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Dr. Daniel Willingham: Why Don't We See More Critical Thinking in Students?

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Dr. Daniel Willingham: Why Don't We See More Critical Thinking in Students?

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This aligns nicely with the importance of cues that connect prior knowledge for students. Also, as a district thinking through the vertical alignment of learning to ensure students have prior knowledge to draw from.

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Dr. Daniel Willingham: Why Don't We See More Critical Thinking in Students?

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Design Principles for Schools: Putting the Science of Learning and Development into Action

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Design Principles for Schools: Putting the Science of Learning and Development into Action

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The science is clear: students’ skills and well-being can be improved by schools that use whole child design. Key principles show how to apply the science.

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Educator Learning to Enact the Science of Learning and Development

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Educator Learning to Enact the Science of Learning and Development

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Unleashing the Power of Best First Instruction

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Unleashing the Power of Best First Instruction

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3 Ways to Help Expert Teachers Get Even Better

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3 Ways to Help Expert Teachers Get Even Better

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3 Ways to Help Expert Teachers Get Even Better

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Small shifts in practice are often all it takes for an expert teacher to reach the next level in the classroom.

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You are committed to students and their learning. Each week, you invest many hours in instructional planning. Your commitment is evident in your bell-to-bell instruction. Any time an observer enters your classroom, they will see you teaching: If you aren't leading whole-group instruction, you can be found at the kidney table working with small groups or conferencing with individual students. You have good classroom-management skills. You also provide opportunities for peer-to-peer interaction, and your instruction is clearly aligned with the standards, all in an effort to provide your students with high-quality, effective instruction.

Imagine you're the teacher described here. You feel good about your practice-yet you sense that something about how effectively your lessons move along and keep students engaged isn't as strong as it could be. During post-observation debriefings, while your principal or other observers consistently talk about your strengths, they also mention growth opportunities-all of which center on what we might call pacing. After some reflection, you realize that pacing, the timing and presentation of elements of a lesson, is an instructional practice you need to refine. So what now?

What Do We Mean by Pacing- and "Learning Time"?

What exactly is pacing? Feeney, Hibbard, and Ylvisaker (2006) define pacing as "the rate at which instructional activities occur or at which specific 'learning trials' are presented to the student." Perception is part of pacing: The teacher-development group Impact Teachers (2016) describes pacing as "the skill of creating a perception that a class is moving at just the right speed for the students."

There's a correlation between effective pacing and student engagement, so it's crucial to consider the speed at which you move through a lesson and the rate of delivery for different parts of the lesson. When pacing is too slow, students often become bored and disengaged. When it's too fast, some may not grasp what's being taught and get lost-or discouraged.

As an instructional coach and educational consultant, I'm responsible for facilitating critical reflection and collaborating with teachers in problem solving to improve or enhance their instruction. I spend many hours observing classroom instruction, which allows me to see different teachers, instructional styles, and implementation of practice. I've noticed that teachers who struggle with getting the right pacing in their lessons often struggle because of barriers they create themselves. By this I mean teacher behaviors that adversely affect pacing. Fortunately, any teacher can improve her or his pacing by engaging in certain processes when planning for and delivering instruction.

How we use time is an important factor in the success of any lesson. Before diving into how pacing impacts student learning and ways to improve pacing, we need a common understanding of time within the context of teaching and learning. After conducting classroom observations over a six-year period, researchers Carolyn Denham and Anne Lieberman (1980) developed the term academic learning time, which is composed of several variables:

Allocated time: The amount of time teachers plan to devote to instructional activities in a lesson.

Instructional time: The amount of allocated time dedicated to a specific instructional activity that a teacher (or students) actually spend on that activity.

Engaged time: The amount of time during which students are authentically engaged in the instructional activit(ies).

To make effective learning happen, we want to maximize "engaged time"-in which students aren't just attending to direct instruction or doing the activities planned, but are substantively engaged as they do so. In other words, students put forth cognitive effort, actively participate, and commit to the task.

Using Planning to Improve Pacing

Determine How Much Time You'll Really Have

To increase engaged learning time, we must first recognize that lesson planning is just as important as teaching, and it should include planning to set the right pace. It's the phase of instruction in which teachers have the most opportunity to be intentional in selecting content and pedagogical practices. The TESOL International Association (n.d.) explains that when a teacher "... is clear on what needs to be done, how, and when ... [pacing] will tend to flow more smoothly because all the information has been gathered and the details have been decided upon beforehand." Well-planned lessons lead to an increase in Denham and Lieberman's "instructional time" (as well as "engaged time").

Since most U.S. schools are now doing remote learning to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, let me note that it's equally essential to think about planning for effective pacing in lessons taught online. When teaching virtually, we should think about pacing in lessons a bit differently, but good pacing is still important. (See " Good Pacing When Teaching in Virtual Settings ".)

When planning for a lesson you want to teach, it's imperative to consider the amount of time you will actually have for delivering instruction and facilitating student activities. Actually is the operative word here because both expected and unforeseen variables like announcements, attendance, restroom breaks, fire drills, and student misconduct all impact instructional time. It's almost impossible to predict when and what types of behaviors will occur within your lesson-and fire drills can happen out of the blue. But, although you have no control over unexpected events, you can at least estimate how much instructional time you'll likely have by approximating the time needed for extraneous activities like attendance that are within your control.

