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What Teachers Should Know About the Science of Reading

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What Teachers Should Know About the Science of Reading

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Kids aren't being taught to read, says senior education correspondent Emily Hanford of APM Reports, and that's because many teachers haven't learned how reading works.

Hanford's hard-charging radio documentary, published last fall, has reinflamed decades-old debates about early reading. Her message is clear: The science has shown that systematic, explicit phonics instruction is the necessary foundation for successful reading. But that's not what teachers are learning in their training, and it's not what's happening in schools.

We recently invited Hanford to the Education Week studio for a live conversation on what teachers should know about reading science. Below is the transcript of that discussion, which first aired on Facebook Live. (The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

Liana Loewus: I'm here with Emily Hanford. She is a senior education correspondent for APM Reports, which is the documentary and investigative reporting group at American Public Media. She, in the fall, published a radio documentary titled "Hard Words: Why Aren't Our Kids Being Taught to Read?" So we're going to talk about reading today-reading research and the science of reading. As Emily says in the documentary, decades of research have shown that reading doesn't come naturally. The human brain is not hard-wired to read. It is hard-wired to learn to speak, but not to read. So kids have to be taught explicitly how to connect letters and [sounds]. So we're going to talk about that.
She also found in her reporting that that kind of instruction is not happening in a lot of classrooms across the country, so I'm going to ask her about that. My background is actually, I began as a reading teacher. I've taught in a few different settings. So this topic is of particular interest to me, so I'm really excited to have you here today. And yeah, I mean let's just kick things off and maybe you can tell us a little bit about, why did you decide to tackle early reading?
Emily Hanford: That's a good question. So it started, it's probably about two and a half years ago and I was really kind of a blank slate on this topic at this point. I had already been an education reporter for almost a decade but I had done very little about elementary education. I had done some work on early education and I got interested in dyslexia, in particular. So about two and a half years ago, I spent several months working on this documentary about kids who really struggled to read and what is going on for them and why many of them are having a hard time getting what they need in school, getting their dyslexia identified and getting the help they need.

And what I learned through that reporting is that a big part of the problem for kids with dyslexia is that there is a core instruction problem going on. Kids with dyslexia are often not being identified and given the help they need because there's not as much of an understanding about how reading works, how skilled reading works, and what happens when kids are having trouble reading, as there could be in schools. We actually know a lot about that but the knowledge base sort of generally in schools on that topic is not real strong, so what I really discovered through the moms of kids with dyslexia, who themselves have gotten really dug into the research to try to figure out what's going on, they are the ones that really clued me in, like, we think we have a core instruction problem here. We think that the way that we're teaching all kids to read is a little off because kids with dyslexia don't need some different or other kind of reading instruction from everyone else. They often need more of it, they need it more intensely, but what they need to learn how to read is the same thing that everyone needs to learn how to read.

So in some ways, dyslexia is sort of treated as kind of like a special ed. problem and really, it's not so much for a lot of kids. It's about getting good core instruction. Many of the kids who were being identified with dyslexia may not need that special education if they were getting the right kind of instruction in their classroom.
So then you decided to look into all learners, not just students with dyslexia and reading there. And you did a lot of research on the science of reading, on reading science. Talk a little about what that means.
Right, so what is the science of reading? It's kind of a loaded term but, how do skilled readers read words and how do kids learn how to do it? These are fascinating questions. As human beings, we've been reading for thousands of years. We did not know the answers to those questions. So we had theories about it and we created ways to teach kids how to read, kind of based on those ideas about how reading works and we fought about that. We fought about it pretty viciously in the '80s and '90s but we've actually fought about it over history. You can go back a couple hundred years and find that we were fighting about how does reading work and what does that mean about how kids should be taught? So what's happened, there's that whole history, and then over the past like 50 years or so, scientists from all over the world have done thousands of studies about how we learn to read. And these are people in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguists, many different fields. There's not like one field of reading science.

And they've done all this research and they've pretty much figured it out. They figured out, how do we read? How do we learn to read? What does that mean about how we should be taught? So we've been fighting about it but at the same time, in the last 50 years, there's this huge body of research. It's not like a few studies or a few scientists. It's like hundreds of scientists and thousands of studies that have really established an evidence base for the way reading works that is not disputed among scientists.
And talk a little bit about how does reading work? What is the most important thing you learned about how the brain learns to read?
So I think there's two really kind of important concepts or ideas that I think teachers in particular really need to know, that come out of this vast body of research. So one is this model that's actually been around since 1986 and it's called the Simple View of Reading. And it was really proposed to try to understand actually some of these things we fight about, which is like, how does reading comprehension happen? What's the role of phonics in decoding and all of that? So the Simple View of Reading is a model that is now been backed up by lots and lots more research. It has a solid scientific base behind it and it essentially says, reading comprehension is the product of your language comprehension-the words you know how to say, the words you can hear-and your decoding ability.

So if you multiply those two things together, you get reading comprehension. So what's going on for a child who's entering school is, they already know how to say a lot of words. They already know what a lot of words mean in their spoken vocabulary and their task, and it's not a small task for a lot of people, is to figure out how the words they know how to say are represented by written language. Now kids certainly come into school at different levels with this, in terms of the pre-literacy experiences they have, and some kids are actually reading some words, but it really is the primary task for most kids in kindergarten to figure this out, to understand how their spoken language is represented in writing.

The other big idea that I think teachers really need to understand is ... even when phonics was sort of developed as an idea, that was kind of invented before we really knew how people learned to read also. So phonics isn't 100 percent right. It turns out that the people who are advocating a phonics approach, which is paying attention to helping kids understand the way that the sounds in their language map onto letters and combinations of letters, that they're sort of more right than some of the other models we've had for reading. But it's not 100 percent right. And one of the things that phonics kind of failed to explain completely is ... phonics is about decoding words, but when we're skilled readers, what the research has figured out is we don't decode words as we go. We do eventually sort of store words in our mind, not as whole words, but we store them so that they are automatically known to us when we read.

The hallmark of skilled reading is you very, very quickly and very accurately know exactly what a word is when it's flashed in front of you. In fact, scientists have done these studies which have showed that if you flash in front of a skilled reader the word chair and the picture of a chair, your brain actually processes the meaning of the word chair quicker than the picture chair.

So we become super good at reading and, like you said in the beginning, our brains weren't meant to do this but when you become a skilled reader, you get really, really good at it. So one thing I think that teachers really need to understand about all this is that the goal is automatic recognition of words, but we do not recognize them as wholes. When you and I are reading words, we are very quickly processing every single sound, every single letter in that word. So that is a hallmark of being a good reader and ... scientists have figured out, how do people do that? How does stuff get stored in your brain? Well it gets stored in your brain through processing a word several times through its phonology and through its orthography. So the way it sounds and the way it's spelled.

So a typically developing reader, once they've been taught the basics of the alphabetic principle, like phonics, how their language is represented by letters and combinations of letters, once you give kids a good grounding in that, most typically developing readers, starting in like 1st or 2nd grade, need just a few exposures to a word through its phonology and its orthography. So through not memorizing the word as a whole but looking at all the letters in the word, going through the word from left to right, processing the whole thing-you do that a few times and it's mapped into your memory as a word that you know on sight in the future. So those two things, the Simple View of Reading and this concept called orthographic mapping, both reinforce the idea of how critical phonology and orthography, how critical it is to have kids pay attention to the sounds in words and to have them really understand the letters that represent those sounds.
Yeah, you explained it to me recently by saying, the way we know the difference between house and horse is because we've orthographically mapped them both and each letter is important in that mapping, right?
And every time we see those words, we quickly see every letter. That's how we know the difference between horse and house. And we do it really, really fast. Yeah.
So we started to talk a little bit about the reading wars, but let's sort of just give a little ... a brief history of the reading wars and sort of talk about where we are now. So you say that they actually go back a hundred years.
They do. Hundreds actually.
But they became pretty vicious in the '80s and '90s, so we can start there if you want.
So there are these different ideas about how reading works that we've been fighting about for a long time, so one is kind of phonics and that's the idea that you need to pay attention to the sounds. It's kind of a bottom up approach, so you begin to teach kids to read by helping them understand the letters, the combinations of letters, and you build up to whole words and to sentences and to paragraphs and to full texts. And then the other approaches were whole word, which is a little bit different than whole language. So whole word was kind of the Dick and Jane books of the early 20th century. That was the look-say model. Like look at a word, say it, and the idea there was that we ... they thought that we read words by wholes, so we should teach kids words by wholes and the way that you become a skilled reader is you basically memorize a whole bunch of words. You're exposed to them enough that you just know them on sight.

And then the whole language iteration of reading was more, came about in more of the 1960s and '70s, shared some ideas with the whole-word approach but had some differences. And one of the key kind of beliefs of or tenets of whole language is that learning to read a language and write a language is very similar to learning to speak a language, that it is essentially a natural thing and that through exposure to lots of text, kids will learn to read. So we fought about that for a very, very long time and we're still fighting about it. But like I said, we have all this research that shows that in fact, phonics is critical to becoming a reader. It is essential. It is not the only thing you need, but all good readers have good phonics skills. So some kids learn a lot of that without getting a lot of instruction in school, but most kids need instruction. So if all kids need phonics skills, we can either hope that they get it somewhere or we can teach it to them.

You say in your documentary ... you quote Mark Seidenberg. He's a cognitive neuroscientist. He said, "The reading wars are over and science lost." What are your thoughts on that? Where do you think we are right now? And the debate does continue in a lot of places, like why is that still happening?

Well what you will find in a lot of schools in the United States and in other parts of the English-speaking world is this term balanced literacy. And balanced literacy is a term that really was sort of introduced during ... in the midst of and in the wake of the reading wars. And the idea of balance is great. I mean, you want balanced instruction sort of in all things, so it's a hard term to bicker with, and it's also a hard term to fully understand because it kind of means different things to different people. But I've been spending a lot of time talking to people, looking at the research, looking at curriculum materials, and there are some things that you ... I think what's happened in the name of balanced literacy is what you find in a lot of classrooms that are doing balanced literacy is sort of a little bit of everything all at once. And what the research shows is that's not actually what kids need. They don't need a little bit of everything all at once. What you really want to see in early reading instruction, when kids are first coming to school-and remember, the task ahead of them is not to learn a whole bunch of words, they already have this advantage, they speak a language. Now they have to learn the written code.

