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Typing might be faster, but longhand stays with you better.

Picture this: it's a work day at an enterprise payments processing company, and there is a critical data engineering task that needs to be completed. In this case, I'm the data engineer who needs to finish the task, but I am missing information necessary for my data model to be finished. I heard the information in a meeting. It was discussed in the daily standup. I have some vague typed notes, but I can't recall the technical details I need to finish my work. No one is available to answer my question. It's then that it hits me: I should have written down notes by hand during the meeting.

Writing notes by hand would have given me several different tangible resources that could help me find the critical missing information: a stronger memory of the meeting I was in, the gaps in the details of the discussion that occurred, and the notes themselves that would help me trigger a stronger recall of the events just by reviewing them on paper. Detailed typed notes would not help my recall and retention of the information in the meetings in the same way that notes written by hand would, though they would have been helpful.

It's hard to keep documentation accurate for a whole organization or even a team with day-to-day process, programming, business, and client changes at the micro and macro levels. But as individuals who consume new information on a minute-by-minute basis, we can learn what we need to with more information retention, cognitive recall, stronger reading comprehension, and a tactile, visual memory of the information we consumed just by hand writing our notes. Writing by hand still remains the most powerful way to learn and retain information.

It would come as no surprise to most people that human beings are visual learners. This applies even to writing, though at first written words and visual learning may seem different. When a person thinks of "visual learning", what may be pictured are videos, images, and other forms of graphic information and media. Yet letters and words are visual representations of a mutually-agreed upon social communication form: written language.

When a young human is learning to read, they must first learn to recognize the different shapes called "letters" that belong to their native alphabet. A letter means nothing to a person who does not know what sound or function that letter is supposed to represent in language. So as human beings, before we learn what a word is, we first must learn that the graphical representation of a letter means something. We must also learn the differences between individual letters as well as variations in the shapes, sizes, and styles of those letters.

In a 2012 study published in Trends in Neuroscience and Education, researchers Karin James and Laura Engelhardt observed of pre-literate children, "When children begin to print, their motor output (of a letter) does not conform to prototypical lettering: each output (which is also the perceptual input) can be said to be noisy relative to the model." Despite the fact that the children's recreation of a letter was messy compared to the letter model, their brains still accurately recognized that the letter they drew was the same one they attempted to copy. As James and Engelhardt said, the children recognized these letters "presumably because the children themselves created them." This is visual learning and acumen: the children needed to learn what an individual letter looked like in its various "noisy" and exemplary forms in order to identify and comprehend that letter in the future, regardless of its representation.

Handwriting is a unique expression of each person who learns to write; they represent letters and words as a written output of what they perceive those letters to be. James and Engelhardt showed in their study that this repetitive, creative handwriting also creates stronger reading comprehension and maturity of language recognition. "The most novel result of our ROI analysis," say James and Engelhardt, "is that visual processing of letters is affected by specific motor experience-the act of printing a letter".

One of the most important parts of learning new information is the ability to retain it and recall it later when it is relevant. Writing by hand on paper creates a tactile, personalized experience each time a person takes notes. The complex experience of hand writing on paper contains a multitude of variable elements: the creativity of an individual's written representation of language, the texture of the paper itself, the fine motor skills needed to translate thoughts into written language, the engagement of the physical senses, and even the reading comprehension strength that we learned of earlierAll of these complexities create a stronger memory of the information that is taken in during the note taking.

There have been a few scientific studies done on the subject of information processing through digital note taking and notes taken by hand. A recent study led by neuroscientist Professor Kuniyoshi Sakai at the University of Tokyo published in March 2021 showed that subjects who recorded calendar event information on paper showed more brain activity than subjects who recorded the same information onto a smartphone when they attempted to recall details about that calendar information later. And they recalled/entered the information 25% faster when writing it by hand.

Professor Sakai suggests that analog and paper learning experiences cannot be mimicked by the uniform ways in which digital devices represent information. "Digital tools have uniform scrolling up and down and standardized arrangement of text and picture size, like on a webpage. But if you remember a physical textbook printed on paper, you can close your eyes and visualize the photo one-third of the way down on the left-side page, as well as the notes you added in the bottom margin," says the neuroscientist. That stronger tactile memory is easier for the brain to recall later on even when the paper isn't present later; so is the information the brain associates with that learning experience.

We know that typing does not engage the brain with the same level of cognitive interaction as handwriting for various reasons. This has been a hot topic in the early education sphere around the world for over a decade as typed notes and digital notepads become more and more popular in classrooms. In fact, replacing handwriting with typing notes could be detrimental to early literacy skills because it lacks the creativity necessary for strong reading comprehension and faster note-taking.

In a study from the Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology , Professor Audrey van der Meer confirms that a keystroke on a keyboard lacks the creativity of handwriting and won't challenge memory the way that writing by hand does. Two professors from University of Umeå, Sweden champion writing by hand for students as a cognitive process necessary for the best learning experience: "Think of writing as learning an instrument: separate skills...need to be practiced in order for the player to become independent of the mechanics and allow for full expression of...the meaning."

Although typing notes can be useful and even faster for some note-takers, ultimately it does not have the cognitive, tactile, memory, or visual cognitive effects that people can get when they write by hand. Typing notes can be good, but it won't make it easier to remember what was said later on.

Perhaps you're like me and you already take notes by hand sometimes. I hope you've been writing down the parts of this blog that you want to remember if that's the case! If not and you also like to type sometimes like me, be nice to your hands as you begin your handwritten note journey again. Be prepared to feel challenged physically and mentally as you develop a new practice. Spend some money on a notebook you like, with paper that feels good against the rough scratch or smooth roll of your favorite pen. Those tactile moments will live in your mind when you want the information again later.

Writing by hand remains the best way to take in new information. It helps with reading comprehension, creativity, memory, and information retention in ways that are unmatched by other learning tools. Your writing, your shorthand, and your notes that look incomprehensible to others are a special part of your processing that help you learn in your way. So go ahead and get writing. By hand, of course.

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Why writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

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Typing might be faster, but longhand stays with you better. Picture this: it's a work day at an enterprise payments processing company, and there is a critical data engineering task that needs to be completed. In this case, I'm the data engineer who needs to finish the task, but I am missing information necessary for my data model to be finished.

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The key to thriving, as both a human and an educator, rests in mindfulness, reflection, and daily self-care activities. With Take Time for You , you will discover a clear path to well-being by working through Maslow's hierarchy of needs: (1) physiological, (2) safety, (3) belonging, (4) esteem, (5) self-actualization, and (6) transcendence. The author offers a range of manageable research-based strategies, self-care surveys, and reflective teaching questions that will guide you in developing an individualized self-care plan.

Embrace imperfection as you develop your own self-care plan:

Understand the challenges to mindfulness for teachers and how Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes into play in your personal and professional life.

Design action plans so you can meet your own physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization needs and, finally, transcend and connect with something greater than yourself.

Take surveys and perform a daily time audit to determine how well you are meeting each of your needs.

Use the journaling space and self-reflection questions provided throughout the book to reflect on your implementation efforts.

Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1: Understand the Framework
Chapter 2: Physiological Needs
Chapter 3: Safety Needs
Chapter 4: Belonging Needs
Chapter 5: Esteem Needs
Chapter 6: Self-Actualization Needs
Chapter 7: Transcendence Needs
Epilogue: Final Thoughts
Appendix: My Personalized Self-Care Plan
References and Resources
Index

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Take Time for You: Self-Care Action Plans for Educators (Using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Positive Psychology)

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Take Time for You: Self-Care Action Plans for Educators (Using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Positive Psychology) [Tina H. Boogren] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Take Time for You: Self-Care Action Plans for Educators (Using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Positive Psychology)

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Every kid needs a champion | Rita Pierson | TED

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Anders Ericsson on the science of expertise | Larry King Now | Ora.TV

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How are memories formed in the brain? When creating new neural pathways, what factors influence how strong and lasting those memories will be?

Creating new neural pathways is the foundational part of how memories are formed in the brain. You can form stronger neural pathways by splitting your learning process into two steps: taking effective notes, and applying active learning strategies like spaced repetition, active recall, and teaching.

Read on to learn more about how to supercharge your memory and the two-step method for creating new neural pathways.

How Memories Are Formed in the Brain

Learning and memory experts suggest that the first step to supercharging your memory is to understand the pivotal role neural pathways play in your ability to recall and retain information. Several authors provide insights into creating new neural pathways, each detailing different aspects of how the brain commits information to memory.