Getting a handle on this information will be critical in determining how much information and how many activities you'll be able to fit into a single lesson. It will help you decide how much time each element should ideally take. Failing to allocate specific amounts of time to each part of a lesson-whether you write these allocations down or just mentally note them-often causes lesson components to lag.

Determine the Learning Target

To ensure you allocate appropriate amounts of time to present essential content, you must first identify the lesson's learning target. You have to determine, specifically, what you want students to know and be able to do by the lesson's end. This will inform how you apportion your lesson time. If a lesson's content, for example, is complex and conceptual and your learning target involves thorough understanding of a key concept, you may need to devote more time to concept development and direct instruction than to a student work activity.

When developing learning targets, you must be realistic about how much content you'll be able to teach because (for most secondary teachers at least) the amount of minutes you have with each group of students has been allotted by your state, district, or school-and can't be expanded. Therefore, you need to set reasonable expectations for how much students will be able to learn within the time allotted for the lesson. This can be achieved by breaking the standard you're teaching into bite-sized, manageable learning objectives and designing a lesson (or several) for each objective.

Take, for example, a language arts standard determine the main idea. The following learning targets would be considered bite-sized for this standard:

Learning Target 1: Determine the topic of a text.

Learning Target 2: Identify key details and explain how details develop the topic.

Learning Target 3: Determine the main idea of a text.

The opposite of planning bite-sized objectives is planning too many learning targets-or one massive learning target-for a lesson. Teachers who pick too large a target and plan components for a single lesson that lead to mastering that target-and who are adamant about sticking to what they planned-will likely end up teaching the content, not the students. Because such a teacher is pressed to get through the lesson, he won't have time to pause and check for understanding. This approach to pacing adversely impacts student learning. When instruction moves along too quickly, many students won't understand what you're teaching and will become discouraged (Impact Teachers, 2016).

Script Your Questions

Every teacher behavior impacts a lesson's pacing. While asking questions is a sound practice, neglecting to carefully plan questions beforehand can be a detriment to pacing; questions that are vague or misfire disrupt the flow of a lesson and take away time from essential content. I've seen many lesson objectives not attained and the instruction come to an impasse, so to speak, when extended time was spent on one or more questions because the teacher was refining her questions during instruction. Generally, the teacher had to refine questions midstream because students' responses indicated that the questions she was posing were verbose, ambiguous, or nebulous. Scripting your questions carefully during planning increases your chances of keeping pacing on track.

In addition, make sure you use your questions judiciously. I've seen the pacing of lessons derailed by a teacher continuing to call on different students in search of a correct response to a question, even when more than enough student answers have clearly demonstrated that a teaching point was needed for these students to grasp the concept or content being asked about.

Plan Your Teaching Point-and Try a Few Tricks

Just as you plan questions, it's important to plan your teaching points. A teaching point is a specific piece of information, skill, or understanding you want learners to take away from the lesson. If you were teaching a math lesson, a teaching point could be teaching students how to regroup; in a science lesson, it might be how to differentiate between chemical and physical changes. Unlike a learning target, which states what students should know and be able to do, a teaching point is any segment or piece of information within the lesson that supports students in mastering that objective.

Whether made in a think aloud, teacher modeling, mini-lesson, guided discourse, or point of clarification, in my experience, the teaching point is often where the downward slope in instructional delivery effectiveness begins. The trouble often stems from a lack of preparation, evidenced by a teacher giving protracted explanations and superfluous information-both of which cause pacing to lag. To increase the likelihood of strong lesson pacing, you must know the lesson's content, know what you're going to say and how you're going to say it, and know specifically what you are going to do in the lesson and how you're going to execute those actions. In return for this intentionality, instruction will flow more smoothly.

Since you need to keep the lesson-especially in key teaching points-feeling briskly paced but not go so fast that some students get lost, consider ways to use a bit of smoke and mirrors, creating the perception of speed. This can be done by varying the modes of presentation (lecture, video, direct instruction, etc.) and including more than one activity (pair-share, think-write-speak, discussion period, and so on) to attain the lesson's objective. Changing things up creates interest and increases the pace.

Thoughtfully Plan Activities

Activities directly impact student learning, so you need to choose or develop engaging activities, plan them carefully, and allocate time for activities appropriately. With your learning target in mind, brainstorm activities that will require students to interact with the content, interact with their peers, and get out of their seats. It's also necessary to consider your students' readiness. Planning for readiness is crucial because readiness impacts both motivation and engagement. If the content is too difficult, students might mentally check out; if it's too easy, they'll become bored.

Besides planning for students' readiness levels, you must plan for relevance-and for the same reason: engagement. Roberson (2013) defines relevance as "the perception that something is interesting and worth knowing," and claims it's one of the most important aspects of teaching and learning. He notes that in addition to a connection to students' lives, the perception of relevance is enhanced by good classroom relationships. Students engage more with teachers they have a relationship with and like.