So you want to see a pretty heavy emphasis on that, not entirely, but you want to see a really heavy emphasis on that. I think what you find in a lot of balanced literacy classrooms that I've been in and that I've talked to people about, is kind of putting it all, in the name of doing everything, putting it all together at once. And I think a lot of the important skills that kids really need to master to get from here to here with reading are kind of being missed.

Another observation I have about balanced literacy is that in some ways, when you kind of look at what is going on in the name of balanced literacy, there's a little bit of an idea that to become an expert reader, you mimic what experts do rather than you go along a series of steps to become an expert. So there's a lot of this research just in learning in general, and I think there's a kind of resistance to breaking reading into its parts, but we really need to do that for kids, to break it into its parts, to build it up so that kids then have all the skills that go together.

There's all these different skills that go together to become a proficient reader and it's like there's this foundation of phonics and phonemic awareness knowledge, which really is kind of one of the first tasks in school, and so much research, including the National Reading Panel and since the National Reading Panel, reiterates the critical role of really focusing on the alphabetic principle and the alphabetic code, sort of emphasizing the written code in early learning.
Just to talk a little bit about what the National Reading Panel was, it was published in the year 2000. Congress mandated that a group of experts come together and decide, sort of to settle the reading wars, and they looked at 100,000 studies, and a lot of those studies they dismissed. And the end result of that was that they said phonics is very important. It has to be systematic and explicit, right? This is now 19 years ago, and you're saying we're not seeing phonics in all our classrooms. But I've talked to teachers and in our reporting we talk to teachers who are using balanced literacy and they say, we are doing phonics. And they get very ... there's a lot of emotion behind this ... because some people will say it's a euphemism for whole language and others will say, no, we're doing balanced literacy and we're doing phonics. What do you see as the issue there though?
Well I think what balanced literacy is is whole language with a little bit of phonics in it. And the question is whether or not, if you really know the research base on reading, would you design reading instruction that way? And one really important thing to point out to people is, among the people who study how the brain reads and how people learn to do it, there's not controversy about phonics. There's no controversy that this is an essential building block, right?
At K-2 though, right?
At K-2.
We're talking very early.
And older if you haven't learned how to decode words. There's a resistance ... There's a lot of people out there who will say, if a kid's not a good reader in 5th or 6th grade, they're beyond phonics. They're not beyond phonics if they haven't mastered that. They really need to learn that. So I think there is ... Yes, I think in most schools ... You can still find some schools that really don't do much about foundational skills at all, but yes, in my reporting, I found and I said in the documentary that most balanced literacy classrooms do do some phonics. The question is, are they doing enough of it? Are they emphasizing it?

It's kind of like an opportunity cost question, is one of the ways that I've come to see a balanced literacy classroom. If you really look at the science, what would you want to emphasize first? What's the sequence you would want to go in to build all the things that you would need to become a proficient reader? And I think what happens in a balanced literacy classroom is there's potentially a lot of time lost, like a lot of stuff sort of left on the table because there's not enough time being devoted to the phonics and phonemic awareness, the alphabetical principle, the written code. And it's also really important to understand what we mean by explicit and systematic, because what's happening in a lot of classrooms is that the phonics is being taught kind of incidentally, like it comes up as kids struggle with words. There's a particular letter pattern that they're struggling with, so the teacher will teach a mini lesson on that, and a lot of stuff kind of gets lost because you don't necessarily know all ... unless you're listening to every single kid read everything out loud, you're not going to know all the different patterns that kids are struggling with.

People can fight and there's no agreement on what particular order you teach the written language to children in, but you kind of need to have a system. You need to have an order so that you cover it all. And again, kids are in different places, but you need to make sure that there's not holes in their knowledge. I've interviewed many children and parents who are older, who have huge holes in their knowledge when they're taught in this kind of incidental way. The teacher notices they struggle with one thing, they focus on that, but they may miss that there's a lot of other things that these kids don't understand.
There are actual sounds they don't know or digraphs or some part ...
Exactly.

I'm going to ask you one more thing and then we'll go to audience questions and if you're just tuning in right now, I'm here with Emily Hanford. She is of AMP Reports. She did a radio documentary called Hard Words. It's about reading science and why kids aren't learning to read.
But I did want to ask, teacher prep comes up in your radio documentary. What did you find that teachers are learning in their preparation programs? As they're studying to become teachers, what are they learning about reading?
Well, first I want to say that there's actually a decent amount that we know about this. So there have been a number of surveys of teachers. There have been reviews of syllabi and textbooks by a number of different groups and researchers. There have been some really good research in a couple of states, where they've gone in and done some reporting, where they really interviewed teacher candidates, interviewed teachers after they went to the classroom, interviewed professors, interviewed deans, went and observed what was happening. So it's not such a black box. Some people are like, we don't really know what's happening. We have a decent amount of research that shows us what's happening in teacher prep and I have talked to, at this point, talked to and interacted with hundreds of teachers.

And what I am hearing is that the basics of the reading science, like the Simple View of Reading that I just described, most teachers aren't learning that in their teacher-preparation programs.So they're not learning the basics of all of this stuff that researchers have learned about how the brain learns to read, which is very, very relevant to how you would design reading instruction.

The other thing I think that we pay less attention to, but there's been some good research on this, too, is that teachers are not learning very much about the structure of the English language themselves. And this gets back to what you asked about in terms of balanced literacy. Teachers are saying, well I teach phonics. I think one of the things that we know and that teachers have told me is that they themselves don't know that much about how the English language works. I mean, many of us don't. Many of us who become readers don't necessarily know all the rules and you don't need to, like, learn them. I don't even want to call them rules because that's not a good way to talk about what phonics is. But there's a decent amount, that if you were going to be a kindergarten, 1st, or 2nd grade teacher, or even a teacher for older kids because we've got a lot of struggling readers in older grades, there's a lot of stuff you need to understand about how the English language works to be able to teach it well to little kids. And that is not a focus, according to the teachers I've talked to and the surveys that I've seen in teacher preparation.

So we have this wide gap between research and practice, along the research itself and the knowledge of the English language.

And one of the things that I want to say here is that I think it's unfair to teachers that they're not being taught this, and teachers want to know it. I mean teachers want to be able to effectively teach their kids how to read. It's not like we have any silver bullets out there but we know so ... I mean this was really surprising to me as a reporter, and I'm still learning stuff, but there are dozens of books, so many papers, tons of videos, I mean it is a voluminous amount of stuff that we know about how reading works. And the fact that that is just over there and is not, for the most part, making its way to teachers when they're being prepared or making its way to them when they're getting professional development is unfair to teachers and unfair to kids.
So somebody is asking, what's the best response to the argument that structured literacy instruction would be boring to some advanced students. I assume that they mean sort of a, an explicit program by structured literacy. I mean what's your response to that.
So I think that's one of the misunderstandings about phonics out there. I'll tell you this, I just took ... audited a class, an online class, in the psychology of reading and the last half of the class was just all about the structure of the English language and about phonics and phonemic awareness. It's fascinating. I mean completely fascinating. This is one of the reasons we have a problem in the United States, is English is a complex language. We have many layers of our language. There's many influences. We're a kind of melting pot language. So our spelling patterns, we have many different ways to explain our spelling patterns. We don't have one clear set of rules that this is the way things are spelled in English. We take stuff from the French, the Germans, the Anglo-Saxons, Latin and Greek.
But that becomes an argument not to teach phonics, right? It's too hard. There are too many things to learn. Our language is too irregular, so we can't teach all the rules.
That's one of the myths too because there's ... Linguists will debate this but between 80 and 95 percent of English words can be explained. Sometimes there's not just one rule to explain it all, so you have to teach many things to children, but this gets to the idea that it's not boring at all. If it's taught well, it's completely fascinating and so I think this is one of the things that kind of hangs us up. I think some people have this idea that phonics is just worksheets and boring. But, number one, if it's taught well, it's not at all, and I've been into many classrooms where it is not boring at all. And if you describe to kids like, this is from Greek, and why is was spelled that way?, and all these very common words we have that are the most irregular words are Anglo-Saxon words and we used to pronounce them differently-you can tell that to kids and it's fascinating to them.

So I think we're kind of stuck. I think one of the things that keeps us stuck is some ideas about phonics that I don't think are really true. And I'll say number two, phonics is so ... if you know the research, you know how absolutely critical it is to have phonics skills. I mean you cannot be a really good reader without phonics skills. Again, we can hope kids just learn that somehow or we can teach it to them. So even if it were ... I'm not advocating for boring instruction, but boring phonics is better than no phonics. Kids are going to become better readers and the research, the evidence base I think shows you that. So it is a non-negotiable to teach phonics, and there's no reason it should be boring. And if teachers themselves understood why phonics was so important and had a really good understanding of the English language, I'd want to go to kindergarten again. The stuff you would learn about language in a good kindergarten class, and I've seen some of it, is just mind-blowingly interesting.
Yeah and great teachers can make anything interesting. I've definitely seen that in reporting and in the classroom.
Absolutely.
So here's a question that kind of goes back to your dyslexia documentary. Somebody says, if a kid has dyslexia and learns how to read, do they still have dyslexia?
That's a really good question. So what the researchers have found ... I mean dyslexia is caused by a phonological weakness. So the reason people with dyslexia have a hard time learning how to read is it's hard for them to not hear necessarily but sort of discern and manipulate the individual sounds in words. So their brain just processes these speech sounds kind of differently and they need more explicit kind of awareness of what's going on. They need more kind of training and practice to hear the different sounds of words. So dyslexia is something that's based in neurology. There's something in your brain. But the definition of dyslexia is an inability, a hard time reading words, even if you've had good instruction. So technically, if you have a phonological weakness but you're taught how to read really well and you become a very good reader, it's kind of one of those ... Are you still dyslexic? In some ways, it doesn't really matter.
Because you can read.
Yeah, so you just happen to be someone who becomes really good at ... I don't know a good analogy. I mean you become good at math even though you have a weakness like you're not one of those kids who can do multiplication tables in their head. I have two boys and one of them could multiply three-digit numbers by three-digit numbers in his head and I was like, whoa. I can't do that. But you don't have to be able to ... you don't have to be strong at that to become a good mathematician. ... That's probably a terrible analogy because I don't know anything about math, but anyway, what I'm just trying to say is that what we know is that people with dyslexia can become very good readers if they're taught. We also know that people who don't have dyslexia, they don't become good readers if they're not taught really well because there can be a lot of other factors that put you at risk for reading that aren't having a phonological core deficit, if that makes sense.
I'm going to ask one more question. If parents, teachers, and policy makers could do one thing to help shift the thinking and bring about needed change in teacher-prep programs, what do you think they should do?
I think that teachers need to speak up, honestly. Because I really think that in some ways, we've gotten stuck in the reading wars because this debate about reading has gotten attached to a whole bunch of other things. And one of them is sort of this idea of teacher autonomy. And so when people start talking about what the research says about reading and bringing in phonics programs or whatever, there's this kind of backlash like, you're encroaching on my space and my professional autonomy and I know how to teach my kids. And this is true. Teachers are the ones who need to get up everyday and teach kids how to read. And when the teachers that I have talked to, who have written about this and who have spoken up about this, I mean so many of them when they discover how much is known about reading, they go, oh my god. Why didn't I know that? Why didn't I know these basic things?