Neurons form memory pathways: Experienced educator Barbara Oakley and neural network expert Terrence Sejnowski (Learning How to Learn), explain that when you think, brain cells called neurons make connections with each other, creating a neural pattern or pathway that represents the information in your brain. The connections between the neurons that make up this pathway are called synapses. The more synapses a certain idea activates in your brain, the better you'll learn it, because it's connected to more neurons, giving your brain more neural pathways it can use to retrieve it.

Strong neural pathways enhance memory: Building on this concept, in Learn Like a Pro, Oakley and learning expert Olav Schewe explain that when you learn something simple, like a phone number, those neural pathways are short. But when you learn something complex, the pathways grow longer and form webs of connections that cement what you learned into your long-term memory. The more you use neural pathways, the stronger the bonds between the neurons become, and the more ingrained the information becomes. This is why when you practice a skill, it becomes easier, or when you regularly review and recall information, you're less likely to forget it. This is due to how memories are formed in the brain.

Memories intertwine in associative webs: Journalist and former winner of the US Memory Championships Joshua Foer (Moonwalking With Einstein) highlights that memories don't exist in isolation; they're stored in a web of associations. For example, thinking of the word "baker" would probably also make you think about bread or your favorite bakery. Therefore, to retrieve memories, you must search for pieces of information by thinking about other things that are connected to them in this neural web of associations. For example, to remember what your friend's car looks like, think more generally about your friend or about cars in order to "search" the web of associations that will eventually lead you to the memory of your friend's car. Creating new neural pathways in association with existing webs of information will make it easier for you to retrieve those memories in the future.

To sum up these aspects of memory, actively engaging with and reinforcing the information you want to memorize encourages your brain to form strong neural associations that supercharge your memory. In this article, we'll explore ways of creating new neural pathways and strengthening neural associations in two parts:

Step 1 explores note-taking techniques that take advantage of how memories are formed in the brain through association.

Step 2 presents strategies for actively engaging with your notes to help solidify the information in your long-term memory.

Step 1: Creating New Neural Pathways by Taking Effective Notes

According to learning practitioners, taking effective notes is key to capturing and retaining new information. Let's explore how to enhance your note-taking with three techniques that leverage your brain's natural affinity for association: Clarify your note-taking goals, create multisensory associations, and take notes about your notes.

Technique #1: Clarify Your Note-Taking Goals

In, teacher, life coach, and motivational speaker Jim Kwik asserts that the first step in effective note-taking is to clarify what you're interested in learning (or what you must learn) from the material you're studying. In other words, identify your goal in studying that specific material and then take notes based on that goal. This approach will help you filter through the information you're getting and look for what's relevant to that goal.

Technique #2: Create Multisensory Associations

Experts agree that creating multisensory associations when taking notes can greatly boost their effectiveness as memory aids.

Foer suggests incorporating as many of your senses as you can into your mental representations of things you want to remember. He explains that the more senses you incorporate, the more cues you have to remind you of the memorized information. If applicable, imagine how something looks, smells, sounds, feels, and tastes.

The reason for this, as Oakley and Sejnowski explain, is that connecting an idea to inputs from more senses creates more synaptic connections in more neural pathways in your brain. This makes it easier to learn and remember because you are creating more new neural pathways your brain can use to retrieve the idea.

Technique #3: Take Notes About Your Notes

Oakley and Schewe suggest that actively engaging with your content-by taking notes about your notes-enhances the effectiveness of your note-taking. This involves:

Simplifying the information you're working with: Think of easier words to describe the concept and focus on the main ideas rather than getting lost in the details. One way to do this is to use mind maps to organize your notes. Mind maps are visual representations of topics that typically start with a central idea or concept and branch into related ideas connected with lines, colors, and images. By visually organizing the material, mind maps help distill complex information into more digestible components, making it easier to identify and remember key points.

Step 2: Strengthening New Neural Pathways With Active Learning Strategies

Once you've taken notes, the next step is to actively engage with them to help solidify the information in your long-term memory. Oakley and Schewe explain that actively engaging with your learning materials helps you absorb far more information than when you passively engage with them. This is because active learning helps build longer and stronger neural connections.

Experts suggest three active learning strategies: Practice spaced repetition, test yourself with active recall, and teach what you've learned.

Technique #1: Practice Spaced Repetition

Your brain remembers information best by engaging with it repeatedly over time-this popular concept is called "spaced repetition." The more time that passes after you learn something, the more information you forget. The key to overcoming this is to review the information again right before you're about to forget it. Keep doing this each time you feel you're close to forgetting the material. Each time you review it, you'll be able to remember the information for longer, eventually fully ingraining it into your long-term memory.

Technique #2: Test Yourself With Active Recall

Kwik notes that many people try to learn new information by rote memorization: repeating something until it sticks. However, rote learning is ineffective because you're basically trying to bully your brain into accepting the information. Given how memories are formed in the brain, active learning-actively participating in the learning experience-is much more effective (and enjoyable!) than rote memorization.

Rote memorization only commits the information you're trying to memorize to your short-term memory, making it a waste of time in the long run. Instead, the most effective way to improve retention of new information is through retrieval practice, which is any exercise that requires you to recall what you've learned.

According to Oakley and Sejnowski, active recall (or retrieval practice) can take a variety of forms, depending on what you're studying: If you're memorizing facts, try to recite them or write them down from memory-don't just reread them in your textbook or from your notes. If you're learning a problem-solving technique, work through a problem with it-don't just read an example solution. If you're learning a hands-on skill, practice doing the work-don't just watch someone else do it.

Technique #3: Teach What You've Learned

Kwik suggests that you should study what you want to memorize with the intent to teach it to somebody else -and to actually teach it to another person if possible.

(Shortform note: Studies show that teaching others can help you retain what you've learned. In one study, students who taught others didn't do significantly better in the short term than those who only learned the material themselves; however, when tested again a week later, those who had taught the material to other students remembered a great deal more of it. This is attributed to the protégé effect, a psychological phenomenon that boosts metacognitive processes. Teaching, or even pretending to teach to others, involves testing your knowledge and using it to inform others. This makes you more aware of your level of understanding and which areas you might need to improve in.)

Creating New Neural Pathways: The 2-Step Method

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Creating New Neural Pathways: The 2-Step Method

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How can you improve your memory? Read about this two-step method for using webs of association when creating new neural pathways.

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Putting our best book forward

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Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging - Kindle edition by Junger, Sebastian. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.

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Random Name Picker is a free web-based application that lets you select a random name using Spin Wheel and Slot Machine. These simple and easy to use selectors can be customize by changing the names in the name list to whatever the user desires. You do not need to download or install any plugins/software as it is based on HTML5, so a modern browser (e.g Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome) is all you need.

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Promoting relationships and a positive mindset toward learning has a bigger impact on students' long-term success than raising test scores, new research shows.

Allison Shelly/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action

Test scores are often touted as an objective way to measure how good a school is. And while this is true to a degree, they don't tell the whole story. For students who come from disadvantaged or minority backgrounds, schools that emphasize the social and emotional dimensions of learning-relationship-building, a sense of belonging, and grit, for example-may do a better job of improving long-term outcomes than schools that focus solely on high test scores.

In a new study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, C. Kirabo Jackson, a professor of education and social policy at Northwestern University, and his colleagues found that schools with robust impacts on student well-being may be helping students in ways that aren't picked up by standardized tests. These schools may not have the highest test scores, but they're the most likely to motivate students to graduate and attend college, especially those students who are less likely to do so in the first place.

"Test scores aren't everything, and schools that promote socio-emotional development actually have a really big positive impact on kids," Jackson told me. "And these impacts are particularly large for vulnerable student populations who don't tend to do very well in the education system."

Working to See the Bigger Picture

This is the latest in a series of studies examining the broad impact that teachers and schools have on students. Jackson's previous research looked at the impact that teachers had on noncognitive skills such as self-regulation, and found that teachers who improved these skills improved their students' long-term outcomes, boosting not only grades, but also attendance and high school graduation rates. The skills that are valuable for future success aren't usually measured on tests, Jackson points out. So while teachers and schools are often evaluated by their ability to improve students' test scores, broader measures should be used.

In the current study, Jackson and his colleagues looked at over 150,000 ninth-grade students who attended Chicago public schools between 2011 and 2017, analyzing test scores and administrative records. They also examined responses on an annual survey students completed on social and emotional development and school climate. The survey covered a range of topics, including peer relationships, students' sense of belonging, how hard they studied for tests, and how interested they were in the topics they were studying. The data were then combined into a three-part index: one that included test scores and other academic outcomes, a "social well-being" index, and a "work habits" index.