To increase the chances students will perceive the learning as worthwhile, begin the lesson with a captivating hook or lesson opener (Simmons, 2015). Getting students' attention at the onset of a lesson is critical. In addition, as you introduce lesson content and activities, make clear to students the "why" of the lesson and its long-term value. Connect the lesson to their lives and backgrounds.

Before You Allocate Time, "Internalize"

After determining the lesson's learning target, key questions, teaching points, and activities, it is time to internalize the lesson. Lesson internalization entails thinking through the lesson and practicing critical aspects, such as think alouds, explanations, and transitions. It involves rehearsing. Alber (2012) explains that it takes practice to make the pacing in a lesson seamless. Rehearsing is paramount because it allows the teacher to refine aspects of the lesson before presenting it.

There are several ways you can practice your instructional delivery to positively impact pacing. If you're comfortable presenting in front of colleagues, you can ask them to participate as students. If being that vulnerable makes you uneasy, ask friends or family members to role-play. These two methods are effective because you have the opportunity to receive honest, critical feedback. If you're like most teachers, when it comes to self-evaluation, you're probably overly critical, and it may feel too hard to rehearse in front of others. In this case, you might want to record yourself to watch and learn from later.

Rehearsing the lesson promotes appropriate time allocation. Only after completing this phase should you begin allocating time to elements of the lesson. If you allocate without engaging in the internalization process, you 're likely to devote insufficient time to certain parts and too much time to other lesson components.

Getting to Engaged

Keeping the lesson flowing at a good pace helps keep students engaged-and remember, what we're after is maximizing not just time on task, but "engaged time." Here are several other things to consider about pacing for engagement:

Transitions and Classroom Management

Like the previously mentioned pedagogical practices, classroom management impacts pacing. Transitions, for example-if not planned well-can be the point where pacing goes off track. As you internalize your lesson, create explicit instructions you'll give students as they move to the next activity. Make a note of what materials you'll need to have readily available to provide learners as they make this transition.

Teachers will also need to respond to unexpected student behaviors-and misbehaviors-as the lesson unfolds. While we can't pre-plan the best response to any behavior that may arise, we can plan and practice strategies to address minor behavior issues (and even more serious ones) without breaking the flow of the lesson. My article in the September 2019 EL describes such strategies. It's important to not completely stop instruction to address inconsequential behaviors. Stopping the lesson negatively impacts pacing and interferes with creating instructional time and engaged time.

Finally, it's crucial to read your audience. Even if you've planned your lesson well, as it unfolds, attend to the signals students give you as to whether your pacing is too fast or too slow. Pay close attention to students' behavior. I've seen many lessons executed poorly because teachers failed to adjust their pacing to meet the needs of their audience.

Signals that indicate pacing is too slow include:

Signals that indicate pacing is too fast include:

Students ask many questions for clarification.

Students are struggling to keep up and understand the material.

Signals that indicate your pacing is just right include:

Students are engaged (asking questions that spark discussion, collaborating with peers, completing tasks, and keeping up with the pace of new material presented).

Students seem to be grasping the content, evidenced by correct responses and appropriate, relevant questions.

Better Pacing, Better Teaching

Whether you're teaching face-to-face or virtually, choosing lesson content well and implementing sound instructional strategies are just two components of a powerful lesson. If students never get to the essential content or become disengaged as you present it because of poor pacing, the lesson will be somewhat futile. Teachers must take actions like those described here to enhance the pacing of their lessons. Getting this aspect right will help increase the most important time elements in the classroom: instructional time and engaged time.

Fig. 1: Good Pacing When Teaching in Virtual Settings

As an instructional coach, I often facilitate teacher professional learning communities on the topic of strengthening instructional pacing. Now, as I facilitate such groups virtually, I find myself discussing with teachers how to get pacing right when teaching in the virtual space, and the pacing of asynchronous and synchronous instruction.

Teaching in the virtual space is very different from teaching in the physical classroom, and pacing in a remotely delivered lesson space presents a unique challenge: teachers and students aren't in the same physical setting. Not being in this same space leaves the teacher with little to no control over household distractions and students becoming preoccupied, both of which can adversely impact pacing. To mitigate these barriers to good pacing, when teaching remotely:

Keep lessons short (15 minutes or less) and upbeat. Only include essential content.

Include appropriate audio and visuals in pre-recorded lessons (asynchronous learning) and during live sessions (synchronous learning).

During synchronous learning, cold call on students, as needed, to prevent students' lack of participation from disrupting the lesson's flow.

Fig. 2: Essential Steps for Planning with Great Pacing in Mind

Choose the Goal and Components for Your Lesson:

Determine how much time you'll have.

Set your learning target.

Script the questions you'll pose.

Plan actions and words for your teaching point.

Plan lesson activities (consider readiness levels and relevance).

Once You've Planned Individual Components, "Internalize":

Think through and rehearse key parts of the lesson.

Allocate how much time to give each element.

Think through transitions-and be ready to read signals.

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Planning for good pacing-the timing of presenting elements and keeping kids engaged-is crucial to a lesson's success. Here's how to get it right.