So I really think the key is for teachers to be like, we want this information. You are not coming in here telling me what to do. I want to know what to do and I don't want to be hammered over the head and told what to do, I mean ... teachers need to be given this knowledge and they need to be given good materials and good programs so that they can go in and be teachers. They can put their own spin on it. They put their own personality in it. I have seen teachers who didn't know this stuff, learn this stuff, started teaching in a very different way. They say, this is very different than the way I used to teach reading. And they love it. And the class is fun and it's their personality and they're really into it.

So I really do think that teachers need to speak up about the knowledge that they don't have. And the teacher preparation programs need to listen to that and then the schools need to listen to that. We do have a really big challenge ahead because there's quite a big gap here between knowledge and practice. So it's going to take a lot of time and resources in terms of money and know-how to bring this knowledge to teachers. But like I said before, I think it's unfair to teachers and unfair to kids if we don't commit to doing that.
Well I could talk about this all day ...
So could I.
And you probably could, too, but we have to stop somewhere. This has been fascinating. Thank you so much for coming and chatting with us, and thank you to everyone who is chiming in and sending questions. And if you want to continue the conversation, find us on Twitter. You can find Emily on Twitter. We have a new Facebook group if you're interested in joining. We do some more in-depth conversation. It's called the EdWeek Homeroom. Find us there, ask for an invite. And then head to the website, edweek.org, we have plenty of articles on reading. Thanks for being here, Emily. This was fun.
Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks.

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What Teachers Should Know About the Science of Reading (Video and Transcript)

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Education correspondent Emily Hanford of APM Reports spoke with Education Week about her radio documentary on early reading and what teachers should know about reading science.

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The Progression of Addition and Subtraction HD

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The Progression of Addition and Subtraction

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The Progression of Addition and Subtraction

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Graham Fletcher

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By Jancey Clark, posted October 23, 2017 - Show your thinking
As mathematics classrooms continue to shift from a focus on procedures to more conceptual understanding, students are being asked to "show their thinking." This isn't always easy. Visible Thinking routines can provide students with a structure and scaffold to support making connections, using knowledge effectively, and communicating ideas during problem solving.

In the book Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners, authors Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison suggest ways to use thinking routines in all subject areas and across all grade levels. As an elementary school instructional coach, I have been excited to see how these routines can be used in the math classroom. The following routines help students see that math is about more than finding the answer.
Develop a deeper understanding of content
The Connect-Extend-Challenge (CEC) routine is perfect for introducing new concepts and skills because it encourages students to draw on prior knowledge and experience. Instead of just asking students to solve a problem, ask them how it connects with other problems they have solved. Then ask them to think about what's new to them-how the task extends their thinking further and deeper than the previous lesson. Finally, asking students to identify what challenges they are facing with the task will provide useful formative data and inform your future instruction.
Promote meaningful collaboration
As mathematicians, our students must be able to communicate a claim, make generalizations, recognize patterns, and provide evidence. The Claim-Support-Question routine guides students in doing so. Start with a claim, such as, "All multiples of nine are also multiples of three." Then ask students to work in pairs or small groups to discuss whether this claim is true or false. They must also provide support, or evidence, using manipulatives and examples. Finally, invite students to share any remaining questions that have been raised and have not yet been answered. This routine will highlight student misconceptions and disagreements, and it will keep the discussions focused on the evidence and how it supports or refutes the claim.
Scaffold students' thinking and learning abilities
To support students in uncovering patterns and developing equations, use the See-Think-Wonder routine with Visual Patterns. First, show students a pattern and ask, "What do you see?" In response, students describe patterns and talk about how they would count the objects. Then, move on to asking, "What do you think?" Instruct students to think about what the next step in the pattern would be. This will lead to the question, "What do you wonder?" Students might wonder about what the 100th step would look like and how they could find out. This discussion will lead students to a conceptual understanding of equations.
Build a culture of engaged thinkers and learners
These are just a few of the Making Thinking Visible routines that can be used in the math classroom. When used explicitly and consistently, Visible Thinking routines will promote active thinking and deep learning. In addition, students will become capable of thinking independently and communicating effectively.
Your turn
How are you transforming the culture of math teaching and learning at your school this year? Use the comment section below to share your ideas and plans for transforming the culture at your school, or join us on Twitter @TCM_at_NCTM using the hashtag #TCMblog.

Jancey Clark is an elementary school teacher and instructional coach who is passionate about personalized learning for both students and teachers. In her current role as elementary school learning coach at the American International School in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (AIS-R), Clark facilitates professional learning through workshops, coaching cycles, and team planning. As a member of the Near East South Asia (NESA) Council of Overseas Schools Mathematics Collaborative Core, she helps develop and promote professional learning opportunities in mathematics for the NESA community. When she is not learning with colleagues at AIS-R, she enjoys sharing and reflecting on learning through Twitter (@jancey5) and her blog ( EDventures in Coaching).

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Transforming the Culture of Math: Routines for Making Thinking Visible

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By Jancey Clark, posted October 23, 2017 - Show your thinking As mathematics classrooms continue to shift from a focus on procedures to more conceptual understanding, students are being asked to "show their thinking." This isn't always easy. Visible Thinking routines can provide students with a structure and scaffold to support making connections, using knowledge effectively, and communicating ideas during problem solving.

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The more you know about your memory, the better you'll understand how you can improve it. Here's a basic overview of how your memory works and how aging affects your ability to remember.

Your baby's first cry...the taste of your grandmother's molasses cookies...the scent of an ocean breeze. These are memories that make up the ongoing experience of your life -- they provide you with a sense of self. They're what make you feel comfortable with familiar people and surroundings, tie your past with your present, and provide a framework for the future. In a profound way, it is our collective set of memories -- our "memory" as a whole -- that makes us who we are.

Most people talk about memory as if it were a thing they have, like bad eyes or a good head of hair. But your memory doesn't exist in the way a part of your body exists -- it's not a "thing" you can touch. It's a concept that refers to the process of remembering.

In the past, many experts were fond of describing memory as a sort of tiny filing cabinet full of individual memory folders in which information is stored away. Others likened memory to a neural supercomputer wedged under the human scalp. But today, experts believe that memory is far more complex and elusive than that -- and that it is located not in one particular place in the brain but is instead a brain-wide process.

Do you remember what you had for breakfast this morning? If the image of a big plate of fried eggs and bacon popped into your mind, you didn't dredge it up from some out-of-the-way neural alleyway. Instead, that memory was the result of an incredibly complex constructive power -- one that each of us possesses -- that reassembled disparate memory impressions from a web-like pattern of cells scattered throughout the brain. Your "memory" is really made up of a group of systems that each play a different role in creating, storing, and recalling your memories. When the brain processes information normally, all of these different systems work together perfectly to provide cohesive thought.

What seems to be a single memory is actually a complex construction. If you think of an object -- say, a pen -- your brain retrieves the object's name, its shape, its function, the sound when it scratches across the page. Each part of the memory of what a "pen" is comes from a different region of the brain. The entire image of "pen" is actively reconstructed by the brain from many different areas. Neurologists are only beginning to understand how the parts are reassembled into a coherent whole.

If you're riding a bike, the memory of how to operate the bike comes from one set of brain cells; the memory of how to get from here to the end of the block comes from another; the memory of biking safety rules from another; and that nervous feeling you get when a car veers dangerously close, from still another. Yet you're never aware of these separate mental experiences, nor that they're coming from all different parts of your brain, because they all work together so well. In fact, experts tell us there is no firm distinction between how you remember and how you think.

This doesn't mean that scientists have figured out exactly how the system works. They still don't fully understand exactly how you remember or what occurs during recall. The search for how the brain organizes memories and where those memories are acquired and stored has been a never-ending quest among brain researchers for decades. Still, there is enough information to make some educated guesses. The process of memory begins with encoding, then proceeds to storage and, eventually, retrieval.

On the next page, you'll learn how encoding works and the brain activity involved in retrieving a memory.

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The more you know about your memory, the better you'll understand how you can improve it. Get details on how your memory works and how aging affects your ability to remember.

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Staying focused throughout the day.

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The Pomodoro Technique®: Staying Focused Throughout the Day

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Use frequent short breaks to manage time better, raise productivity levels, and protect your health with Francesco Cirillo's Pomodoro® Technique.

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This blog entry is part of a series of topical Practice-Oriented Literature Overviews written by the HILT Research Fellows.

by Michael C. Friedman

Note-taking should be an obvious practice and an intuitive skill: pay attention in class, and scribble (or with the current generation of students, type) furiously as the instructor speaks and displays slides of information, right?

Good note-taking practices can potentially make the difference between efficient study behaviors, better course outcomes, and even retention of course content beyond a course's conclusion. Unfortunately, many students are unaware of the benefits of effective note-taking on their learning and the importance of cultivating their note-taking skills over the course of their education.

Notes on note-taking: Review of research and insights for students and instructors reviews the existing research on note-taking and makes recommendations for both students and instructors:

For students:

Avoid transcribing notes (writing every word the instructor says) in favor of writing notes in your own words.

Review your notes the same day you created them and then on a regular basis, rather than cramming review into one long study session immediately prior to an exam.

Test yourself on the content of your notes either by using flashcards or using methodology from Cornell Notes. Testing yourself helps you identify what you do not yet know from your notes, and successful recall of tested information improves your ability to recall that information later (you will be less likely to forget it).

Carefully consider whether to take notes on pen and paper or with a laptop. There are costs and benefits to either option.

We are often misled to believe that we know lecture content better than we actually do, which can lead to poor study decisions. Avoid this misperception at all costs!

For instructors:

Explain your course policies regarding note-taking at the start of the semester (Do you allow laptops? Do you provide slides to students before or after class?). Point to the literature/research and your own experience to support your policies.