Jackson's team found that schools that scored high on the latter two indices-those that promoted social and emotional development-were also the most effective at supporting long-term student success. In these schools, there were fewer absences, and more students graduated and went on to college. And perhaps more importantly, the benefits were greatest for student populations who struggled the most in school.

"These results are broadly consistent with studies that have found that psychological interventions, specifically things like belonging interventions, tend to have the largest impacts for lower-income students or underrepresented minorities," Jackson told me. "So the data that we're finding are consistent with the idea that these particularly vulnerable populations are the ones that benefit the most from the socio-emotional interventions."

Why Noncognitive Skills Matter

Although all students benefit from attending high-performing schools, it's the schools that provide a well-rounded education that drove the differences that Jackson and his colleagues observed. They discovered that a school's impact on the noncognitive dimensions of learning-healthy relationships and a growth mindset, for example-were much more predictive of long-term success than a school's impact on test scores.

For example, Jackson found that high schools that were effective at improving students' feelings of connectedness and belonging had the biggest impact for disadvantaged students, improving their graduation rates by 3.1 percentage points. In contrast, graduation rates for advantaged students at these high schools increased by 0.6 percentage points.

Schools that were effective at raising test scores had a much smaller impact on graduation rates, improving them by 1.8 points for disadvantaged students and 0.2 for advantaged ones.

Disadvantaged students, Jackson told me, "were likely to be relatively lower on the socio-emotional measures" when they started high school. "They were less likely to have strong feelings of belonging in their schools, less likely to have the persistence or academic engagement that students from more affluent homes may have had. So these are the students who would have benefited the most from schools that improve these things."

So what's the big takeaway? Some high schools are better than others at fostering healthy relationships and the skills and mindsets-like grit and good study habits-that promote long-term success. So for Jackson, success shouldn't be measured in terms of test scores alone.

"If you look at people who are successful in life, oftentimes they have attributes that are really positive, in addition to being really smart," Jackson told me. "They're very smart, very knowledgeable, but they also seem to be well-adjusted, for the most part. They tend to be engaged, highly motivated. So there are a lot of other traits that aren't measured by test scores, but if you look at successful individuals, you see that they have those things."

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A Fuller Picture of What a 'Good' School Is

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Promoting relationships and a positive mindset toward learning has a bigger impact on students' long-term success than raising test scores, new research shows.

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How to Master Anything: PEAK by Anders Ericsson | Core Message

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Get Started

This quiz will help you assess current knowledge and determine which words to work on first. Based on the results, you'll receive a printable resource packet that includes images, descriptions, and fun activities. You'll also gain full access to online videos designed to empower learners to explore new terms independently.

Take the online quiz

How to use the Building Basic Vocabulary Tool

Your child has taken the assessment, and you've identified a vocabulary cluster of focus. Now it's time for the learning to begin. Simply select the cluster from the "All Cluster" drop down menu and click the red "Search" button. A table will appear with videos and downloadable tools tailored to your child's needs. Watch the videos below to learn step-by-step how to make the most of these learning resources.

How to Use the Vocabulary Learning Resources

How Do I Determine My Student's Proficiency Level?

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This quiz will help you assess current knowledge and determine which words to work on first. Based on the results, you'll receive a printable resource packet that includes images, descriptions, and fun activities. You'll also gain full access to online videos designed to empower learners to explore new terms independently.

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Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

As traditional handwriting is progressively being replaced by digital devices, it is essential to investigate the implications for the human brain. Brain electrical activity was recorded in 36 university students as they were handwriting visually presented words using a digital pen and typewriting the words on a keyboard. Connectivity analyses were performed on EEG data recorded with a 256-channel sensor array. When writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns were far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard, as shown by widespread theta/alpha connectivity coherence patterns between network hubs and nodes in parietal and central brain regions. Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning. Our findings suggest that the spatiotemporal pattern from visual and proprioceptive information obtained through the precisely controlled hand movements when using a pen, contribute extensively to the brain's connectivity patterns that promote learning. We urge that children, from an early age, must be exposed to handwriting activities in school to establish the neuronal connectivity patterns that provide the brain with optimal conditions for learning. Although it is vital to maintain handwriting practice at school, it is also important to keep up with continuously developing technological advances. Therefore, both teachers and students should be aware of which practice has the best learning effect in what context, for example when taking lecture notes or when writing an essay.

Introduction

Digital devices are more and more replacing traditional handwriting ( Longcamp et al., 2006; Kiefer et al., 2015), and as both writing and reading are becoming increasingly digitized in the classroom, we need to examine the implications of this practice ( Mangen and Balsvik, 2016; Patterson and Patterson, 2017). Using a keyboard is now often recommended for young children as it is less demanding and frustrating ( Cunningham and Stanovich, 1990; Fears and Lockman, 2018), allowing them to express themselves in written form earlier ( Hultin and Westman, 2013). Be that as it may, handwriting training has not only been found to improve spelling accuracy ( Cunningham and Stanovich, 1990) and better memory and recall ( Longcamp et al., 2006; Smoker et al., 2009; Mueller and Oppenheimer, 2014), but also to facilitate letter recognition and understanding ( Longcamp et al., 2005, 2008; Li and James, 2016). Such benefits for learning have been reported irrespective of when writing by hand using a traditional pen or pencil or using a digital pen ( Osugi et al., 2019). Also, brain research shows that it is not just any motor activity that facilitates learning, but that accurately coordinating the complex hand movements while carefully shaping each letter when using a pen, is crucial ( Pei et al., 2021). Apparently, the pen causes different underlying neurological processes that provide the brain with optimal conditions for learning and remembering ( Askvik et al., 2020).

Recent findings in neuroscience reveal that neural processes are not as localized and static as is commonly believed, but that the brain is organized in a highly dynamic functional manner ( Lopes da Silva, 1991; Singer, 1993). Under normal circumstances, several brain systems are continually working together ( Buzsáki, 2006), showing an extremely flexible organization with structurally different neural tissue being involved in neural circuits that are only temporarily assembled so as to enable a given task ( Edelman and Gally, 2013; Van der Weel et al., 2019). In such a view, neurons can change function entirely when incorporated in different systems ( Anderson, 2014). Bullmore and Sporns (2009) refer to this type of flexible organization of the brain as functional connectivity as against structural connectivity.

Electroencephalography is well suited to studying brain electrical activity as a function of handwriting and typewriting in the millisecond scale. It permits the investigation of changes in the status of the underlying active networks ( Lopes da Silva, 1991) and can reveal the everchanging spatial patterns of activations that are specific to any given task ( Pfurtscheller et al., 1996). In particular, studies of cortical oscillations detected with high-density EEG are now considered an indispensable aspect of contemporary systems neuroscience ( Fröhlich, 2016).

Brain oscillations can be considered as the interplay between the cortex and the thalamus and are generated by changes involved in the control of oscillations in neural networks ( Pfurtscheller and Lopes da Silva, 1999). The complex interactions and the resulting particular frequencies are thought to reflect distinct cognitive processes ( Klimesch et al., 1994; Berens and Horner, 2017). The temporal organization of neuronal firing is crucial as it is assumed to be fundamental when forming long-term memories in the hippocampus ( Berens and Horner, 2017).

Frequency-specific changes in EEG recordings can be observed as event-related synchronization (ERS) or event-related desynchronization (ERD; Pfurtscheller and Aranibar, 1977; Pfurtscheller and Lopes da Silva, 1999). Spectral analyses are used to detect differences in a given frequency band ( Pfurtscheller et al., 1994; Salmelin and Hari, 1994; Klimesch et al., 1996), by calculating the temporal dynamics of EEG oscillations and quantifying event-related amplifications and/or suppressions of rhythms.

A recent EEG-study from our lab showed that drawing by hand causes more activity and involves larger areas in the brain as opposed to typing on a keyboard ( Van der Meer and Van der Weel, 2017). We concluded that the involvement of fine and intricate hand movements in notetaking, in contrast with pressing keys on a keyboard that all require the same simple finger movement, may be more advantageous for learning ( Van der Meer and Van der Weel, 2017). A follow-up study observed event-related synchronized activity in the theta range in both children and students in parietal and central brain regions, but only when writing by hand ( Askvik et al., 2020). As these studies have found evidence that writing by hand facilitates learning, the present study further investigated the neurobiological differences related to cursive writing and typewriting in the young adult brain. Specifically, we investigated how the various brain regions interconnect via neural networks when writing by hand as opposed to typing on a keyboard using frequency modulation and the latest in brain connectivity analysis (c.f., Solomon et al., 2017).