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Learning is learning, whether it occurs in a classroom, at a library, or within a virtual environment. But regardless of the venue, learning can vary from superficial to substantive. Many teachers are looking for ways to make online and hybrid learning more substantive and less superficial. The following three practical strategies and associated tools-adapted from Teaching for Deeper Learning (McTighe & Silver, 2020)-promote deep learning in virtual and hybrid settings as well as in traditional classrooms.

What Is Deep Learning?

Deep learning occurs when students come to understand important ideas and processes and are able to transfer that learning. Our conception aligns with that of the National Research Council: "While other types of learning may allow an individual to recall facts, concepts, or procedures, deeper learning allows the individual to transfer what was learned to solve new problems" (2012).

While information can be transmitted by telling, understanding must be "earned" by the learner. We can directly teach facts and procedures, but learners must construct an understanding of more abstract and transferrable ideas in their minds through deliberate mental processing of new information. Indeed, the phrases " coming to understand" and " making sense of..." suggest that deep learning occurs over time and requires the active mental manipulation of content via "higher-order" thinking. We refer to this active construction of meaning by students as meaning making -best done by focusing content on fewer, bigger ideas to avoid superficial "coverage" and by engaging students in the active process necessary for understanding and transfer.

Strategy One: Begin Units with a "Pile of Words"

When students actively "construct" meaning of abstract and transferable processes, they are forming concepts and principles derived from specific examples. A powerful strategy for engaging students in this kind of meaning making is Inductive Learning, which is based on the pioneering work of Hilda Taba (Taba, Durkin, Fraenkel, & McNaughton, 1971). Here, in a nutshell, is how such learning works:

1. Students are presented with a list of terms related to a reading, lesson, or unit they are about to begin. For example, young students who are about to learn about the Ancient Egyptians might be presented this word pile:

3 Strategies for Promoting Deep Learning Virtually - table

Figure 1. Grouped and Labeled Terms

2. Students review the terms, look up the ones they are unfamiliar with, and then group terms together based on common characteristics. Here's how one student team grouped and labeled the above terms:

3. Students use their groups to make predictions about the learning to come. For example, students might make predictions like these: "There were Egyptian doctors who used tools and plants to help sick people" and "The Egyptians believed in many gods."

4. Students test and refine their predictions as they learn more. For example, during the Ancient Egypt unit, students collect evidence as they progress through the unit, looking for any information that confirms or challenges their predictions. This evidence-gathering requirement turns the lesson into searches for information and keeps the learning active, thus helping to address the engagement challenge of online learning.

We can use inductive learning in versatile ways to help students activate their prior knowledge, construct an initial conception of the content to come, develop their classification skills, make predictions, and test and refine their predictions in light of new learning. Here are a few tips for using it in your classroom or online learning environment:

Model the process. Work with students to group and label everyday items (things in a sporting goods store, types of food) to help them understand the process.

Mix familiar and unfamiliar terms. Having some familiar terms helps connect new terms to concepts students already know. As students get older, they can handle more terms. Aim for between 15 - 40 terms, depending on students' ages and your objectives. Make sure that the terms you select will help students discover some of the important big ideas you aim to highlight.

Use it as a pre-reading strategy. Giving students important words about the setting, characters, and action of a story helps them make predictions and test them as they read.

Think beyond words. Having students group and label paintings, pictures, or physical objects builds thinking and classification skills. Just make sure that students explain why they put certain items together.

Strategy Two: Engage Students in Active Reading

The increase in asynchronous learning that often comes with online and hybrid instruction means that more now depends on students' ability to read and make meaning of texts for themselves. Enter Reading for Meaning (Silver, Morris, & Klein, 2010; Silver, Strong, & Perini, 2007), a tool that engages students in active reading and helps teachers accomplish a number of important objectives. Reading for Meaning improves reading comprehension, provides direct training in how to find and evaluate relevant textual evidence, and develops the healthy skepticism of good critical thinkers ("Let's see what the evidence suggests before we jump to conclusions"). It does all of this by extending the typical reading comprehension paradigm from asking questions about the text to posing statements about the text.

Unlike comprehension questions, which often suggest right-wrong thinking to students and come after reading, Reading for Meaning statements are open-ended and presented before students read the text. Statements are meant to be pondered, interpreted, defended, and discussed. Statements also have the power to stir up controversy-a great way to engage students. For example, imagine you are an 8th-grade student reading a web article about genetically modified foods, or GMOs. Before you begin the text, you read these three statements:

1. When scientists develop a technology that can improve people's lives, that technology should always be pursued.

2. There is conclusive evidence that GMOs are safe.

3. The public's lack of knowledge about the science behind GMOs is being exploited.

Do you agree or disagree with these statements? Maybe you're not sure. Your job would be to collect evidence from one or more articles that either supports or refutes each statement. Voila! Inquiry is in the air. Students approach the text with purpose and may collect evidence both for and against the same statement, as controversial and open-ended statements often promote deliberation when the issues are complex and the answers are unclear.