Prior to lecture, provide students with materials so that they become familiar with main ideas or topics. This will help students identify the important concepts during class and take selective notes (however, avoid giving students so much material that they elect poor study behaviors such as relying on materials instead of attending class and taking notes).

Encourage students to take notes in their own words rather than record every word you say in class. Doing so will lead to deeper understanding during lecture, more student engagement in class, and better retention of course content.

Make connections between current and previously discussed course concepts, and encourage students to make such connections on their own. Doing so will help students retrieve related ideas when they are needed (i.e., during an exam) and assist your students in identifying relationships they would have otherwise missed.

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This blog entry is part of a series of topical Practice-Oriented Literature Overviews written by the HILT Research Fellows. by Michael C. Friedman Note-taking should be an obvious practice and an intuitive skill: pay attention in class, and scribble (or with the current generation of students, type) furiously as the instructor speaks and displays slides of information, right?

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Asynchronous and Synchronous Learning for Math

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Asynchronous and Synchronous Learning for Math

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Link to webinar from SAP, register to get access to the recording.

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We understand the uncertainty you face next fall. IM Certified COVID-19 response resources will help you plan for distance learning, address unfinished learning, and support families. Based on IM K-12 Math certified by Illustrative Mathematics, COVID-19 response resources will ensure students are engaged with grade-level math content and are set up for success in math next year and beyond.

To address unfinished learning for your students next fall, IM has created just in time adaptation packs and supports to engage all students with grade level content. These resources seamlessly integrate with the curriculum's scope and sequence.

Curriculum Adaptations

Curriculum Adaptation Packs help you identify prior concepts and skills that students need to access the content in each unit, and provide just in time support to keep students progressing in their learning.

IM K-5 Math beta Adaptation Packs

Cool-down Supports

Cool-down supports ensure you have the tools to address newly discovered unfinished learning, and identify opportunities to revisit content in future lessons, without stopping to re-teach a concept.

Professional Learning

On-demand math story videos share the big mathematical ideas of each unit to help you make choices to maintain a coherent "math story" as you adjust for the demands of distance learning and address unfinished learning.

IM K-5 Math beta on-demand videos

IM Certified Blog Corner

"I appreciate all of the thought around planning for the possibility of student learning gaps due to COVID as well as being proactive around planning for continued remote learning."
-Ashley Shaw, Assistant Principal, Citizens of the World Charter School
As you look at the possibility of distance learning models next fall, IM is providing guidance and resources to keep your students engaged and give every student access to grade-level mathematics. The guidance will support your students' social-emotional learning needs and provides opportunities to synthesize their learning before moving on.

NEW! IM Community Hub
Coming this summer
The IM community has always been a great resource for sharing ideas including The Standards for Mathematical Practice and IM Learning Tasks. We look forward to collaborating with you in response to COVID-19 at the IM Community Hub. Sign up to join the IM Community Hub where you can create, share, and get resources for unfinished learning, distance learning, and family supports.

Section Planning Guides

The section planning guides identify essential lessons and activities that address major work of the grade or prerequisites, and provide guidance on distance learning activities to support each lesson or activity.

PBS Video Lessons

Plus, Schoolkit will be providing 24 video lessons for IM 6-8 Math and Algebra 1 to be aired on local PBS stations later this summer. These videos will help students be prepared for next fall.

Video Lesson Summaries

The video lesson summaries highlight key points and vocabulary that students learn across several lessons. This supports students for checking their understanding and reviewing important concepts, vocabulary, and skills.

IM 6-8 Math Video Lesson Summaries

IM 9-12 Math Video Lesson Summaries

IM Certified Blog Corner

"I love that IM authors are tuned to the teachers' needs and come out with guidance in a timely manner."
-Rita Moneymaker, BHS Math TOA
To support families with their child's learning and engagement in math, IM family support resources ensure family support resources to ensure children talk about math and families have a better understanding for what their child is learning.

IM Talking Math prompts, aligned to lesson and content standards, help spur mathematical discussions at home for grades K-5 and 6-8.
GRADES K-5 GRADES 6-8

Family Support Materials for IM 6-8 Math and IM 9-12 Math certified by Illustrative Mathematics give an overview of each unit's math content and problem for families to work on together.
IM 6-8 MATH IM 9-12 MATH

IM Certified Blog Corner

"IM Talking Math prompts has helped teachers adjust their pedagogy and families communicate mathematically with their children during an incredibly difficult time."

-Dr. Hilary Kreisberg, director of Lesley University's Center for Mathematics Achievement.

IM professional learning has been converted to virtual in response to Covid-19

To support your readiness for fall and beyond, sign up for IM K-12 Math . Plus, New professional learning for K-5 , 6-8, and 9-12 Covid-19 response professional learning now available.

"We consider a facilitator's 'IM Certified stamp' shorthand for quality and expertise, both in mathematics and in delivering the very best professional learning experiences to teachers and coaches."

- Katie Martin, Lead Secondary Math Teacher, New Hanover County Schools, Wilmington, NC

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Distance Learning | Illustrative Mathematics

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We understand the uncertainty you face next fall. IM Certified COVID-19 response resources will help you plan for distance learning , address unfinished learning , and support families . Based on IM K-12 Math certified by Illustrative Mathematics, COVID-19 response resources will ensure students are engaged with grade-level math content and are set up for success in math next year and beyond.

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About this site

This site contains a collection of webinars that address various topics in mathematics education. Register for new sessions and view previously recorded sessions. Live webinars are presented at 7:00 p.m. ET and recordings are posted the day after the live event.

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NCTM – Professional Development Webinars

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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced schools across the country to confront unprecedented challenges. And the longer schools remain closed-likely through the end of the academic year in most states-the higher the stakes become for next school year.

To tackle these challenges, school systems must focus on the strategies proven to accelerate student learning. Even imperfect attempts to accelerate learning back to grade level will create far better school experiences for many students than what they received before the crisis.
The key is doing the right planning for the new school year, right now.
We've created the following guidance to help school and district stakeholders responsible for that planning, organized around a few key questions:

1. How do we create a plan to accelerate student learning?

2. How do we accelerate student learning in the next two years?

3. What other challenges should we be anticipating as we plan to accelerate student learning?

This guide will help you figure out how to go about answering these guiding questions and assembling the people, information, and processes needed to plan for restarting school.
Terms of Use
These tools and resources are provided for informational or educational use only and are not intended as a service.

Unless otherwise indicated, the resources provided on the COVID-19 School Response Toolkit are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license and are subject to the copyright rules under that license.

Commercial use of the materials is not allowed without explicit written permission from TNTP, Inc. Unless otherwise noted, any distribution of materials posted on this website must credit TNTP, Inc. as follows:

From COVID-19 School Response Toolkit (2020) by TNTP, Inc., available at https://tntp.org/covid-19-school-response-toolkit.

Permission to copy, use and distribute materials as described above shall not extend to information housed on the COVID-19 School Response Toolkit and credited to other sources, or information on websites to which this site links.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced schools across the country to confront unprecedented challenges. And the longer schools remain closed-likely through the end of the academic year in most states-the higher the stakes become for next school year. To tackle these challenges, school systems must focus on the strategies proven to accelerate student learning.

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Students can engage in grade level work and "fill gaps" simultaneously..

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Students can engage in grade level work and "fill gaps" simultaneously..

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Vinci Daro quote

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Students are learning online in greater numbers than ever before, and faculty need more than the technical basics -they must be fully prepared to use pedagogical approaches that make the most of an online experience.

This 25-module course in effective online teaching practices concentrates on teaching practices effective for online instruction. Based on the same evidence-based pedagogy as ACUE's course in effective teaching practices, Effective Online Teaching Practices was designed in collaboration with online teaching and learning experts to empower faculty to be impactful online instructors and ensure student success today and in the future .

Comprehensive in scope, the course's content and facilitation focuses on proven online teaching approaches across all of the core competencies in ACUE's Effective Practice Framework. Faculty earn a Certificate in Effective College Instruction.

Effective Online Teaching Practices s upports all design and delivery models, including synchronous, asynchronous and hybrid formats, and is relevant for all faculty roles. This course can also be delivered through flexible microcredentials courses.

Offering this course is an ideal way to complement and expand the impact of institutional teaching centers and instructional technologists as they support effective online instruction that leads to more powerful student outcomes.

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Students are learning online in greater numbers than ever before, and faculty need more than the technical basics -they must be fully prepared to use pedagogical approaches that make the most of an online experience. This 25-module course in effective online teaching practices concentrates on teaching practices effective for online instruction.

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Online Teaching Toolkit | Resources for Online Instruction

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Resources for instructors needing to make a quick transition to utilizing an online environment. Improved the online experience for teachers and students.

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Teaching online isn't like teaching in the classroom. It requires a different approach and specific online teaching strategies to boost learning.

In a digital learning environment, you often have limited time to make sure that your instruction is effective. No matter your audience, you have to provide maximum value.
These five online teaching strategies will help you increase engagement and retention for both kids and adults.
Want to learn how to put them into practice? Read on.

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative Learning

Sometimes called small-group learning, is an instructional strategy in which small groups students work together on a common task. The task can be as simple as solving a multi-step math problem together, or as complex as developing a design for a new kind of infrastructure.

One of the weaknesses of online and distance learning is that students have fewer opportunities to interact and collaborate.

Modern learning software allows for a great deal of interaction between participants. In fact, social features have become a hallmark of learning software. Just because it's not the same type of interaction as in the classroom doesn't mean it's not beneficial.

Basic features like commenting and discussion forums let learners interact asynchronously. One-on-one and group chat foster real-time communication. File co-authoring, user groups, polls, and surveys also increase student interaction.

And when learning software doesn't have those capabilities built in, it can often integrate with services that do (like Google Drive for co-authoring and Slack for group chat).

Learners can also create their own content with blogs and wikis. These tools increase learner agency and encourage learning outside of the class syllabus. Users can share their thoughts, comment on others', and share knowledge.

All of this makes project-based learning (PBL), a hallmark of collaborative education, easier than ever. PBL sees students working together on a real-world problem over an extended period of time.

Many of the steps of project-based online learning offer opportunity for collaboration:

(For more information about this particular model, see this blog post from the Buck Institute for Education.)

This type of learning requires that students work together to find new solutions to real problems. It's one of the best ways to prepare learners for the requirements of the real world. This applies to both young students and experienced professionals.