Methods

Participants

Forty university students in their early twenties took part in the study at the Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). HD EEG data from 36 students were of good enough quality and sufficiently artifact-free to be included in the analyses. The data from 12 adult participants were already used in analyses in the time-frequency domain ( Askvik et al., 2020). The present study performed a brain connectivity analysis to investigate the underlying neural networks involved in tasks of handwriting and typewriting. Participants were mostly students and were recruited at the university campus. They received a $15 cinema ticket for taking part. To avoid crossover effects between the two hemispheres, only right-handed participants were included, as determined by the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory ( Oldfield, 1971). Allowing the use of (the fingers of) both hands would cause many unforeseen effects on the brain, which would make it hard to interpret the results. Participants gave their informed written consent, and it was made clear that they could withdraw from the experiment at any time without consequences. The Regional Committee for Medical and Health Ethics (Central Norway) approved the study.

Experimental stimuli and EEG data acquisition

E-prime 2.0 was used to individually display 15 different Pictionary words on a Microsoft Surface Studio. The participants used a digital pen to write in cursive by hand directly on the touchscreen, and a keyboard to typewrite the presented words.

The experiment comprised a total of 30 trials, where each word appeared in two different conditions, presented in a randomized order. For each trial, participants were instructed to either (a) write in cursive with their right hand the presented word with a digital pen directly on the screen, or (b) type the presented word using the right index finger on the keyboard. Before each trial, the instruction write or type appeared before one of the target words appeared, and the participants were given 25 s to either write by hand or type the word multiple times, separated by a space. EEG data were recorded only during the first 5 s of each trial. To prevent artifacts produced by head and eye movements caused by shifting gaze between the screen and the keyboard, typed words did not appear on the screen while the participant was typewriting. The writings produced by the participants (see Figure 1 for example) were stored for offline analyses.

Figure 1. Task design, behavioral performance, and sequence of the connectivity analyses. Visually presented words were either written by hand with a digital pen or typed on a keyboard while participants were wearing a 256-channel sensor array. EEG recordings were analyzed in terms of their functional connectivity, resulting in detailed network measures.

A Geodesic Sensor Net (GSN; Tucker et al., 1994) with 256 evenly distributed electrodes was used to record EEG activity from the participant's scalp at 500 Hz. The signals were amplified using a high-input EGI amplifier ( Picton et al., 2000).

Procedure

On arrival in the lab, a consent form with all necessary information was given to the participants to sign. While the participant completed the handedness test, an appropriately sized net was soaked in a saline electrolyte for 15 min to optimize electrical conductivity. The participant was sitting comfortably in an adjustable chair in front of a table. The screen was placed on the table as closely as possible to the participant. A keyboard was also placed in a preferred position for the participant, and a digital pen was used for writing on the touchscreen. A pre-test was completed before the experiment started, where one of the experimenters was present in the room with the participant.

Brain data pre-analyses

Brain Electrical Source Analysis (BESA version 7.0) research software and BESA Connectivity (version 1.0) were used to analyze the EEG data. Epoch and filter settings were the same as in Askvik et al. (2020).

Channels contaminated by movement artifacts were either removed or interpolated using spherical spline interpolation ( Perrin et al., 1989; Picton et al., 2000). Up to 10% of channels could be defined as bad. Artifact correction was applied using manual and semi-automatic artifact correction with fitting spatial filters ( Berg and Scherg, 1994; Ille et al., 2002; Fujioka et al., 2011).

The mean number of accepted trials out of 15 was 14.1 ( SD = 1.1) for handwriting and 13.3 ( SD = 1.3) for typewriting. To analyze oscillatory brain activity, a time-frequency analysis in brain space was then performed on accepted trials, see Askvik et al. (2020) for details. Optimal separation of brain activity was achieved using source montages derived from a multiple source model where waveforms separated different brain activities ( Scherg and Berg, 1991). Using this procedure, the time-frequency content of different brain regions can be separated even if their activities severely overlap at the surface of the scalp ( Hoechstetter et al., 2004). Then, the connectivity measure of Coherence was applied, resulting in a symmetric connectivity matrix with the upper and lower triangular matrix showing pairwise clusters symmetrical to the diagonal.

Statistical analyses

Probability of significance in connectivity values was tested with BESA Statistics 2.0, where connectivity measures for all participants were computed and the significant connectivity regions were used as guides in finding the extent of connectivity between the two experimental conditions of writing and typing. A combination of permutation tests and data clustering was employed. Permutation tests were applied to each set of time samples belonging to one frequency bin ( Simes, 1986). Data clusters that showed a significant effect between conditions were assigned initial cluster values. Using within-group ANOVA's, these initial cluster values were passed through permutation and assigned new clusters so that the significance of the initial cluster could be determined. A Bonferroni correction was used for multiple comparisons. As in Askvik et al. (2020), cluster alpha, the significance level for building clusters in time and/or frequency, was set at 0.01 and the number of permutations was set at 10.000. Low- and high cut-offs for frequency were kept at 2 Hz and 60 Hz respectively, and epochs were set from −250 to 4,500 ms.

Results

High-density EEGs were recorded during the experimental handwriting and typing conditions. Artifacts were removed from the raw EEG recordings, then the inverse problem was solved by using a 4-shell ellipsoidal head model to analyze the brain regions of interest. The time series of the reconstructed sources were obtained and transformed into the frequency domain using complex demodulation. The functional connectivity between the reconstructed sources was computed using the coherence method. A high-resolution functional connectivity matrix was obtained, and the corresponding functional brain network was visualized. Network measures were then extracted from the network ( Figure 1).

A time-frequency display is shown for three important brain regions in Figure 2 where the power/amplitude for each time is normalized to the mean power/amplitude of the baseline epoch for that frequency. The x-axis shows the time relative to the event, the y-axis shows the frequencies. The intensities are displayed as a color-coded plot.

Figure 2. Grand average coherence results. Displayed are only three selected connectivity areas of interest for the two experimental conditions handwriting and typewriting (left panels), together with the difference in coherence between writing and typing and their permutation results (right panels). Connectivity areas of large significant difference between handwriting and typewriting included brain regions CR-PM (central right-parietal midline, top two panels on the left) and CL-PM (central left-parietal midline, middle two panels on the left), as well as CM-CR (central midline-central right, bottom two panels on the left), in frequencies ranging from theta (2 Hz) and up to gamma (60 Hz). The x-axes display the time interval from baseline to 4,500 ms of recordings of the trial. The signal magnitude reflects the estimated neural connectivity strength between the various brain areas during the experimental conditions compared to baseline activity (−250 to 0 ms). Positive connectivity is shown as (shades of) red-colored contours in handwriting/typewriting plots (panels on the left) and difference plots between handwriting and typewriting/permutation results (panels on the right). Positive connectivity is significantly more prominent in lower frequencies (theta 3.5-7.5 Hz and alpha 8-12.5) for handwriting (0 ≤  p < 0.05, see also Figure 4).

Figure 2 displays the results of grand average coherence results from just three selected connectivity areas of interest for clarity, for the two experimental conditions handwriting and typewriting (left panels), together with the difference in coherence between writing and typing and their permutation results (right panels). Connectivity areas of large significant difference between writing and typing included central and parietal brain regions in frequencies ranging from theta (2 Hz) and up to gamma (60 Hz). The signal magnitude reflects estimated connectivity strength between brain areas compared to baseline (−250 to 0 ms) activity. Positive connectivity patterns are shown in (shades of) red. In the central and parietal areas, positive coherence patterns were more prominent in the lower frequencies (theta 3.5-7.5 Hz and alpha 7.5-12.5 Hz) for handwriting as opposed to typewriting. For handwriting, this activity appeared between 1,000 to 2000 ms and lasted throughout the trial.

The connectivity matrix of writing over typing

Comparisons between the two conditions handwriting and typewriting were computed for each participant with time-frequency displays (changes in amplitude over time). TSE displays were limited between frequency cut-offs of 2-60 Hz, while frequency and time were sampled at 1 Hz and 50 ms, respectively. Symmetric connectivity measures were then obtained from BESA Connectivity and a high-resolution functional connectivity matrix between the reconstructed sources was computed using the coherence method ( Rosenberg et al., 1989). Here, the number of in-phase components of two brain source signals at a specific frequency were described, and the corresponding functional brain network was visualized in Figure 3. Finally, network measures were extracted from the network and presented in Figure 4.