Whether using Reading for Meaning in the classroom or online, give students time after reading to work in small groups (or virtual rooms), review the statements, and explain the evidence they collected from the text to support or refute each statement. When students cannot reach consensus on a particular statement, encourage them to rewrite one they can all agree on. For example, students might not be able to collectively agree (or disagree) with the statement, "When scientists develop a technology that can improve people's lives, that technology should always be pursued." So, they can rewrite it in a way that promotes consensus: "When scientists develop a technology that can improve people's lives, that technology should be tested for risks before it is pursued."

Reading for Meaning works just as well when used with data tables, diagrams, videos, and almost information source that we want students to analyze and interpret. Just try to make your statements "juicy" so that students invest in taking a position and hunting down evidence to support it. Here are some juicy Reading for Meaning statements:

Strategy Three: Use Empathy to Make Learning Personal

With social isolation and political divisiveness at all-time highs, there has never been a better time to invite empathy into our learning environments. Being able to walk in someone else's shoes engages the distinctly human capacity to step out of ourselves so we can see and experience the world as others do. Note that teaching with empathy does not amount to content-free "fluff." Just the opposite, in fact: Empathy can establish a conceptual lens to help students make meaning of abstract and high-level content and increase personal engagement, which helps make the learning "stick."

A Day in the Life asks students to imagine life as a famous figure, a literary character, a person living under very different circumstances, even a concept or object. By "becoming" someone or something else, students develop new insights into what they are learning. The tool also nurtures creative thinking and writing skills, as students can tell their story through personal writing, such as diary entries or a letter to a loved one. Below are two examples from Teaching for Deeper Learning (McTighe & Silver, 2020, p. 110):

You have watched the documentary Life in the Trenches about trench warfare during World War I and read the poem "In Flanders Fields." Choose one of the following roles: a frightened new arrival, an officer trying to bolster troop morale, or a nurse in a field hospital. Write a letter back home describing your experiences.

You are a chrysalis that just can't wait to become a butterfly. Explain what life is like as you await your transformation. Make sure you tell us what excites you most about becoming a butterfly.

A Day in the Life can also serve as the basis for an extended research project. For example, a teacher of current events might ask students to explore the "labor behind the label" by learning about child laborers who make clothes. After conducting research on child labor practices in various countries, students "become" a child laborer and tell what life is like on the factory line. In one instance, some students were so engaged by this project that they made direct contact with workers their own age in other countries and conducted interviews to learn about their daily experiences.

The practical tools we offer have proven effective in virtual, hybrid, and in-person settings by enabling teachers to engage learners actively in making meaning. Such active learning is especially important in virtual and hybrid settings where students can easily lose focus when staring at a screen. In sum, deep learning is doable-and it has never been more important.

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Learning is learning, whether it occurs in a classroom, at a library, or within a virtual environment. But regardless of the venue, learning can vary from superficial to substantive. Many teachers are looking for ways to make online and hybrid learning more substantive and less superficial.

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Those of us with fitness trackers on our wrist or finger know how often they can spark conversations. Technologies allow us to track the number of steps we take each day, our heart rate and oxygen levels, and even the quality of our sleep. These biometric data report how you are doing compared to averages of other users, but also compared to your own past performance-marking progress that many people want to share. When Nancy hit a new personal record of 22,427 steps in a single day, she made sure everyone knew about it (now you do, too).

Athletes refer to their PR (personal record) in competitions and use past performance markers to set new goals. Even outside of direct competition, many of us talk about our "personal best" professionally or otherwise. The competition is with ourselves. Once we achieve a new PR, we create a new objective. Nancy's new goal is 25,000 steps.

Academic personal best goals have received growing attention in the last decade as a means for fostering a self-directed learning mindset. These kinds of personal best goals meet three conditions: (1) they are specific; (2) they are challenging; and (3) they are competitively self-referenced, meaning that a student's performance is compared to their own past performance, as opposed to the performance of their peers.

Goal Setting in Learning

Academic goal setting is a crucial dimension of a student's ability to cognitively self-regulate. Goal setting is also a constructive academic behavior, along with perseverance, motivation, and planning, that impacts learning. A student who can focus their attention, concentrate, and activate mental processes to connect concepts they are learning is far more likely to succeed in the classroom. Cognitive self-regulation encompasses many observable academic skills, such as taking notes, completing a task, and persisting when faced with challenges. Goals can improve students' ability to delay gratification and reduce impulsive behaviors, allowing them to focus on the learning at hand.

The source of goals is important. Mastery goals focus on learning content ("I want to learn how to calculate slope"). In contrast, many students only focus on performance goals, such as "Getting an A in Algebra I." That objective is also quite distant, because the student isn't going to know whether they achieved it or not until the end of the year. Incremental goals help students break down long-term objectives into manageable pieces, allowing them to monitor their progress. Initial and mid-unit assessments give students interval data to gauge how they're doing.

Academic mastery goals are more powerful when they are incremental, and when students actively participate in their development. In doing so, the goals often shift from an exclusive focus on performance to more of an emphasis on mastery. In other words, moving from "I want to get an A in Algebra" to "I want to learn how to calculate slope" shortens the time needed to achieve the goal while also focusing on necessary learning instead of looking narrowly at academic achievement. But how else might we ramp up goal setting that emphasizes growth, not just achievement?