Differentiation Instruction

Differentiating Instruction

Means teaching the same material to all students using a variety of instructional strategies. It can also require the teacher to deliver lessons at varying levels of difficulty based on the ability of each student.

Every learner has a different learning style. They come to the training with different backgrounds, experiences, and educations. And everyone has their own preferences and innate skills.

Here's an overview of differentiated instruction from Education Week (this video focuses on the classroom teaching of children, but the same concepts apply to all learning situations):

Offering the exact same training to all of them reduces the effectiveness of the teaching. Which is why differentiation is so important.

Unfortunately, it's not easy to develop unique content or presentation methods for classroom teaching. It takes a lot of time and effort.

This is where online teaching blows classroom teaching out of the water.

For example, you can offer different tracks of the same training. One might be for people who are new to the subject matter. Another can teach people who are somewhat familiar. A final one might be for experts.

Each track will have the same core material, but you can present it in a different way or supplement it with different materials.

We're going to talk in more detail about a few different ways you can differentiate your online teaching in a moment.

But first an important note: make sure that the core of the training stays the same for each differentiated group. Or else you'll be offering different courses to each group instead of different tracks of the same course. And that's a lot more work.

One of the ways you can effectively differentiate your learning is by letting each learner go through at their own pace. Keep reading to find out how self-paced learning can take your online training to the next level.

Self-Paced Learning

Self-paced learning

Accommodates for different learning rates and needs by letting the learner control the speed of the course.

You might be reading this article as fast as you can. Someone else might be re-reading each section before moving on. There's no right or wrong way, and none is better than the other.

Aside from learning habits and preferences, there are often life situations that result in students only having a few hours a week to learn online, while others have a few hours a day. Self-paced learning is the best way to accommodate both types of situations.

Online teaching offers effective self-paced learning for all types of students.

If you've ever completed an online training, you're probably familiar with the typical presentation. You see a list of videos (or audio files or text documents) that you need to go through to complete the training.

Here's an example from HubSpot:

Learners can choose when to watch the videos and when to take the quiz.

In most cases, you can choose to go through learning files at any pace you want. You may have a final due date, but there's no requirement for watching specific videos at specific times.

This means it's easy for learners to take the content at the pace that makes sense for their learning style (we'll talk more about learning styles in the next section). They can even go over lessons more than once if they need to.

Yes, that means that people will finish the training at different times. But if it means better learning, isn't it worth it?

Multiple Learning Tools

With modern technology, it's never been easier to address various learning styles and preferences among your learners.

If nothing else, presenting information in multiple ways helps to reinforce it to your learners. Hearing something once is a good start. But hearing it, reading it, seeing it, and talking about it (or problem-solving with it) is a lot better.

And modern tools like live streaming give you the opportunity to engage with students in a variety of methods. You're no longer limited to video, audio, and text. You can also have live discussions, work on a project at the same time, or collaborate in real-time.

(It's also important to remember that you may have learners who are blind, deaf, or otherwise unable to fully engage with a particular style of learning. Providing a mix of learning tools ensure that everyone can learn the material.)

Teacher-Student Interaction

One of the most commons fears about digital learning is that the lack of face-to-face interaction will be detrimental to learners.

Most studies on the topic have shown that teacher-student relationships are important for school-age children. Little time has been spent studying (or at least publishing about) the effect on adult learners.

But social connections and interaction are important to humans in general. So it's a safe bet that these interactions foster learning.

Just because you're teaching online doesn't mean there's no interaction between the teacher and the learner. But you have to be intentional about making it happen.

Much of it comes down to choosing the right instructional methods.

Live streaming, for example, lets students ask questions during a lecture or a Q&A session. It also feels more personal than simply watching a video of the instructor.

Want a great example of live digital question-and-answer sessions? Look no further than the Washington Post :

Whether by chat or video, these Q&A sessions help connect people across the digital divide.

The social features mentioned above can facilitate interaction between students and teachers as well-not just between students.

And many online programs do include face-to-face interaction. Corporate training, for example, may use all of the methods above with a group of learners in the same building. Occasional meetings or projects are much easier in this situation than with a group of learners spread across the world.

All that said, it's easy to forget about interaction when designing an online course.

But it's more than just an online teaching strategy; it's good practice.

Experiment with Online Teaching Strategies

Not every online class or course is going to use all of these strategies (though it's worth pointing out that many of them are related). It's best to start with one or two and see how well they work.

Maybe you'll find that your learners don't need differentiated instruction. Or that they respond best to a particular type of learning tool. You can adapt to that.

The important thing is to find a platform that supports these strategies and start testing them. See if more cooperative learning gets you better engagement or outcomes. Try different tools, like live streaming or podcasts. Experiment with different methods of interaction.

After a while, you'll find the best combination of online teaching strategies for your particular group.

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The Top 5 Online Teaching Strategies for Success | Uscreen

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Teaching online isn't like teaching in the classroom. It requires a different approach and specific online teaching strategies to boost learning. In a digital learning environment, you often have limited time to make sure that your instruction is effective. No matter your audience, you have to provide maximum value.

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The IDEAS (Inclusion, Design, Engagement, Evaluation, Assessment, and Support) Framework for online teaching and learning highlights best practices for before, during, and after the delivery of an online course to help instructors deliver high-quality courses and improve learner experience and outcomes.

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Explore this resource site-a collection of all EDUCAUSE resources related to online teaching strategies.

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Online learning is not "slapping classroom content online" (O'Neil, Fisher, & Newbold, 2008, p. 18). The use of a delivery mechanism, such as the Internet or Blackboard "should not define the pedagogical practice." The technology should provide "the mechanism through which the online teacher implements the best pedagogy for that course or topic" (McVay et al., p. 6).

The online teacher must use technology to enhance the course content. By utilizing the positive aspects of technology, the online teacher can provide a quality educational learning experience. An effective online pedagogy is one that emphasizes student-centered learning and employs active learning activities. "Interactivity, faculty, and student presence are essential in an effective online learning environment" (O'Neil et al., p. 21).

Bill Pelz (2009), a Professor of Psychology and Sloan Consortium Award for Excellence in Online Teaching winner,provides three principles of effective online pedagogy (p. 3):

Principle 1: Let the students do (most of) the work. The more time students spend engaged with the content, the more they will learn.

Principle 2: Interactivity is the heart and soul of effective asynchronous learning.

Principle 3: Strive for presence: social, cognitive, and teaching presence.

Methods for incorporating these principles and corresponding best practices into your online teaching and course are discussed in detail in Section 4.1: Student Engagement and Motivation.

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Online learning is not "slapping classroom content online" (O'Neil, Fisher, & Newbold, 2008, p. 18). The use of a delivery mechanism, such as the Internet or Blackboard "should not define the pedagogical practice." The technology should provide "the mechanism through which the online teacher implements the best pedagogy for that course or topic" (McVay et al., p.

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Many of us are having to move teaching quickly online ( tips here if you are still setting up your course). Once you have your technology in place, take a deep breath. Teaching online requires different types of interactions with students. We've simplified what works into nine strategies based on research that will help set you and your students up for success in your newly online course.

1. Know the technology

This is new to everyone, so be prepared to troubleshoot and let your students know you are working on it. Take an hour to familiarize yourself with the technology. Most companies are offering additional training right now.

Be very clear to students about where they should go for technical support (good digital technologies will have support services). Make the contact information readily available, and be prepared to direct students there if they come to you.

2. Expect the unexpected and remain flexible

At some point technology will fail, whether it is a video chat not connecting or assignment and/or resource links not working properly.

Have a backup plan for all assignments and assessments that rely on technology.

Be transparent in your communication to students about technology failure. For example, put a policy in place that outlines the actions students should take if they are unable to submit assignments due to technical issues.

Don't be afraid to solve technical challenges in real time, such as during synchronous discussions or collaborative real-time activities, to save time.

3. Create and maintain a strong presence

Send a message to all students, by video if possible, to welcome them to online learning and reassure them.

Use video chat rather than basic instant message when interacting with students.

Get the students talking by beginning discussions in the discussion board, and then contributing rapid, regular, and open responses to questions.

Use non-verbal communication such as emojis.

Complete your profile with professional and personal traits.

4. Set clear expectations for the course

Online learning is new to the students as well. Make it clear to students how their grade in the course will be determined now (participation often makes up a much larger portion of the grade than in face to face classes).

Set expectations for response time. For example, make it clear that you will respond to emails within one business day, otherwise students may expect you to answer an email within a few hours, and disengage if you don't.

Share resources for students on how to be an online learner. We have one from college students and from professors.

5. Establish a sense of comfort and develop a community of learners

Students are looking to you to set the tone. Demonstrate enthusiasm and excitement about teaching the course to alleviate fear, anxiety, and isolation.

Humanize yourself by posting a welcome video, a biography, photos that tell stories about what you are doing to keep busy during social isolation, links to news articles or video clips.

Encourage each student to personalize their homepage and spend time going around the class asking students to share information about what they have posted.

Incorporate instant messaging, web cameras, blogs and vlogs.

Ask questions that empower participants to question each other, and elicit rich discussion.

Respond to the community as a whole rather than directing all responses to individual participants outside of the community.

6. Promote reflection and communication through quality asynchronous discussion

Return to posted topics that have not been fully discussed and promote contribution and reflection.

Monitor participation and contact students individually if they are either not participating, or are taking over conversations and not permitting contributions from other individuals.

7. Have a good balance of active leader and active observer

You will begin the course as the manager of the learning community. As the course progresses, slowly transfer the responsibility to the community of learners. The online community building steps in point 4 will help with this. You should also gradually retract further out of communal discussions.

8. Request regular feedback and be mindful of misinterpretation

Check in with your students to see how things are going. You can do formal or informal surveys to assess attitudes, workload and challenges. Make course correction as necessary - we're all learning.

Use ad hoc quizzes to assess learner comprehension of material.

9. Regularly check content resources and applications

Regularly check all links, resources, modules, and activities. Online content can move or change, which can lead to disengagement.

Assist students who are having difficulty navigating course links or managing the material spanning across various web pages.

Model the process of navigating to websites that are not embedded in the course, and demonstrate how to appropriately manage keeping track of navigation when jumping from site to site.

Summarised from:
Smith, K. (2016).Toward an Understanding of Training to Teach Online: A Review of the Literature. Pearson Efficacy & Research.

Working and learning online during a pandemic
Visit our website to find expert faculty, best practices, and other online learning resources for people who are studying, teaching or working remotely.