Figure 3. Connectivity results of writing over typing. (A) Grand average connectivity matrix results show widespread theta/alpha coherence results (in red) between PL, PM, PR and CL, CM, CR brain regions when writing by hand, but not when typing. The y-axes display frequencies from 2 to 60 Hz. The x-axes display the time interval from baseline to 4,500 ms of recordings of the trial for all involved brain regions. The signal magnitude (coherence) reflects the estimated neural connectivity between the various brain regions during the writing condition compared to baseline activity (−250 to 0 ms). (B) Further illustration of connectivity patterns revealing a concentration of 16 significant connections for handwriting compared to typewriting. Connection lines in red indicate connectivity in the theta range whereas lines in blue indicate connectivity in the alpha range. Levels of significance in connectivity strength for handwriting, but not for typewriting are further indicated by solid (<0.0001), dashed (<0.005), and dotted (<0.05) connection lines.

Figure 4. Symmetric connectivity matrix with t-values (A) and significance Table (B) with significant data clusters in the various sources of interest when handwriting is compared to typewriting in all participants. Thirty-two significant cluster differences marked in orange in (A) and fully described in (B) were found in the matrix and came out particularly significant in the parietal left (PL), parietal midline (PM), and parietal right (PR) areas.

Figure 3A displays the grand average connectivity matrix for writing compared to typing. The matrix offers a compact description of the pairwise connectivity between all separate regions of the brain. Throughout the matrix there is evidence for widespread theta/alpha coherence results (in red) particularly between areas parietal-right, parietal-mid, and parietal-left and between areas central-right and central-left. These connectivity patterns are further illustrated in Figure 3B revealing a concentration of no less than 32 significant clusters (see Figure 4 for details) for handwriting, but not for typewriting. A pair of clusters will represent a single link between the corresponding pair of sources. The 32 significant clusters thus represent 16 significant connections.

Main statistical effects

Analyses were run to test for statistical differences in brain activity between handwriting and typewriting. Figure 4 displays the detailed effects ( t-tests) of the permutation results. These results showed 32 significant cluster differences between the two experimental conditions. The t-tests revealed significant differences in connectivity primarily in the theta (3.5-7.5 Hz) and alpha (8-12.5 Hz) range within three positive clusters (in orange), namely in the parietal left (PL), parietal midline (PM), and parietal right (PR) areas (see also Figure 3). These positive clusters suggest separate processes (differences in band power) between handwriting and typewriting mainly in the parietal but also in the central regions.

As can be seen in Figure 4, significant clusters of differences in band power were found mainly in parietal and central brain regions.

Network measures

Figure 5 shows the adjacency matrix for handwriting in the form of a hub, nodes, and edges of a simplified theoretical network ( Figure 5A). Hubs have a higher degree of involvement in the network than nodes as expressed through their functional connectivity values (edges). Figure 5B shows the brain connectivity network results of handwriting compared to typewriting in this experiment. Proposed hubs (in red, ≥ 4 departures/arrivals) and nodes (in black, ≤ 3 departures/arrivals) interacting between brain regions PL, PM, PR and CL, CM, CR show widespread theta/alpha coherence patterns indicating stronger connectivity when writing as opposed to typing ( Figure 5C).

Figure 5. The adjacency matrix for handwriting. (A) Hub, nodes, and edges of a simplified theoretical network. (B) Brain connectivity network of handwriting compared to typewriting in this experiment. (C) Hubs (in red, ≥ 4 departures/arrivals) and nodes (in black, ≤ 3 departures/arrivals) interacting between brain regions PL, PM, PR and CL, CM, CR show widespread theta/alpha connectivity patterns when writing by hand, but not when typing.

General discussion

This study investigated brain electrical connectivity as a function of handwriting and typewriting using high-density EEG in young adults. Participants used a digital pen to write visually presented words directly on a touchscreen and used a keyboard to type the words. Going beyond our previous study where we reported synchronized theta oscillations in parietal and central brain regions when children and students wrote by hand ( Askvik et al., 2020), the present study performed connectivity analyses on the brain data of 36 students to explore underlying differences in coherence patterns when participants were typing versus writing by hand.

Focusing on brain connectivity that has shown to facilitate learning and memory ( Pfurtscheller and Lopes da Silva, 1999), we investigated parietal and central areas in specific frequency bands. These brain areas have been associated with attentional mechanisms and cognitive processes in visual perception ( Pfurtscheller et al., 1994; Vilhelmsen et al., 2019) and language ( Brownsett and Wise, 2010; Benedek et al., 2014), and have strong links to sensorimotor cortex ( Velasques et al., 2007). We set out to investigate whether it is actually the act of forming the letters by hand itself that brings about larger connectivity in the brain, since perceptual, motor, and higher cognitive areas are more involved during handwriting as opposed to typewriting.

Increased connectivity in theta/alpha range for handwriting

The present findings revealed increased connectivity for handwriting over typewriting, suggesting that different underlying cognitive processes are involved in the two tasks. Increased connectivity within the theta (3.5-7.5 Hz) and alpha (8-12.5 Hz) frequency bands has been linked to mechanisms underlying sensorimotor integration ( Bland and Oddie, 2001). As increased connectivity in the brain was observed only when writing by hand and not when simply pressing keys on the keyboard, our findings can be taken as evidence that handwriting promotes learning. Interestingly, the increased connectivity between the various brain regions seems to be linked to the specific sensorimotor processes that are so typical in handwriting.

The theta/alpha connectivity patterns found in the present study may indicate that different neural networks are involved in handwriting and typewriting. Interestingly, whereas connectivity in the alpha band is considered highly task-specific and is said to correspond to long-term memory performance, theta connectivity seems to be related to working memory and the ability to apprehend novel information ( Klimesch et al., 1994, 1996, 2001; Klimesch, 1999; Raghavachari et al., 2001; Clouter et al., 2017). Thus, the enhanced brain connectivity for handwriting appears not to be related to differences in muscular involvement. It has also been proposed that hippocampal activity is reflected within the theta band ( Klimesch et al., 1994), adding further support for the benefits of handwriting in terms of learning and memory formation.

Lower frequencies are considered especially suited for facilitating communication over longer distances in the brain, and are often reported to "gate" the occurrence of faster oscillations, for example when theta oscillations in humans are proposed to gate gamma (> 30 Hz) oscillations ( Canolty et al., 2006; Halgren et al., 2018). In general, this theta-to-gamma cross-frequency coupling can be linked to gamma networks desynchronizing and theta networks synchronizing during encoding, retrieval, and episodic memory formation ( Burke et al., 2013). Others have suggested that theta connectivity activity (see Figure 3) is positively correlated with a brain region's gamma power, suggesting a potent low-frequency mechanism for communication between brain regions ( Solomon et al., 2017). Exploring these interactions may disclose the relationship between a brain region's functional connectivity and local processing. Our results reflect such a low-frequency mechanism for interregional communication. Present findings of theta synchrony for handwriting suggest that low-frequency connections support the integration of information during memory formation, and follow from earlier studies that have reported low-frequency entrainment to be essential to cognition ( Solomon et al., 2017).

The importance of handwriting practice in a learning environment

Handwriting requires fine motor control over the fingers, and it forces students to pay attention to what they are doing. Typing, on the other hand, requires mechanical and repetitive movements that trade awareness for speed. Our results reveal that whenever handwriting movements are included as a learning strategy, more of the brain gets stimulated, resulting in the formation of more complex neural network connectivity. It appears that the movements related to typewriting do not activate these connectivity networks the same way that handwriting does. The concurrent spatiotemporal pattern from vision, motor commands, and proprioceptive feedback provided through fine hand and finger movements, is lacking in typewriting, where only a simple key press is required to produce the entire wanted form ( Longcamp et al., 2006; James, 2010; Vinci-Booher et al., 2016, 2021). In the present study, participants only used their right index finger for typing to prevent undesired crossover effects between the two hemispheres.

Thus, the ongoing substitution of handwriting by typewriting in almost every educational setting may seem somewhat misguided as it could affect the learning process in a negative way ( Alonso, 2015; Mangen and Balsvik, 2016; Arnold et al., 2017). The present findings suggest that the intricate and precisely controlled handwriting movements have a beneficial impact on the brain's connectivity patterns related to learning and remembering. The present study did not find evidence of such positive activation patterns when using a keyboard.

Even though maintaining handwriting practice in school is crucial, it is also important to keep up in the ever-developing digital world. Children should receive handwriting training at school to learn to write by hand successfully, and, at the same time learn to use a keyboard, depending on the task at hand. The present study shows that the neural connectivity patterns underlying handwriting and typewriting are distinctly different. Hence, being aware of when to write by hand or use a digital device is crucial, whether it is to take lecture notes to learn new concepts or to write longer essays.

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Norwegian Data Protection Services for Research and by the Regional Committee for Medical and Health Ethics (Central Norway). The participants gave their written informed consent. Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) for the publication of any identifiable images or data included in this article.