Frame Personal Best Goals

When we set goals for ourselves, we typically don't start with the most ambitious outcomes we can think of. Chances are good that Nancy's walking goal is not on par with a professional athlete's. But it's her goal and it spurs her forward. Students who are not yet making expected progress may struggle in setting goals, especially if they are focused on perfection. Their past performance may be evidence to them that they can never reach high-level performance, a self-defeating attitude that further hinders their learning.

Conversations about one's personal best, which is self-referenced, can be useful in building self-efficacy, the belief that one can achieve their goals. Begin the discussion by exploring an academic or school-related goal students have for themselves. Ask them some questions to learn more about their goal. Possible questions include:

To illustrate, the video that accompanies this column (see below) shows intervention paraprofessional Cynthia Ramirez meeting with Cesar, a multilingual learner receiving intervention supports. Every month, she works with him to identify intermediate language-development goals, such as increasing the complexity of books he is reading, that move him closer to his longer-term aim to read on grade level.

Identify Resources and Steps

Academic goals can seem overwhelming to some students, and they may need reminders about what resources they can draw upon. A student whose goal is to advance to the next Lexile level in reading comprehension, for example, may struggle coming up with a plan to achieve this. It's good to discuss available resources, asking things like:

What resources can you draw on inside yourself? ( I met my last goal, so I have some confidence; the next topic we're studying is interesting to me)

What school resources can you use? ( My teacher is good at finding books I like; I can work with classmates; I can record my reading and listen to it so I know where I am making mistakes)

What resources can your family offer? ( My grandma asks to read with me; They are proud of me)

Once students have identified their resources, help them break their goal into incremental action steps they can more easily follow. The student with the goal of reaching the next Lexile level might identify these steps:

1. Meet with the reading teacher to talk about new personal best goal and ask for help achieving it.

2. Read for 15 minutes every night with my grandma.

3. Record myself reading every Friday and listen to it with my teacher.

Maintain Forward Momentum

Change the narrative of schooling by encouraging students at all achievement levels to identify personal best goals. When it comes to learning, the goal isn't about outperforming everyone else, but rather about understanding current performance and using that information to move to the next level.

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Forming specific and incremental goals for themselves helps students focus on achieving mastery in their learning-and stay engaged.

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Three Effective Teaching Strategies to Support Equitable Learning Outcomes

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Three Effective Teaching Strategies to Support Equitable Learning Outcomes

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Ensuring equitable learning experiences for all students is a high priority for educators everywhere and, based on our research, using strategies outlined in The New Classroom Instruction That Works can help teachers make that goal a reality. Many of the studies supporting the new CITW strategies were conducted in classrooms and schools that served diverse populations and helped close or reduce performance gaps. In this post we'll highlight some of the specific strategies that can help elevate this goal.

Strategy No. 1: Provide your students with cognitive interest cues.

When done effectively, cognitive interest cues activate the first phase of learning (becoming interested) and can increase student achievement. When teachers use this strategy to engage students by highlighting how it's relevant to their lives, educators can tap into students' intrinsic motivation and curiosity to learn. It sounds simple enough, right? Just get your students interested in the lesson. However, doing it effectively involves much more intentionality.

Implementation requires that teachers know about their students' lives and interests outside of the classroom; know what may or may not be cognitively challenging for their students; and have a willingness to take the time to pre-plan these engagement tools.

Studies have shown that to close achievement gaps, teachers should not shy away from presenting students with complex ideas. The appropriately identified challenge intrigues and engages students more than simplified learning approaches. One study conducted with approximately 4,000 middle schoolers in an urban community found that when teachers did not simplify learning and instead focused on engaging students with high-interest, cognitively engaging texts with known authors, along with frequent writing exercises, those students outperformed their peers in business-as-usual classes when measuring reading comprehension, vocabulary, and language expression.

Some of the best teaching tools for this engagement hook are beginning lessons or units with mysteries, controversies, cognitive conflict, riddles, and suspense. Anecdotally, most of us know that controversy begets curiosity, and research supports it. When deploying riddles to create suspense, use incomplete sentences, unfinished narratives, or unsolved puzzles. For example: We know that mixing baking soda and vinegar creates carbon dioxide. What will happen when we pour this mixture into a jar with a lit candle?

* Takeaway: When planning a lesson, take time to identify what new learning students will encounter that day and write down what prior learning students will use to help them activate that knowledge. Then ask yourself, how does this lesson relate to my students' lives, and how will my students use what they are learning inside and outside of the classroom?

Strategy No. 2: Help your students set their own learning goals and monitor their progress.

Consider this the "what" and "why" of every lesson plan. By defining learning objectives in a language students will understand, you can increase students' interest and commitment to learning, and give them a sense of purpose.

This step requires teachers to provide students with success criteria for each lesson-describing for students how they will demonstrate their learning to successfully meet the defined goals. Success criteria give students a picture of success that is more than a grade; it's a personal goal that they can then monitor progress toward achieving. As students become accustomed to reflecting on what they've learned and what they still need to work on, they learn how to take control of their own education and begin to figure out that effort is connected to success-and with practice, they become skillful at identifying their own success criteria and generating ideas for how they can demonstrate their learning. Studies have shown that this ownership, with a clear path of where they're going and how to get there, increases student engagement and motivation to learn.