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9 strategies for effective online teaching | Pearson Blog

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Many of us are having to move teaching quickly online ( tips here if you are still setting up your course). Once you have your technology in place, take a deep breath. Teaching online requires different types of interactions with students.

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The digital classroom brings with it a range of unknown and unexplored territory, mostly in part to its relative newness when compared to traditional teaching methods. To be an effective online teacher, there are 10 simple but effective practices you can follow. When coupled with a comprehensive course load and the right resources, there's no reason why online learning can't be even more effective than a traditional classroom setting.

1. Be Present

Sure, you might not be physically present in a classroom, but there are many ways to make yourself known in the digital realm. Achieving this online means utilizing a range of different communication methods and ensuring that you check in on them daily or hourly if needed. Discussion boards, emails, announcements, and forums, are just some of the ways you can be present each day in your online classroom. When the course begins, set clear guidelines for your students about when you'll be present.

2. Set The Expectations

As the online classroom can often feel a little free-form, you'll need to provide students with a very clear set of expectations before they commence their studies. These expectations should include everything from what they can expect from you as their teacher, as well as what will be required of them. The expectations can outline due dates for assessments, your communication frequency, how much online participation you require of them, and the conduct they will be expected to display throughout the course.

3. Let The Students Do The Work

The aim of learning is to have students engaged in the content for as long as possible, so you need to create the opportunity for this to happen. Professor of Psychology Bill Pelz discussed in his "Principles of Effective Online Pedagogy" report that the more time the students spend engaged in the content, the more they'll learn.

To give your students plenty of opportunity to engage with the content and each other you can ask them to find and discuss resources, grade their own assignments, and hold student-led discussions in the online forums.

4. Nurture A Supportive Online Community

Since this online space is their classroom, you want students to feel as supported as possible when they're here. By using a variety of dialogue formats, you'll ensure your coursework caters to all learning types and allows students to flourish.

Encourage students to use the general forum for discussion, but also set up small groups within the class so that students can engage in feedback and support with their fellow classmates. Some students may sit back and learn from the sidelines, whereas others will benefit greatly from actively engaging in this type of communication.

5. Think Before You Write

Not only is this an important principle for teaching staff to follow, but one that should be communicated from the very beginning to all students. As it's well known that written text can be left open to interpretation or misinterpretation at any time, it's crucial to craft well thought out responses and posts to others.

When crafting responses to assignments and other evaluations, the best tone to use is a simple, clear, and polite one. As these responses are all your students have to go off in regards to feedback, you need to leave nothing open for interpretation.

6. Ask For Feedback

Sometime around the 2nd or 3rd week, you should ask your students for direct and honest feedback on how things are going. This feedback should cover everything from content to teaching methods, and request any areas requiring improvement. The best way to achieve this is in a somewhat formal tone, so post something on the discussion board and see what pops up.

7. Foster Personal Relationships With Each Student

Getting some one on one time with each student is just as important as effective group communication. Students studying online can sometimes feel deserted and alone in the digital classroom, so it's up to you to make an effort and reach out.

Use a blend of different communication methods, including personalized responses to their discussion boards posts and emails addressed to only one student. At the start of the course, you should set out in your expectations the best communication methods, but never give out your personal email address or contact details to a student.

8. Make Use Of Group And Individual Projects

A healthy mix of group and individual projects is the best way to ensure success with online learning. Giving students this variety of learning styles will enhance their learning capabilities, and teach them the importance of both group work and individual achievements.

9. Use Resources That Are Readily Available

Since your students will already be engaged on their computers and use the internet to log onto the learning portal, the best resources for them are going to be online. By using an assortment of relevant and easily accessible resources such as digital publications, news sites, and online videos, your students are going to be far more engaged than if they had to refer to an outdated textbook. Where possible, mobile content is ideal so don't forget to incorporate anything that can be accessed on their smartphone or mobile device.

10. Have A Closing Activity

Finally, you want to end the course with a bang. The best way to achieve this is with a final summary or assessment that helps students to reflect on everything they've learned. Allow students to reflect on the content and the experiences shared so that everyone is made aware of what they're taking away from the course.

Incorporating these principles into your online teaching methods will not only ensure a supportive community for your students, but will make your job ultimately easier too. As online learning is still in its building stages when compared to other methods of teaching, the most effective principles will continue to grow and adapt to the new world of digital classrooms.

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10 Best Practices To Be An Effective Online Teacher - eLearning Industry

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The digital classroom brings with it a range of unknown and unexplored territory, mostly in part to its relative newness when compared to traditional teaching methods. To be an effective online teacher, there are 10 simple but effective practices you can follow.

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Internet Treasure Hunt: Finding What You Need - Presented by Shawna Safreed

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Flipgrid: Empowering Student Voice - Presented by Gail Adams

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Padlet: A Digital Blank Wall - Presented by Anna Malone

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Intro to Book Creator - Presented by Monica Supanik

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Surprising info.

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When students who started the year behind had greater access to grade-appropriate assignments, they closed the outcomes gap with their peers by more than seven months.

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When students who started the year behind had greater access to grade-appropriate assignments, they closed the outcomes gap with their peers by more than seven months.

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"The Opportunity Myth" (2018)

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Multiplication and Math Practice: Do Jo Boaler’s Math Theories Hold Water?

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Multiplication and Math Practice: Do Jo Boaler’s Math Theories Hold Water?

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There is a huge elephant standing in most math classrooms: it is the idea that only some students can do well in math. Students believe it, parents believe it and teachers believe it. The myth that math is a gift that some students have and some do not is one of the most damaging ideas that pervades education in the United States and that stands in the way of students' math achievement.

This short paper summarizes five recent and important areas of knowledge that have emerged from studies of the brain and learning and that address this myth head-on.

In the last few years scientists' understanding of ability and learning have changed dramatically. The advent of brain scans and other technological advances have enabled researchers to gain new and important information about learning and ability. The results that are emerging have major importance for all those running schools, teaching mathematics or helping others learn mathematics.

1. All Students Can Achieve at High Levels.

Researchers now understand that, with good teaching and the right messages, every child can achieve at the highest levels in math at school. The pervasive idea that some students are "smart" and achieve at higher levels than others because of genetic ability is mistaken. Studies of expert performance show that it comes not from genetics but from hard work and deliberate practice (Ericsson & Pool, 2016).

Of course we all know students who are faster than others or who seem to grasp mathematics easily. That is because they have had multiple opportunities to make brain connections during their childhood. Students who struggle do not have less potential; they have not had the opportunities that other students have received. This makes it even more important that lower-achieving students are given the opportunities and encouragement in school that will enable them to progress to high mathematics levels. This does not mean being placed into low-level classes and being given low-level work. It means being given challenging work as well as growth mindset messages and opportunities to engage well.

2. Students' Ideas About Their Ability Determine Their Learning Pathways and Math Achievement.

In 2006 Carol Dweck published a book summarizing decades of research on "mindset" that quickly became a New York Times best-seller (Dweck, 2006). The book has had more impact on educational practice than any other research volume I know. Through her research Dweck has shown that everyone has a mindset-an idea about ability and potential-and that some people have a "growth mindset" whereas some have a "fixed mindset." Those with a growth mindset believe that smartness increases with hard work and that everything they learn makes them smarter; those with a fixed mindset believe that some people are smart and some are not.

These different mindsets have associated behaviors that we now know have a huge impact on learning and achievement (Blackwell et al., 2007). Students with a growth mindset persist longer on problems, relish challenge and learn from mistakes whereas those with a fixed mindset give up easily, avoid challenging problems and hate to make mistakes. When students have a growth mindset they achieve at higher levels and when students receive a mindset intervention their learning trajectories immediately accelerate upward towards higher and higher achievement (Blackwell et al., 2007).

Mindset also has significant implications for equity:

High-achieving girls are some of the worst hit by fixed mindset thinking, which leads to avoidance of challenging work and high-level courses, (Dweck, 2006b);

Gender differences in schools are only found among fixed mindset students (Dweck, 2006b); and

Mindset interventions improve the performance of minority students more than any other students (Cohen et al., 2006).

In the United States people are more likely to have a fixed mindset about mathematics than any other subject or area of their lives, and the prevalence of fixed mindset thinking is one of the reasons we have widespread failure and math trauma in this country. It is critically important that teachers and students develop growth mindsets; these can be developed at any time in life.

When I asked over 800 teacher leaders in the United States recently which educational practices they saw as developing and maintaining fixed mindset ideas in students, the number one response was ability grouping. I agree: The easiest way to give a strong fixed mindset message to students is to put them into groups and tell them they have a certain ability. A recent study found that significantly more students developed growth mindsets after they were placed into high track groups (Romero, 2013). Students who develop fixed mindsets will often do anything they can to maintain the idea that they are "smart," which can make them vulnerable to unproductive learning behaviors and the avoidance of challenging work or higher-level math courses.

It is extremely important that schools communicate growth mindset messages to students, and don't limit students' achievement by giving fixed mindset messages through grouping and other practices. This is important for equity, it is important for students of all levels, and it may be the key to unlocking the potential of millions of students in mathematics.

3. Mistakes and Struggle are Extremely Important for Learning.

Multiple entry points

Multiple ways of seeing

Multiple pathways and strategies for solutions

Many of these tasks are shown on the math education resource, youcubed.org. The research on the importance of mindset and struggle suggests strongly that we need math environments in which students are given open tasks and challenging work that causes them to struggle and experience important brain growth. Teachers should support or even reward students for making mistakes so that they feel comfortable doing so. More advice is given on ways to teach math for a growth mindset in my online classes, in the materials on youcubed.org and in Boaler (2016).

4. Mathematics Should Be Dissociated from Speed.

An important message that is emerging from neuroscience concerns the damage that is caused when math performance is associated with speed. Many math classes across the United States encourage the idea that the best math students are those who work quickly. When the late mathematician and Fields Medal winner Laurent Schwartz reflected on his childhood, he described his days in school as days when he thought of himself as unintelligent because he was a slow math thinker:

I was always deeply uncertain about my own intellectual capacity; I thought I was unintelligent. And it is true that I was, and still am, rather slow. I need time to seize things because I always need to understand them fully. ... Towards the end of the eleventh grade, I secretly thought of myself as stupid. I worried about this for a long time. ... [I]'m still just as slow. ...