Author contributions

FW and AM contributed equally to all aspects of the study. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Funding

The APC for this article was covered under one of NTNU's open publication agreements.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Frontiers | Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom

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As traditional handwriting is progressively being replaced by digital devices, it is essential to investigate the implications for the human brain. Brain ...

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Dr. David A. Sousa is an international consultant in educational neuroscience and author of seven books that suggest ways that educators and parents can translate current brain research into strategies for improving learning. A member of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, he has conducted workshops in hundreds of school districts on brain research, instructional skills, and science education at the Pre-K to 12 and university levels. He has made presentations to more than 100,000 educators at national conventions of educational organizations and to regional and local school districts across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. Dr. Sousa has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Massachusetts State College at Bridgewater, a Master of Arts in Teaching degree in science from Harvard University, and a doctorate from Rutgers University. His teaching experience covers all levels. He has taught senior high school science, served as a K-12 director of science, a supervisor of instruction, and a district superintendent in New Jersey schools. He has been an adjunct professor of education at Seton Hall University and a visiting lecturer at Rutgers University.Prior to his career in New Jersey, Dr. Sousa taught at the American School of Paris (France), and served for five years as a Foreign Service Officer and science advisor at the USA diplomatic missions in Geneva (Switzerland) and Vienna (Austria).Dr. Sousa has edited science books and published dozens of articles in leading journals on staff development, science education, and educational research. His seven popular books for educators, all published by Corwin Press, include: How the Brain Learns, third edition; How the Special Needs Brain Learns, second edition; How the Gifted Brain Learns; How the Brain Learns to Read; How the Brain Influences Behavior; and How the Brain Learns Mathematics, which was selected by the Independent Publishers' Association as one of the best professional development books of 2008. The Leadership Brain, suggests ways for educators to lead today's schools more effectively. His books have been published in French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and several other languages. Dr. Sousa is past president of the National Staff Development Council. He has received numerous awards from professional associations, school districts, and educational foundations for his commitment to research, staff development, and science education. He recently received the Distinguished Alumni Award and an honorary doctorate from Massachusetts State College (Bridgewater), and an honorary doctorate from Gratz College in Philadelphia. Dr. Sousa has been interviewed by Matt Lauer on the NBC Today Show and by National Public Radio about his work with schools using brain research. He makes his home in south Florida.

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How the Brain Learns [Sousa, David A.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. How the Brain Learns

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It's always better to know if a student is struggling before a big test is in the rearview mirror. But students often lack the self-awareness to monitor their own learning, and may struggle to work up the courage to ask for help. Others may overestimate their mastery of important ideas and concepts, tricking their brains into thinking they're prepared for a test when they're not.

So when it comes to student learning, how can you tell what's sticking-and where additional instruction or review could make a difference?

Formative assessments are typically short, gradeless ways to evaluate what students know while they're still in the process of learning it. When used early and often, they can shine a light on individual student progress, serve as general indicators of how the class is doing as a whole, and inform subsequent instruction. This process of actively checking in with students on their journey toward mastery is "especially effective when students are given tactical feedback, immediately followed by time to practice the skill," says Todd Finley, a tenured professor of English education at East Carolina University.

Quick checks for understanding aren't new, of course, but when time allows, occasionally injecting an element of creativity into formative assessments can deliver unexpected benefits. For example-regardless of a student's artistic talent-research suggests that drawing the information they're learning can increase student recall by nearly double. And when kids are encouraged to tap into their imagination to show what they know, they tend to ask more innovative questions of themselves, brainstorm fresh solutions to problems, and synthesize material in original and surprising ways.

Here are 13 formative assessment strategies that lean into creativity-inspired by the work of several Edutopia contributors, and from Finley's handy list of quick checks for understanding.

Simple Symbols: Sketchnoting-simple, hand-drawn renderings of things like facts, dates, or abstract concepts-can be a great way to help students process vocabulary. Educator Wendi Pillars has her students co-create a symbolic language library, working together to visually represent important terms from a unit. After choosing 10 terms, students develop an icon or character to correspond with each one. For example, a drawing of a sun can represent energy or a tree can represent life.

Write a Letter: On a sheet of paper or an index card, ask students to explain a new concept they've learned in the form of a short letter to a friend or family member, pretending the other person is new to the information. This process of explanation can open students' eyes to what they know and what they don't, explains Woo-Kyoung Ahn, a psychology professor at Yale University who uses a similar strategy with college students before exams.

Tweet Like a Historian: Challenge students to enter the minds of popular historical figures, tweeting about major events in the figure's life as that person would have, suggests former educator Matthew Lynch. To get a firm grasp on how well students understand their chosen figure, ask who their figure might be following on social media, as well as topics that would be "trending" on their feed at the time. Educator Jill Fletcher prefers to use a paper template so that students can engage in the exercise without going online.

Playful Pamphlets: An effective brochure is easy and engaging to read, and offers eye-catching design. Ask students to create their own brochures that describe the key features of a concept, or to explain a historical event or scientific discovery. This can be done using paper and art materials, or digitally using applications like Canva or Google Slides.

Do It Yourself TED Talks: Most students are familiar with TED Talks, this strategy provides them with the opportunity to give their own. Educator Katy Farber describes them as "one person's short presentation of an idea worth spreading." After showing an example that students can model, ask them to find an idea worthy of spreading from the day's lesson and create their own speeches to present the information. Those who feel comfortable can share with the class.

Comic Creators: Using digital creation tools like Canva, kids can create their own comic strips to connect new material and information from past units. The comics shouldn't be a "regurgitation of knowledge," explains Andrew Miller, director of teaching and learning at the Singapore American School. Instead, they should have an authentic purpose, making it a fulfilling exercise where students create products that are informative and useful to peers. After a lesson on nutrition, for example, students could make comics that explain the major nutrients-as well as the role they play in how bodies function-that could be displayed in hallways for classmates to learn from.

Build-a-Billboard: Have small groups work together to create an advertisement, with visuals and text, to highlight a newly learned concept like Manifest Destiny or the scientific method. Students in San Francisco Unified School District health classrooms learn about tools advertisers use to convince people to buy their products, then create their own billboards. "If you were going to make an ad for your favorite fruit or vegetable, what techniques would you use?" asks health ed content specialist Christopher Pepper.

Sing It Out: Asking students to sing or rap about a lesson can be a fun change of pace-and rack up a few giggles. First, students identify the main concept of a lesson and list related keywords. In a rap about the order of operations, for example, educator Alex Kajitani lists "operations, order, parenthesis, exponent, multiply, divide, add, and subtract." Using the website RhymeZone.com helps identify what words rhyme with each key term, then students can begin writing their rap, song, or even spoken word poem.

Illustrate Connections: "A student who draws as they learn considers the following: How should I represent the relationship between these parts? How large/small should I draw these parts? What shape should they be? Where do I place each part?," explains instructional leader Shveta Miller. Invite students to draw a picture that illustrates a relationship between terms from the lesson or recreates a scene from their reading. Providing reflection questions like "How well did I recall the material after having represented it in my drawings?" or "When would drawing as I learn be useful? When is it not useful?" can be a useful add-on to the exercise.

60 Minutes: Students pair up and pretend they're a guest expert on the television program 60 Minutes or their local news broadcast. During their segment, they'll need to answer a few of their partner's interview-style questions-"What is the purpose of feudalism in a society?," for example.

Laughable Lists: At the end of a lesson or once students have finished assigned reading, ask them to enumerate what they think are the top ten most important takeaways. The twist? Students will have to try to infuse humor into their list of observations. Sharing a few examples before they begin can help students who might struggle with the exercise at first.

Cut and Paste: Encourage students-on their own, in pairs, or in groups-to make either digital or paper collages to demonstrate their understanding of the lesson's major themes and concepts: anything from matter and energy, to fractions and decimals. If time allows, have a few kids present their collages to the rest of the class and explain their thinking.

3-2-1 Action!: Choose a selection of excerpts from a recently read text-like a poem, play, or a short story-for students to dramatically interpret and perform. Without the use of props, costuming, or sets, students must not only have read the text but understood it enough to convey an insightful character analysis, as well as the mood and tone of the scene. These 5-minute performances can be recorded and submitted to the teacher to review, or shared in class for peers to see.

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13 Formative Assessments That Inspire Creativity

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Sometimes mixing in formative assessments that go a step beyond exit slips and low-stakes quizzes can inject some fun-and creativity-into learning.

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In some circles, Ben Hogan is credited with "inventing practice."