In one study, a randomly selected group of mostly nonwhite 7 th graders who were low achieving in math were taught in a series of eight 25-minute lessons that they could grow their intelligence and abilities through effort. Class readings, discussions, and activities impressed upon students that brains (like other muscles) grow stronger with frequent use, and they could control this as learners. By the end of the semester, these students exhibited greater growth mindset and reversed their previous declines in grades, achieving significantly higher grades than their peers.

* Takeaway: Identify the learning objectives for an upcoming unit and clearly explain the "why" behind it so students understand how it's relevant to them. Draft the success criteria and share it at the beginning of the lesson. Each item on this list should start with "I can..." and have action verbs that describe how students will show their learning. For example, "I can rank the relevant facts in order of importance to identify the theme or topic," or "I can highlight two or more transition words in the text and explain to a partner how the words demonstrate relationships between ideas and concepts."

It's important that the objectives and criteria are appropriately sized. One of the quickest ways to get off course is to try to cram too many lessons into one class. You may work on the same objectives for a series of lessons, but each lesson should have distinct success criteria that allows all students to see how they are progressing toward the standard and recognize where they need additional support.

Strategy No. 3: Include vocabulary instruction in every lesson.

When students grasp the vocabulary associated with a specific lesson, they can develop pegs in their mind on which to hang the specific concepts they're about to learn. Vocabulary instruction, per The New CITW, builds declarative knowledge by helping students understand, recall, and apply subject specific words and academic terms. It has been linked to student success and reading comprehension.

To effectively use vocabulary instruction, teachers should dedicate time during lesson planning to identify what terms need to be explained and how to do so in student-friendly language. It's important to consider how to teach the words in multiple ways and address words that can have multiple meanings. Words could be introduced in advance of conceptual learning, following an introduction to concepts, or in parallel. Regardless of the approach, after introducing the vocabulary, time must be devoted to practice using the words and terms in authentic conversation and writing related to learning content.

Vocabulary instruction's importance across ages and topics is well documented, and it has been found to be especially beneficial for multilingual learners. In one study, middle school English language learners in a treatment group attended an afterschool program that focused on 60 key academic vocabulary words. Over the course of 75-minute lessons in 20 afterschool sessions, the students had multiple opportunities to process the words' meanings, personalize them, and encounter them in a variety of ways, including direct instruction, word games, and other activities. At the end of the study, students in the treatment group showed significantly more growth in knowledge compared with students in the control group who attended an afterschool homework club.

Vocabulary instruction goes beyond traditional reading and writing comprehension. It should be applied to all academic topics, as highlighted in another study of 5 th grade students in a low socioeconomic status school who were learning about photosynthesis. In the treatment group, the topic was introduced in students' everyday language prior to introducing the academic terms. The learning gains between pre- and post-tests demonstrated significant effect when compared to the gains of students in the control group, who were taught the scientific concepts and academic vocabulary at the same time.

* Takeaway: Devote time to explain new vocabulary using age-appropriate terms at the beginning of every lesson. Students will use this as their anchor to understand the larger concepts of the lesson, so creating this context is imperative. Once the vocabulary is introduced, provide students with multiple opportunities to practice the new words in conversations and in writing tasks to ensure they fully understand the concepts. We want students to develop deeper conceptual understanding and comprehension as a result of vocabulary learning, so it's wise to avoid using word lists with drill-and-kill activities that support memorization without deeper learning.

For many teachers, it's likely that you already use some or all three of these strategies to some degree. But with a bit more focus and consistency during lesson planning and delivery, these strategies can each play a significant role in closing achievement gaps and helping all your students succeed.

Karen Baptiste Ed.D., a senior consultant at McREL International, has worked with K-12 schools across the U.S. to support improved teaching and learning with an emphasis on quality implementation of evidence-based instructional strategies for diverse learners, including helping teachers create learning environments that encourage student voice and ownership of learning. She is a co-author of The New Classroom Instruction That Works.

Michele Kimball, B.A., a consultant at McREL, leverages her experience as a bilingual early childhood educator in Texas and as a national school support consultant (pre-K-12) to develop and support educators in ways that have a lasting impact on their students. Ms. Kimball has helped educators and educational leaders identify and understand evidence-based best practices, skills, and processes that can be used to change their school culture, support school goals, and advance student learning. She is a co-author of The New Classroom Instruction That Works.

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Three Effective Teaching Strategies to Support Equitable Learning Outcomes - McREL International

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Ensuring equitable learning experiences for all students is a high priority for educators everywhere and, based on our research, using strategies outlined in The New Classroom Instruction That Works can help teachers make that goal a reality. Many of the studies supporting the new CITW strategies were conducted in classrooms and schools that served diverse populations and helped close or reduce performance gaps.

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Planning for Learning Sets Teachers and Students Up for Success

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Planning for Learning Sets Teachers and Students Up for Success

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Do you plan for teaching or plan for learning? Or asked another way, when you look at your planning document, who do you see? Your students or yourself?