At the end of the eleventh grade, I took the measure of the situation, and came to the conclusion that rapidity doesn't have a precise relation to intelligence. What is important is to deeply understand things and their relations to each other. This is where intelligence lies. The fact of being quick or slow isn't really relevant. (from Schwartz, 2001)

5. Teachers' Messages are Hugely Powerful.

Discussion and Conclusion

Gloria Ladson-Billings refers to teachers as "dreamkeepers." I like this description because it communicates, accurately in my view, the opportunities that teachers have to help students achieve their dreams. In mathematics this starts with believing that all students can achieve at the highest levels, as research on the brain shows. It also involves grouping structures that encourage high achievement for all and provision of challenging and interesting work for all students. If we can bring about these changes in mathematics teaching, many more students will enjoy mathematics, achieve at high levels, take more advanced mathematics classes and develop the quantitative literacy they need to become effective citizens in the 21st century.

Works Cited
Aronson, J. et al. (2002). Reducing the Effects of Stereotype Threat on African American College Students by Shaping Theories of Intelligence, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 113-125.
Blackwell, L.S. et al. (2007). Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across an Adolescent Transition: A Longitudinal Study and an Intervention, Child Development 78 (1), 246-263.
Beilock, S. (2011) Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To. New York: Free Press.
Boaler, J. (2009). What's Math Got To Do With It? How Parents and Teachers Can Help Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject. New York: Penguin.
Boaler, J. (2013a). Ability and Mathematics: The Mindset Revolution that is Reshaping Education. FORUM, 55, 1 (143-152)
Boaler (2013b). Ability Grouping in Mathematics Classrooms. International Encyclopedia of Mathematics Education.
Boaler (2015). Fluency Without Fear. youcubed.org.
Boaler, J (2016). Mathematical Mindsets. Unleashing Students' Potential through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages, and Innovative Teaching. Jossey-Bass.
Burris, C. et al. (2006). Accelerating Mathematics Achievement Using Heterogeneous Grouping. American Educational Research Journal, 43(1), 103-134.
Cohen, G. L. et al. (2006). Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap: A Social-Psychological Intervention. Science, New Series, 313(5791), 1307-1310.
Dweck, C.S. (2006a). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine Books.
Dweck, C.S. (2006b). Is Math a Gift? Beliefs that Put Females at Risk, in Ceci, S.J. & Williams, W. (Eds.) (2007). Why Aren't More Women in Science? Top Researchers Debate the Evidence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Engle, R. W. (2002). Working Memory Capacity as Executive Attention. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 19-23.
Ericsson, A & Pool, R. (2016). Peak. Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Hirsh-Pasek, K. et al. (2004). Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn-And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less. Rodale, Inc.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children. Jossey-Bass.
Luculano, T. et al. (2015). Cognitive Tutoring Induces Widespread Neuroplasticity and Remediates Brain Function in Children with Mathematical Learning Disabilities. Nature Communications 6, 8453.
Maguire E.A. et al. (2000). Navigation-related Structural Change in the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US), 97, 4398-4403.
Moser, J.S. et al. (2011). Mind Your Errors: Evidence for a Neural Mechanism Linking Growth Mindset to Adaptive Post-error Adjustments. Psychological Science, 22 (12) 1484-1489.
Mueller, C. & Dweck, C. (1998). Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation and Performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33-52.
Piaget, J. (1970). Piaget's Theory, in Mussen, P.H. (Ed.), Carmichael's Manual of Child Psychology. New York: Wiley.
Romero, C. (2013). Coping with Challenges During Middle School: The Role of Implicit Theories of Emotion. (Doctoral dissertation). Stanford University, Stanford CA.
Schwartz, L. (2001). A Mathematician Grappling with His Century. Basel: Birkhäuser.
Yeager, D. S. et al. (2013). Breaking the Cycle of Mistrust: Wise Interventions to Provide Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 804-824.

This article is adapted from an article that first appeared at youcubed.org, a math center co-founded by Dr. Boaler at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education.

Jo Boaler, Ph.D., is a Professor of Mathematics Education at Stanford University, and the co-founder and faculty director of its math education resource, youcubed.org. She is the author of several books, including Mathematical Mindsets.

This article first appeared in the 2019 issue of the Parents League Review. Get the current issue of the Review free with a family membership. Or purchase it separately.

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All students can achieve in mathematics at high levels. If we can bring about changes in mathematics teaching, many more students will enjoy mathematics, achieve at high levels, take more advanced mathematics classes and develop the quantitative literacy they need to become effective citizens in the 21st century.

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How Understanding the Brain Can Help You Learn

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How Understanding the Brain Can Help You Learn

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Recently, a close friend's niece was having trouble graduating from college. She needed to pass a math class to graduate but wouldn't take it because she feared flunking it. A belief that she just wasn't "good at math" was keeping her stuck in graduation limbo, unable to move on with her life.

I know my friend's niece isn't the first person to be cowed by a math course or some other seemingly insurmountable barrier to success. Maybe someone gave you the message that you weren't talented enough to succeed in a particular field; or you just didn't have the confidence to persevere when you struggled.

Now, a new book, Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers by Jo Boaler, explains what's wrong with this attitude. Boaler, a Stanford University math professor, argues that people can learn just about anything once they understand how their brains work and how to support their own learning. Her book is a call to discard old notions of "giftedness" and to fully embrace the new science of the mind, thereby transforming schools, organizations, and workplaces into environments that support rather than limit success.

The problem with talent

"Millions of children, every year, start school excited about what they will learn, but quickly become disillusioned when they get the idea they are not as 'smart' as others," writes Boaler. That's because parents and teachers inadvertently give out the message that talent is inborn-you either have it or you don't.

As a math professor, Boaler has seen this firsthand. Many young adults enter her class anxious about math, and their fear about learning impacts their ability to learn.

"The myth that our brains are fixed and that we simply don't have the aptitude for certain topics is not only scientifically inaccurate; it is omnipresent and negatively impacts not only education, but many other events in our everyday lives," she writes. Even though the science of neuroplasticity-how our brains change in response to learning-suggests learning can take place at any age, this news has not made it into classrooms, she argues.

Some of our misguided visions of talent have led to racist and sexist attitudes, she writes. For example, many girls get the message early on that math is for boys and that boys are better at it, interfering with their ability to succeed and leading to gender disparities in fields of study related to math. Similarly, people of color may also have to overcome stereotypes about fixed intelligence in order to thrive.

How our minds help us learn

Luckily, Boaler doesn't stop at pointing out the problem but also provides tips to help anyone, whether they're math-phobic or worried about other impediments to learning, to create a new mindset.

1. Understand that your brain is always changing. "Every time we learn, our brain forms, strengthens, or connects neural pathways," writes Boaler. This means that no one is stuck at birth with a limit on what they can learn. Instead, it's the belief in giftedness and how that impacts the way teachers teach that actually hampers people's learning.

For example, when schools practice tracking-dividing students into different reading groups or math groups based on ability-it can produce worse results for students than keeping mixed-ability students together. As research from Teresa Iuculano and her colleagues has shown, the brains of people who have been labeled early on as "learning disabled" can be completely rewired after a short program involving one-on-one tutoring.

2. Learn to embrace struggle, mistakes, and failure. Students and teachers commonly believe that getting the right answer on a test shows that students are learning. But, as Boaler points out, it's actually when students practice difficult things-problems just beyond their ability-that the brain works harder and imprints new knowledge. This also makes the knowledge more accessible later on.

Practicing what they can already do well actually hinders students' learning, while making mistakes helps them focus in on different ways of considering a problem, which helps strengthen learning. When teachers encourage students to struggle and students give themselves permission to make mistakes, it can be incredibly freeing for both.

3. Change your beliefs about your mind, and your brain will follow. When you change your mind about yourself, it turns out that this will also change your body and brain. For example, researchers found that adults who had negative ideas about aging in their younger years-between 18 and 49 years old-were more likely to experience a cardiovascular event during the next 38 years, regardless of their initial age, heart health, race, or many other factors.

The same is true for how you think about your learning. For example, if young kids learn that their success in school is tied to being smart rather than tied to effort, they may be less motivated to learn later on.

4. Try multiple approaches to learning. Though it's important to have a growth mindset for learning-a belief that knowledge isn't fixed, but can be developed through effort and perseverance-it's also important to try new learning strategies. Multi-dimensional approaches to teaching and learning work best because they engage many areas of the brain at once, and communication between different brain areas aids in learning. Even math proficiency can be enhanced by seemingly unrelated knowledge or skills-like verbal skills or finger perception (the ability to identify our fingers without looking at them).

"The new discoveries about the working of the brain are revealing the need for a different approach to teaching that is more physical, multidimensional, and creative than the approaches that have been used in the past in most institutions of learning," writes Boaler.

In her own research, she found that this multi-pronged approach to teaching math-challenging students to consider problems using different strategies, like storytelling or visual art-was much more effective for learning, especially for girls, English language learners, and economically disadvantaged students. This suggests that approaching something you want to learn from multiple angles is better than just trying to get it "right."

5. Aim for flexible thinking rather than speed. Too often, teachers and learners think that being fast at something means you're good at it. But, as research suggests, that's not often the case. Trying to do something under pressure-such as a timed test-can cause stress, which compromises the working memory needed to recall important information. That's why Boaler argues that giving students long problem sets to solve at home, or trying to measure math performance under timed conditions, is not useful. It could also unnecessarily discourage potential future math scholars who give up early because they think speed equals competency. While some students thrive in timed tests and are adept at cramming for exams, it's not likely their learning will stick, says Boaler. Instead, engaging with material in flexible ways over time is key to learning.

6. Try collaboration. Schools that teach a growth mindset won't necessarily help students learn better if there is not peer support for the idea-meaning, if students still buy into the myth of the gifted student. It's crucial for schools to reinforce the idea that learning together is better than learning alone. As one study showed, working together instead of alone can make the difference between passing a difficult math class and giving up and failing the class.

"An important change takes place when students work together and discover that everybody finds some or all of the work difficult," writes Boaler. It reinforces the idea "that learning is a process and that obstacles are common." Focusing on collaboration in the classroom-rather than trying to test students individually-also more closely resembles the work world, argues Boaler, and can help reduce the gender bias so often found in science-related subjects.

In the case of my friend's niece, she ended up drawing on the support of her aunt and connecting with a tutor who encouraged a growth mindset, taught her new strategies for problem solving, and helped reduce her math anxiety. Eventually, she took the math class and passed with flying colors.

Her story is an important reminder that the obstacles to learning are often more a function of our approach than of our ability. As Boaler's work-and that of countless others-suggests, our minds may be less limited than we think.