Hogan was one of the greatest golfers of the 20th century, an accomplishment he achieved through tireless repetition. He simply loved to practice. Hogan said, "I couldn't wait to get up in the morning so I could hit balls. I'd be at the practice tee at the crack of dawn, hit balls for a few hours, then take a break and get right back to it." 1

For Hogan, every practice session had a purpose. He reportedly spent years breaking down each phase of the golf swing and testing new methods for each segment. The result was near perfection. He developed one of the most finely-tuned golf swings in the history of the game.

His precision made him more like a surgeon than a golfer. During the 1953 Masters, for example, Hogan hit the flagstick on back-to-back holes. A few days later, he broke the tournament scoring record. 2

Hogan methodically broke the game of golf down into chunks and figured out how he could master each section. For example, he was one of the first golfers to assign specific yardages to each golf club. Then, he studied each course carefully and used trees and sand bunkers as reference points to inform him about the distance of each shot. 3

Hogan finished his career with nine major championships-ranking fourth all-time. During his prime, other golfers simply attributed his remarkable success to "Hogan's secret." Today, experts have a new term for his rigorous style of improvement: deliberate practice.

What is Deliberate Practice?

Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance. When Ben Hogan carefully reconstructed each step of his golf swing, he was engaging in deliberate practice. He wasn't just taking cuts. He was finely tuning his technique.

While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.

The greatest challenge of deliberate practice is to remain focused. In the beginning, showing up and putting in your reps is the most important thing. But after a while we begin to carelessly overlook small errors and miss daily opportunities for improvement.

This is because the natural tendency of the human brain is to transform repeated behaviors into automatic habits. For example, when you first learned to tie your shoes you had to think carefully about each step of the process. Today, after many repetitions, your brain can perform this sequence automatically. The more we repeat a task the more mindless it becomes.

Mindless activity is the enemy of deliberate practice. The danger of practicing the same thing again and again is that progress becomes assumed. Too often, we assume we are getting better simply because we are gaining experience. In reality, we are merely reinforcing our current habits-not improving them.

Claiming that improvement requires attention and effort sounds logical enough. But what does deliberate practice actually look like in the real world? Let's talk about that now.

Examples of Deliberate Practice

One of my favorite examples of deliberate practice is discussed in Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. In the book, Colvin describes how Benjamin Franklin used deliberate practice to improve his writing skills.

When he was a teenager, Benjamin Franklin was criticized by his father for his poor writing abilities. Unlike most teenagers, young Ben took his father's advice seriously and vowed to improve his writing skills.

He began by finding a publication written by some of the best authors of his day. Then, Franklin went through each article line by line and wrote down the meaning of every sentence. Next, he rewrote each article in his own words and then compared his version to the original. Each time, "I discovered some of my faults, and corrected them." Eventually, Franklin realized his vocabulary held him back from better writing, and so he focused intensely on that area.

Deliberate practice always follows the same pattern: break the overall process down into parts, identify your weaknesses, test new strategies for each section, and then integrate your learning into the overall process.

Here are some more examples.

Cooking: Jiro Ono, the subject of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, is a chef and owner of an award-winning sushi restaurant in Tokyo. Jiro has dedicated his life to perfecting the art of making sushi and he expects the same of his apprentices. Each apprentice must master one tiny part of the sushi-making process at a time-how to wring a towel, how to use a knife, how to cut the fish, and so on. One apprentice trained under Jiro for ten years before being allowed to cook the eggs. Each step of the process is taught with the utmost care.

Martial arts: Josh Waitzkin, author of The Art of Learning, is a martial artist who holds several US national medals and a 2004 world championship. In the finals of one competition, he noticed a weakness: When an opponent illegally head-butted him in the nose, Waitzkin flew into a rage. His emotion caused him to lose control and forget his strategy. Afterward, he specifically sought out training partners who would fight dirty so he could practice remaining calm and principled in the face of chaos. "They were giving me a valuable opportunity to expand my threshold for turbulence," Waitzkin wrote. "Dirty players were my best teachers."

Chess: Magnus Carlsen is a chess grandmaster and one of the highest-rated players in history. One distinguishing feature of great chess players is their ability to recognize "chunks," which are specific arrangements of pieces on the board. Some experts estimate that grandmasters can identify around 300,000 different chunks. Interestingly, Carlsen learned the game by playing computer chess, which allowed him to play multiple games at once. Not only did this strategy allow him to learn chunks much faster than someone playing in-person games, but also gave him a chance to make more mistakes and correct his weaknesses at an accelerated pace.

Music: Many great musicians recommend repeating the most challenging sections of a song until you master them. Virtuoso violinist Nathan Milstein says, "Practice as much as you feel you can accomplish with concentration. Once when I became concerned because others around me practiced all day long, I asked [my professor] how many hours I should practice, and he said, 'It really doesn't matter how long. If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough. If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty.'" 4

Basketball: Consider the following example from Aubrey Daniels, "Player A shoots 200 practice shots, Player B shoots 50. The Player B retrieves his own shots, dribbles leisurely and takes several breaks to talk to friends. Player A has a colleague who retrieves the ball after each attempt. The colleague keeps a record of shots made. If the shot is missed the colleague records whether the miss was short, long, left or right and the shooter reviews the results after every 10 minutes of practice. To characterize their hour of practice as equal would hardly be accurate. Assuming this is typical of their practice routine and they are equally skilled at the start, which would you predict would be the better shooter after only 100 hours of practice?"

The Unsung Hero of Deliberate Practice

Perhaps the greatest difference between deliberate practice and simple repetition is this: feedback. Anyone who has mastered the art of deliberate practice-whether they are an athlete like Ben Hogan or a writer like Ben Franklin-has developed methods for receiving continual feedback on their performance.

There are many ways to receive feedback. Let's discuss two.

The first effective feedback system is measurement. The things we measure are the things we improve. This holds true for the number of pages we read, the number of pushups we do, the number of sales calls we make, and any other task that is important to us. It is only through measurement that we have any proof of whether we are getting better or worse.

The second effective feedback system is coaching. One consistent finding across disciplines is that coaches are often essential for sustaining deliberate practice. In many cases, it is nearly impossible to both perform a task and measure your progress at the same time. Good coaches can track your progress, find small ways to improve, and hold you accountable to delivering your best effort each day.

The Promise of Deliberate Practice

Humans have a remarkable capacity to improve their performance in nearly any area of life if they train in the correct way. This is easier said than done.

Deliberate practice is not a comfortable activity. It requires sustained effort and concentration. The people who master the art of deliberate practice are committed to being lifelong learners-always exploring and experimenting and refining.

Deliberate practice is not a magic pill, but if you can manage to maintain your focus and commitment, then the promise of deliberate practice is quite alluring: to get the most out of what you've got.

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The Beginner's Guide to Deliberate Practice

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You can improve your performance in nearly any area of life, but you must train in the correct way. Read this article to learn about deliberate practice.

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When students begin to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning, they develop self-regulation and can set more ambitious goals.

Davor Pavelic / Ikon Images

As a special education teacher and K-12 tutor, I found that students were often told what to learn but were rarely taught how to learn, which had the potential to leave them stuck, anxious, and disengaged. My desire to teach students strategies they could use to develop their own agency and independence led me to write my book, The Independent Learner.

Metacognition refers to a student's knowledge of their own thought process. A metacognitive thinking process allows students to self-regulate and direct their thoughts, behaviors, and actions toward their goals. As early as kindergarten, teachers can instruct students in how to build their metacognitive skills through a process of planning, monitoring, and evaluating their learning. Once students reach third grade, they can begin to use these strategies with increased choice and independence.

When students begin working without a plan, they become easily confused and overwhelmed by the task. They may give up, get distracted, or become off-task very easily. Taking time to plan can help students avoid these issues. Planning can include previewing the task, setting goals, deciding how to approach the task, and connecting to previously learned information. The following strategies help students to plan.

Building prior knowledge: Teachers can help students build prior knowledge by connecting new information to what students already know. This might look like having students brainstorm in groups to answer a question, watch a short introductory video clip or demonstration, or look at and discuss pictures or objects related to the topic that will be studied. A strong foundation of background knowledge can help students to accurately make predictions and prioritize information during the lesson.

Goal setting: Having students set goals and track progress is linked to a 32 percent increase in achievement. Teachers can help students to set short-term goals related to the skill they are learning as well as the student's long-term personal goals and values.

Planning the process: We have all had the experience of setting goals, only to lose the motivation and follow-through necessary to make them a reality. Teachers can help students think about the changes they need to make in their daily behavior and habits in order to get from where they are now to where they want to be. Students can make a plan or checklist and use this to monitor their daily progress or the baby steps toward their goal.