While teaching and learning may seem like two sides of the same coin, when it comes to lesson planning, your intent and focus matters a great deal. Planning for teaching highlights the actions the teacher must take, whereas planning for learning focuses on defining what success looks like for students. When teachers are clear about what successful learning looks like and explicitly plan to emphasize students' work and their successes, the outcomes for student learning are greatly improved.

The traditional planning model that focuses on teaching defines what the teacher needs to do and when it should be done. This strategy may prompt (or even require) teachers to ensure that their lessons are delivered in a specific way, often emphasizing the assessment that students will have to take to earn their grade. This approach too often leads teachers to dive straight into a lesson by introducing new facts, concepts, and other knowledge without first activating their students' curiosity and motivation to learn.

Based on our research, highlighted in The New Classroom Instruction That Works, learning is most effective when students are supported across the six phases of learning:

1. Become interested

2. Commit to learning

3. Focus on new learning

4. Make sense of learning

5. Practice and reflect

6. Extend and apply

Planning for learning incorporates each of these phases to ensure equitable outcomes for all students. To do so, it's often helpful to start with the end in mind and ask yourself: What does student success look like for this sequence of learning?

When using our best first instruction six-phase model to plan for learning, shown below, lesson sequences become learning focused and student centered. Students understand the what and the why of the lesson as well as what successful learning looks and feels like from the outset. Planning for learning highlights that learning is valuable beyond simply achieving a specific letter grade and places a greater emphasis on student growth. It also encourages students to engage with their curiosity about concepts and topics as well as reflect on their own growth and development over time. When teachers are intentional in their selection and integration of research-based, high-leverage strategies, they position students as partners in learning, equally responsible for their growth and achievement.

So, let's see it in action. A state math standard requires 7 th graders to solve real-life problems involving measurement of angles, surface area, and volume. Following the planning for learning approach, we first need to define what student success looks like: Students will learn how to calculate a variety of geometric measurements.

How can they do this, and why should they want to? This is where there's an opportunity to create a learning objective that will engage the students and make it applicable to real life. We task them with creating a scaled design for a garden in a community park-a design that they will submit to the city at the end of the unit.

We start the conversation by talking about their favorite things to do at a park. From there, we present them with a 2-D picture of a local park and explain it needs to be redesigned, incorporating several of their favorite park elements-a walking path, a series of raised garden beds, a pond, and a seating area. At this point, we have engaged their interest and curiosity, given them a clear goal that goes beyond a letter grade, and connected it to life outside of the classroom.

The lessons are then sequenced and designed in a way to support how their brains input, store, and retrieve information. Vocabulary instruction, visualizations and concrete examples, and strategy instruction and modeling are incorporated into the lesson plan to focus on new learning. In this example, we get out of the classroom and tour the school grounds, looking at planter boxes, paths, and the grassy areas. Each element presents opportunities to discuss the vocabulary of the lesson and the math formulas used to create the elements.

Back in the classroom, students can get to work, applying those conversations to the math problems at hand as they process their new information, while incorporating time for formative feedback and opportunities to pause and process the new learning. This activity encourages students to engage with their curiosity about concepts and topics by revisiting and reflecting on their initial and evolving designs. They are supported to adjust, change, and improve their park designs based on their reflections so that their elements are more accurate in their measurements and placement to scale. This reflection and repetition aids in processing, retrieval, and retention.

As students finalize their design projects, a written proposal for the city to explain their design helps cement the learning, while the math skills and knowledge can be further applied by asking them more questions about their project, such as how much soil they will need to fill the garden beds or how often the pond will need to be re-filled to maintain optimum health of the water and plants.

By developing a clear, student-centered goal for the learning and intentionally sequencing and balancing learning, reflection, and application, we have transformed what might have been a rather pedestrian sequence of lessons about geometry into something real and relevant for students. The intentional integration of research-based instructional strategies aligned to the flow of learning through the six phases also illustrates a thoughtful approach to teaching and learning by aligning the practice with what we know about best first instruction.

Want to learn more? Check out these resources:

Kristin (Kris) Rouleau, Ed.D., Vice President of Learning Services at McREL International, works with schools, districts, and state departments of education, both domestically and internationally, as they navigate change and implement practices and structures to reduce variability and increase student achievement. In addition to consulting, coaching, and facilitation of professional learning, Dr. Rouleau has co-authored several McREL books, including Learning that Sticks and The New Classroom Instruction That Works.

Tonia Gibson, M.S.L., a senior consultant at McREL International, works with teachers, schools, districts, and other stakeholders to develop sustainable plans for improving the professional practices of teachers and school leaders. Through consulting and coaching for individuals and groups, she works with partners to develop strategic pathways to improve educator capacities and provides technical assistance to support teachers and leaders in developing effective practices, ensuring student needs are at the heart of all decisions made. She is a co-author of several McREL books, including Learning that Sticks and The New Classroom Instruction That Works.

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Planning for Learning Sets Up Students and Teachers for Success - McREL International

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Do you plan for teaching or plan for learning? Or asked another way, when you look at your planning document, who do you see? Your students or yourself? While teaching and learning may seem like two sides of the same coin, when it comes to lesson planning, your intent and focus matters a great deal.