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How Understanding Your Brain Can Help You Learn

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Recently, a close friend's niece was having trouble graduating from college. She needed to pass a math class to graduate but wouldn't take it because she feared flunking it. A belief that she just wasn't "good at math" was keeping her stuck in graduation limbo, unable to move on with her life.

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John Hattie Educational Research Database

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John Hattie Educational Research Database

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Over 250 influences and their effect size. Average effect size is .40

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John Hattie developed a way of synthesizing various influences in different meta-analyses according to their effect size (Cohen's d). In his ground-breaking study "Visible Learning" he ranked 138 influences that are related to learning outcomes from very positive effects to very negative effects. Hattie found that the average effect size of all the interventions he studied was 0.40. Therefore he decided to judge the success of influences relative to this 'hinge point', in order to find an answer to the question "What works best in education?"
Originally, Hattie studied six areas that contribute to learning: the student, the home, the school, the curricula, the teacher, and teaching and learning approaches. (The updated list also includes the classroom.) But Hattie did not only provide a list of the relative effects of different influences on student achievement. He also tells the story underlying the data. He found that the key to making a difference was making teaching and learning visible. He further explained this story in his book " Visible learning for teachers ".

John Hattie updated his list of 138 effects to 150 effects in Visible Learning for Teachers (2011), and more recently to a list of 195 effects in The Applicability of Visible Learning to Higher Education (2015). His research is now based on nearly 1200 meta-analyses - up from the 800 when Visible Learning came out in 2009. According to Hattie the story underlying the data has hardly changed over time even though some effect sizes were updated and we have some new entries at the top, at the middle, and at the end of the list.

Below you can find an updated version of our first, second and third visualization of effect sizes related to student achievement.
Order VL for Teachers!

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Hattie effect size list - 256 Influences Related To Achievement

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Hattie's updated effect size list of 256 influences across all areas related to student achievement.

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US Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse

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US Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse

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Highlights approaches that are documented to be effective

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As an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) was created in 2002 to be a central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education.

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HOP ON POP | Dr. Seuss Raps over Dr. Dre Beats

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Wes Tank raps Dr. Seuss books

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Rapping Dr. Seuss books to Dr. Dre beats

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* Download Video of Webinar ​ (To save right-click then select 'Save target as' or 'Save link as')

Participants will become familiar with instructional frameworks for teaching writing. They will also deepen their understanding of ways to integrate writing opportunities in response to students' engagement with text.
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Instructional Principles for Diverse Learners
Dr. Roberta Gardner
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Roberta Price Gardner is a clinical assistant professor of literacy education in the Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education at Georgia State University. She teaches courses in reading and writing methods. She enjoys engaging teachers and students in literature-based reading and writing explorations that connect them to the power and possibilities of reading and writing. Her literature based research focuses on high-needs communities of color, identity, and critical perspectives on children's and young adult literature. She is a Red Clay Writing Project Fellow, and the founder of the Ezra Jack Keats Bookmaking Competition in Atlanta, which provides the opportunity for children in Atlanta Public Schools to write stories and experience the art and craft of bookmaking.

Kate Woodbridge is a third grade teacher at Winnona Park Elementary for City Schools of Decatur. She recently earned a Masters in Early Childhood Education from Piedmont University. Her passion for writing instruction was fueled greatly by her time becoming a Teacher Consultant at the Red Clay Writing Project Summer Institute in 2012. Kate is an alumnus of Penn State University's Professional Development School, and moved to Georgia to teach in 2007. She writes often, and when she's not enjoying the outdoors, she makes messes with her art supplies!

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K-5 Essential Components of Teaching Writing Webinar

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Download Video of Webinar ​ (To save right-click then select 'Save target as' or 'Save link as') Participants will become familiar with instructional frameworks for teaching writing. They will also deepen their understanding of ways to integrate writing opportunities in response to students' engagement with text.

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Strategies for Building Proficient K-12 Writers

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Strategies for Building Proficient K-12 Writers

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Presented by Jenny Hamilton, M.Ed., National Literacy Consultant
Sponsored by Voyager Sopris Learning®
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As instructors, it can be frustrating to see a lack of good writing skills despite dedicated efforts. In this presentation, Jenny Hamilton, M.Ed., National Literacy Consultant, explores why students struggle with writing. She discusses highly effective strategies you can implement immediately to create better writers, including:

Ways to connect research to effective practice

The power of feedback

How to deliver writing instruction

To help students juggle the necessary high- and low-level cognitive skills, teachers must be equipped to deliver explicit, sequential, and systematic writing instruction. This edWebinar introduces several multisensory writing strategies, for use with students of all ages, to fill whatever gaps you may face as a teacher of writing.

This recorded session will be of most interest to K-12 teachers, principals, literacy and writing coaches, librarians, and administrators.

About the Presenter
Jenny Hamilton, M.Ed. has been a tireless advocate for students who struggle to achieve academic success. Her training and background in behavior management enables her to share practical solutions regarding classroom management issues. She also works with teachers to raise awareness of the emotional damage that accompanies academic failure. Jenny's depth of experience in teaching elementary, middle, and high school students lends authenticity to her delivery when she trains and coaches teachers. A deep interest in the research behind best practices and the science of learning allows her to share with teachers and administrators current and relevant data on how the brain works and what can be done to change the trajectory of struggling readers and writers. She is currently an independent consultant focusing on literacy.
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Strategies for Building Proficient K-12 Writers

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Presented by Jenny Hamilton, M.Ed., National Literacy Consultant Sponsored by Voyager Sopris Learning® WATCH THE EDWEBINAR RECORDING If you view the recording and would like a CE certificate, join the Believe Literacy is Possible: Unlock Reading Potential community and go to the CE Quizzes link in the Community Toolbox.

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Researched Based Tools and Strategies to Help Struggling Readers

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Researched Based Tools and Strategies to Help Struggling Readers

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Presented by Eyal Rav-Noy and Tzippy Rav-Noy, Co-Founders of Capit Learning
Sponsored by Capit Learning
WATCH THE WEBINAR RECORDING If you attended the live session, you'll be emailed a CE certificate within 24 hours of the webinar. If you view the recording and would like a CE certificate, join the Instructional Strategies for Reading Improvement K-8 community and go to the Webinar Archives folder to take the CE quiz.
Researchers have long known that phonemic awareness is highly correlated with individual differences in childrens' word-reading skills. Training students in phonemic awareness skills and letter-sound knowledge is recommended in both the United States (NRP, 2000) and the United Kingdom (Rose, 2006). But why do some students struggle so much when learning their sounds? How can teachers help their students remember their sounds? Does the research recommend a particular method for teaching these foundational reading skills?

In this webinar Eyal Rav-Noy and Tzippy Rav-Noy, Co-Founders of Capit Learning, discussed the National Reading Panel Report, an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. They shared three tools the report recommends for early readers that often are overlooked by many teachers, researchers, and curriculum developers. Learn about these research-based tools that will increase your young students' phonemic awareness skills and letter-sound knowledge. Learn how to easily integrate the tools into your existing lesson plans and classroom.

This webinar is designed for Pre-K through grade one teachers, transitional kindergarten teachers, reading specialists, and ELA coordinators. School librarians and special education teachers also will benefit from this recorded session.
About the Presenters
Eyal and Tzippy Rav-Noy, Co-Founders of Capit Learning, have taught thousands of students-both children and adults-to read both English and Hebrew, for over 18 years.
They went on to create their own reading programs which are implemented in schools across the country. Eyal and Tzippy have trained dozens of teachers and reading specialists, and they tutor special education and special needs students at Capit Learning Center in Los Angeles.
Join the Instructional Strategies for Reading Improvement K-8 community to network with educators, participate in online discussions, receive invitations to upcoming webinars, view past webinars, take a quiz to receive a CE certificate for a past webinar, and access free resources. WATCH THE WEBINAR RECORDING
CAPIT Reading teaches students to read without "verbal instructions." Students play with sounds and intuitively create letters, blend words, and assemble sentences.

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Research-Based Tools and Strategies Proven to Help Beginner Readers

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Presented by Eyal Rav-Noy and Tzippy Rav-Noy, Co-Founders of Capit Learning Sponsored by Capit Learning WATCH THE WEBINAR RECORDING If you attended the live session, you'll be emailed a CE certificate within 24 hours of the webinar.

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Eric Jensen

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How to Rewire the Brain of Struggling Readers

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How to Rewire the Brain of Struggling Readers

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Webinar: Instructional Suggestions for Writing About Reading

Archived from 2022. This webinar presented by Joan Sedita for the Oregon RTIi Annual Conference begins with an overview of The Writing Rope framework for writing instruction and then presents instructional suggestions for writing responses to prompts in any subject area based on sources. Strategies are introduced for the ANSWER Routine ( Analyze the question, set Notes, Select relevant information from sources, Write the response, Edit and R evise.

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Start learning now with our free webinars and videos.

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Stay up-to-date with the Reading Rockets professional development webcast series. Listen, watch, and learn from top experts in the field of reading. Our webcasts are available anytime that's convenient for you.

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Webinars and Webcasts - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

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E-seminars are recorded professional development webinars with facilitator guide and handouts. E-seminars are free for NCTM members. Webcasts of Annual Meeting Keynote Sessions offer notable and thought provoking leaders in math education and related fields as they inspire

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Great easy to implement strategies!

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Summary

In this engaging series of webinars, author Judy Willis taps into abundant research on how the brain works and shares practical approaches for how we can improve academic results by demonstrating certain behaviors and teaching students in ways that harness our knowledge and understanding of their brain development. With a straightforward and accessible style, Willis shares the knowledge and experience she has gained through her dual careers as a math teacher and a neurologist in webinars focused on the student brain and learning, executive functions, memory, engagement, and motivation.

Archived Webinars

The Brain and Learning Webinar Series

The Brain and Memory Webinars Series

The Brain, Engagement, and Motivation Webinars Series

About the Presenter

Dr. Judy Willis, a board-certified neurologist and middle school teacher in Santa Barbara, Calif., has combined her training in neuroscience and neuroimaging with her teacher education training and years of classroom experience.

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ASCD Webinars - Judy Willis, Brain-Based Learning Strategies

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In this engaging series of webinars, author Judy Willis taps into abundant research on how the brain works and shares practical approaches for how we can improve academic results by demonstrating certain behaviors and teaching students in ways that harness our knowledge and understanding of their brain development.