine for exploring visuals and related texts.
Materials:
A photograph of a polluted river.
Process:

Topic-specific vocabulary had been pre-taught. The See-Think-Wonder routine raises students' curiosity about the topic with visual stimuli.

First (see) they described what they could see, then (think) they expressed their thoughts about the image, and finally (wonder) they were encouraged to express what else they would like to know about the topic.

The students were given question stems to help them articulate their thoughts. Although they spoke in a mix of L1 and English, they wrote their responses in English.

Reflections:
This routine helped the students analyse a visual, and use elements within it to generate their own ideas related to the topic. We found this routine particularly inclusive, as listening to each other's ideas and opinions encouraged all group members to speak up and share.

Connect-Extend-Challenge (CEC)

A routine for connecting new ideas to prior knowledge.
Materials:
A photo, audio, and some text about the environment and recycling.
Process:

Topic specific vocabulary and expressions had been pre-taught.

The students made observations about the photograph and the dialogue by applying the (now familiar) STW routine before using the new CEC routine.

Using the reading text, first they made connections (connect) to what they already knew about recycling, then they discussed what new information they had gained and how this had extended their knowledge (extend), and finally (challenge) what still puzzled them. The students worked in groups and then a plenary session was held to present their thinking
and their "challenges".

Reflections:
The EFL classroom is often a difficult place for students to express their ideas and their knowledge about a given topic. The CEC routine helped the students tap into their prior knowledge and relate it to new content and encouraged them to go beyond the surface level of the topic.
Thoughts...
A significant consideration which arose while reflecting with students is the importance of feeling comfortable and confident without the threat of evaluation; their thinking is not assessed in this approach! This concept needs to be highlighted at the outset of any Visual Thinking Routine and made clear that it is not just another worksheet to fill in with the right answer, but rather that it's their thinking process that matters.

Visual Thinking Routines need to be used regularly and systematically across the board so that students develop good thinking dispositions and habits which in turn have a positive interdisciplinary impact over time.

How could VTRs make a difference to your teaching?
Authors:
Patrizia Caroti is a teacher and ELT author with 30 years' experience of teaching English in Italian Secondary Schools.
Sarah M Howell is an OUP author and teacher trainer. She has extensive experience of teaching EFL at both primary and secondary levels.
Lisa Kester Dodgson is an OUP author with a rich background in primary and secondary education.
References (recommended reading list!)
Majida "Mohammed Yousef" Dajani. (2016). Using Thinking Routines as a Pedagogy for Teaching English as a Second Language in Palestine. Journal of Educational Research and Practice , Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages 1-18. Walden University, LLC, Minneapolis, MN.

Krechevsky, M., Mardell, B., Rivard, M., Wilson, D., (2013). Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in all Schools John Wiley and Sons, Inc, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Ritchhart, R., Church, M., Morrison, K., & Perkins, D. (2011). Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners. John Wiley and Sons, Inc, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

"Thinking Palette." Artful Thinking. Project Zero. Harvard Graduate School of Education. Feb. 2017. < http://pzartfulthinking.org/?page_id=2>

Ritchhart, Ron., Perkins, David., & Tishman, Shari. "Visible Thinking." Harvard Graduate School of Education. Feb, 2017.< http://www.pz.harvard.edu/projects/visible-thinking>

Salmon, K, Angela. "Making Thinking Visible Through Action Research." Early Childhood Education. The official journal of the Early Childhood Education Council of the Alberta Teachers' Association. Volume 39, Number 1. 2010. < https://www.academia.edu/4841813/Making_Thinking_Visible_Through_Action_Research>

Arcenas, Claire. "Bridging our Thinking." Visible thinking across subject matters. 13 Feb 2015. <https://clairearcenas.wordpress.com/>

Ritchhart, Ron. "Cultures of Thinking." Think! From the Middle. Rochester Community Schools. March 2017. <http://www.rcsthinkfromthemiddle.com/cultures-of-thinking.html>

Jacobson, Gareth. "Team Teaching - an all or nothing phenomenon." I think therefore... 16th Nov. 2016. < https://makingthinkingvisible.wordpress.com/>

"Research." Visible Thinking for the child to be and the adult to see. < http://visiblethinking.ltd.uk/research/>

Categories: Skills, Teenagers, Young Learners | Tags: Advice, Business English, Classroom Routines, Inclusive, learning technology, Llisa Kester Dodgson, new headway, Patrizia Caroti, Sarah Howell, Teenagers, Thinking, Visible thinking, Web tools | Permalink.

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Let's make our thinking visible | Oxford University Press

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While much discourse relating to teaching in the 21st century revolves around content, programmes, methods and approaches etc. there appears to be a gap in how teachers can equip students with the skills they need to deepen their understanding of the world around them as lifelong learners.

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5 Strategies to help learning - Barbara Oakley TED talk

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5 Strategies to help learning - Barbara Oakley TED talk

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iStock/melazerg

Barbara Oakley's and " with professional biography does not suggest that she was once a struggling math and science student: She is an engineering professor, author of A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science " Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential (which is not affiliated with this MindShift). Oakley co-created Coursera's most popular course, Learning How to Learn , Terrence Sejnowski, which has enrolled nearly 2 million students.

But Oakley is a self-described "former math flunky" who "retooled" her brain - and who has since made it her life's work to help others l earn how to learn by explaining some key principles from modern neuroscience.

The field of metacognition offers educators many techniques that are rooted in brain research, such as deliberate practice and interleaving. "But before you can even tackle these," says Oakley, "you have to innoculate learners against the idea that they are stupid if they cannot figure things out first off. You have to teach them that faster is not always better."

While her online course primarily enrolls adults, Oakley is now working on a book aimed at 10-to-14-year-olds. "I picked that age range because it is old enough that they can grasp the ideas but young enough that they don't necessarily think 'I'm bad at math. I can't do it.' We can get to them before they lock out possibilities."

When students do not understand how their brains learn and retain material, they can develop misconceptions about themselves as learners - such as a faulty assumption that they are bad at a subject or that they suffer from performance anxiety. Oakley shares the common experience of students who reread their notes and they know the material - only to enter a test and find that they cannot retrieve the information. "They are horrified and think they must have test anxiety." More likely, says Oakley, they simply haven't been taught how to study in a way that allows them to retrieve the information.

Oakley recognizes that "many educators are not at all comfortable with or trained in neuroscience," so she breaks down a few key principles that teachers can use in the classroom and share with students to help them demystify the learning process.
1. The Hiker Brain vs. The Race Car Brain
Start by teaching students the difference between focused and diffused thinking, says Oakley. When the brain is in focused mode, you can get started on the task at hand. But deep understanding is not fully accomplished in this mode.

Diffused thinking occurs when you allow your mind to wander, to imagine and to daydream. In this mode, the brain is still working - consolidating information and "making sense of what you are trying to learn," says Oakley. If a concept is easy for you to grasp right off, the focused mode might be sufficient, but if a new skill or concept "takes consideration, you have to toggle back and forth between these two modes of thinking as you get to true understanding of the material - and this doesn't happen quickly."

Because toggling is essential to learning, teachers and students need to build downtime into their day - time when learning can "happen on background" as you play a game, go on a walk or color a picture. It's also one reason why sleep is so vital to healthy cognitive development.

Since students tend to equate speed with smarts, Oakley suggests sharing this metaphor: "There's a race car brain and a hiker brain. They both get to the finish line, but not at the same time. The race car brain gets there really fast, but everything goes by in a blur. The hiker brain takes time. It hears birds singing, sees the rabbit trails, feels the leaves. It's a very different experience and, in some ways, much richer and deeper. You don't need to be a super swift learner. In fact, sometimes you can learn more deeply by going slowly."
2. Chains and Chunks
In cognitive psychology, "chunking" refers to the well-practiced mental patterns that are essential to developing expertise in a topic. Oakley prefers the image of a "chain" when she explains this to students.

Learning is all about developing strong chains. For example, says Oakley, when you are first learning how to back up a car, you have to consciously think about each step, from how to turn the steering wheel to how to use your mirrors. But "once that process is chained, it's easy" - it becomes automatic. Similarly, once solving certain equations becomes automatic in math, students can apply these equations to more complex problems.

Teachers can help students identify the procedures in a unit of study that they to master in order to take their learning to the next level - from the steps of the scientific method to fundamental drawing techniques.

"Any type of mastery involves the development of chains of procedural fluency. Then you can get into more complex areas of fluency," says Oakley. Here's another way to think about it. We all have about four slots of working memory that we can use to problem-solve in the moment. One of those slots can be filled with an procedural chain - and then you can put new information in the other slots.
3. The Power of Metaphor
"Metaphor and analogy are extraordinarily powerful teaching tools and very often underused," says Oakley. "When you are trying to learn something new, the best way to learn it is to connect it with something you already know."

The formal term for this is " neural reuse " - the idea that metaphors use the same neural pathways as the concept a metaphor is describing. So familiar metaphors allow a learner to draw on a concept they have already mastered and apply it to a new situation. Or as Oakley says, metaphors "rapidly on-board" new ideas. For example, says Oakley, comparing the flow of electrons to the flow of water is a way to "jump-start students' thinking."

As part of her research, Oakley reached out to thousands of professors who are considered top teachers in their fields. "Many of these professors had a secret that they used in their teaching: metaphor and analogy. It was like a secret shared handshake." Oakley encourages teachers to not only use metaphor but to challenge students to develop their own metaphors as a study strategy.
4. The Problem of Procrastination
Oakley says that procrastination is the number one challenge facing most learners. To train the brain to systematically focus and relax - to - she recommends the "Pomodoro Technique."

Developed by Francesco Cirillo, this strategy uses a timer to help the learner work and break at set intervals. First, choose a task to accomplish. Then, set a timer for 25 minutes and work until the timer goes off. At that point, take a five-minute break: stand up, walk around, take a drink of water, etc. After three or four 25-minute intervals, take a longer break (15 - 30 minutes) to recharge. This technique "trains your ability to focus and reinforces that relaxing at the end is critical to the process of learning," says Oakley. Teachers and administrators can build a similar rhythm into the schoolday, providing brain breaks and movement time to help students toggle between focused and diffused thinking.
5. Expanding Possibilities
When we teach children and teenagers they learn, we can blow open their sense of possibility, says Oakley. "I would tell students, you don't just have to be stuck following your passion. You can your passions enormously. And that can have enormous implications for how your life unfolds. We always say 'follow your passions' but sometimes that locks people into focusing on what comes easily or what they are already good at. You can get passionate about - and really good at - many things!"

5 Strategies to Demystify the Learning Process for Struggling Students

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5 Strategies to Demystify the Learning Process for Struggling Students

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Barbara Oakley's and " with professional biography does not suggest that she was once a struggling math and science student: She is an engineering professor, author of A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science " Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential (which is not affiliated with this MindShift).