Students who are having trouble monitoring don't know when to seek help or may be overly dependent on the teacher to make sure they are doing their work correctly. They may lack a sense of self-efficacy or the belief that their efforts affect their actions or fail to change their approach when it is not working. When a student is monitoring their learning, they are assessing their level of understanding and trying to determine whether the strategy they have selected is working. The following strategies help students monitor.

Metacognitive talk: When students are learning a new skill, the teacher can model thinking aloud to make the thought process visible for students. This helps them to develop the complex thinking skills necessary for that subject area. The teacher can encourage students to use discussion to construct knowledge instead of just participating to display what they know. Strategies like think-pair-share or visually explaining the steps of their thinking help students to understand that there are many ways to approach a particular problem or task.

Analyze, prioritize, summarize: Students can be taught various methods of summarizing information and isolating key facts, details, and keywords. One method that students enjoy is a one-pager.

Diversify: When approaching a new learning task, it is important for students to know many ways to solve a problem or approach the skill. Strategies that mix verbal and visual information make learning more memorable. When students are familiar with many strategies, they have the tools necessary to exercise their own agency in selecting what works best for them.

If students are not evaluating their learning, they often do not understand how to use strategies in other contexts or for future problem-solving. They may know that they got something wrong but are not able to tell you why or what they should do differently next time to avoid that same issue. To evaluate their learning, students consider whether the strategy they chose worked and what they would change for next time. The following strategies help students to evaluate.

Assess: Testing should be used during learning, not just once learning is complete. Students can create their own practice tests or test questions, or teachers can use pre- and post-tests with clickers to find out what students know, help students to prioritize important information, and assess learning during the lesson.

What am I working toward?

What progress have I made so far?

Where do I go from here?

Seek feedback: In the classroom, the teacher acts as a coach to students, providing information about learning goals and progress. Successful feedback should not shame students or focus on personal qualities but instead should answer these questions:

Reflect and revise: After assessment, self-assessment, or feedback, students reflect on whether the strategy they are using is working. Then they decide what changes they need to make. Students may also consider areas where they need to seek out help. When they revise, students consider what did not go so well and fix it. They should be able to explain their mistake or what did not work and then select a strategy to correct their work. As you might notice, this starts the metacognition cycle back at the planning stage.

The only way to make learning truly relevant to each student is to teach the tools and strategies they will need to take a more active role in their learning. Incorporating metacognitive skills and self-regulated learning strategies has helped my students to become more independent, engaged, and capable of exercising their own agency.

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How to Get Students Thinking About Their Own Learning

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When students begin to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning, they develop self-regulation and can set more ambitious goals.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase "We will discuss."
We will discuss the video. We will discuss the story. We will discuss our results.
Every time I saw it in a lesson plan, I would add a note: "What format will you use? What questions will you ask? How will you ensure that all students participate?" I was pretty sure that We will discuss actually meant the teacher would do most of the talking; He would throw out a couple of questions like "So what did you think about the video?" or "What was the theme of the story?" and a few students would respond, resulting in something that looked like a discussion, but was ultimately just a conversation between the teacher and a handful of extroverted students; a classic case of Fisheye Teaching.

The problem wasn't them; in most of the classrooms where they'd sat as students, that's exactly what a class discussion looked like. They didn't know any other "formats." I have only ever been familiar with a few myself. But when teachers began contacting me recently asking for a more comprehensive list, I knew it was time to do some serious research.

So here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging. If you've struggled to find effective ways to develop students' speaking and listening skills, this is your lucky day.

I've separated the strategies into three groups. The first batch contains the higher-prep strategies, formats that require teachers to do some planning or gathering of materials ahead of time. Next come the low-prep strategies, which can be used on the fly when you have a few extra minutes or just want your students to get more active. Note that these are not strict categories; it's certainly possible to simplify or add more meat to any of these structures and still make them work. The last group is the ongoing strategies. These are smaller techniques that can be integrated with other instructional strategies and don't really stand alone. For each strategy, you'll find a list of other names it sometimes goes by, a description of its basic structure, and an explanation of variations that exist, if any. To watch each strategy in action, click on its name and a new window will open with a video that demonstrates it.

Enjoy!
a.k.a. Chat Stations
Basic Structure: Stations or posters are set up around the classroom, on the walls or on tables. Small groups of students travel from station to station together, performing some kind of task or responding to a prompt, either of which will result in a conversation.

Variations: Some Gallery Walks stay true to the term gallery, where groups of students create informative posters, then act as tour guides or docents, giving other students a short presentation about their poster and conducting a Q&A about it. In Starr Sackstein's high school classroom, her stations consisted of video tutorials created by the students themselves. Before I knew the term Gallery Walk, I shared a strategy similar to it called Chat Stations, where the teacher prepares discussion prompts or content-related tasks and sets them up around the room for students to visit in small groups.
a.k.a. Values Continuum, Forced Debate, Physical Barometer, This or That
Basic Structure: A statement that has two possible responses-agree or disagree-is read out loud. Depending on whether they agree or disagree with this statement, students move to one side of the room or the other. From that spot, students take turns defending their positions.

Variations: Often a Philosophical Chairs debate will be based around a text or group of texts students have read ahead of time; students are required to cite textual evidence to support their claims and usually hold the texts in their hands during the discussion. Some teachers set up one hot seat to represent each side, and students must take turns in the seat. In less formal variations (which require less prep), a teacher may simply read provocative statements students are likely to disagree on, and a debate can occur spontaneously without a text to refer to (I call this variation This or That in my classroom icebreakers post). Teachers may also opt to offer a continuum of choices, ranging from "Strongly Agree" on one side of the room, all the way to "Strongly Disagree" on the other, and have students place themselves along that continuum based on the strength of their convictions.

Basic Structure: Students are divided into 4 groups. Three of these groups are assigned to represent specific points of view. Members of the fourth group are designated as "provocateurs," tasked with making sure the discussion keeps going and stays challenging. One person from each group (the "speaker") sits in a desk facing speakers from the other groups, so they form a square in the center of the room. Behind each speaker, the remaining group members are seated: two right behind the speaker, then three behind them, and so on, forming a kind of triangle. From above, this would look like a pinwheel. The four speakers introduce and discuss questions they prepared ahead of time (this preparation is done with their groups). After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and continue the conversation.

Variations: When high school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling introduced this strategy in the featured video (click Pinwheel Discussion above), she used it as a device for talking about literature, where each group represented a different author, plus one provocateur group. But in the comments that follow the video, Wessling adds that she also uses the strategy with non-fiction, where students represent authors of different non-fiction texts or are assigned to take on different perspectives about an issue.
a.k.a. Socratic Circles
Basic Structure: Students prepare by reading a text or group of texts and writing some higher-order discussion questions about the text. On seminar day, students sit in a circle and an introductory, open-ended question is posed by the teacher or student discussion leader. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with textual evidence. There is no particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with others. Discussion is meant to happen naturally and students do not need to raise their hands to speak. This overview of Socratic Seminar from the website Facing History and Ourselves provides a list of appropriate questions, plus more information about how to prepare for a seminar.

Variations: If students are beginners, the teacher may write the discussion questions, or the question creation can be a joint effort. For larger classes, teachers may need to set up seminars in more of a fishbowl-like arrangement, dividing students into one inner circle that will participate in the discussion, and one outer circle that silently observes, takes notes, and may eventually trade places with those in the inner circle, sometimes all at once, and sometimes by "tapping in" as the urge strikes them.
a.k.a. Affinity Diagramming
Basic Structure: Give students a broad question or problem that is likely to result in lots of different ideas, such as "What were the impacts of the Great Depression?" or "What literary works should every person read?" Have students generate responses by writing ideas on post-it notes (one idea per note) and placing them in no particular arrangement on a wall, whiteboard, or chart paper. Once lots of ideas have been generated, have students begin grouping them into similar categories, then label the categories and discuss why the ideas fit within them, how the categories relate to one another, and so on.

Variations: Some teachers have students do much of this exercise-recording their ideas and arranging them into categories- without talking at first. In other variations, participants are asked to re-combine the ideas into new, different categories after the first round of organization occurs. Often, this activity serves as a good pre-writing exercise, after which students will write some kind of analysis or position paper.
a.k.a. Speed Dating
Basic Structure: Students form two circles, one inside circle and one outside circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student on the outside; they face each other. The teacher poses a question to the whole group and pairs discuss their responses with each other. Then the teacher signals students to rotate: Students on the outside circle move one space to the right so they are standing in front of a new person (or sitting, as they are in the video). Now the teacher poses a new question, and the process is repeated.

Variations: Instead of two circles, students could also form two straight lines facing one another. Instead of "rotating" to switch partners, one line just slides over one spot, and the leftover person on the end comes around to the beginning of the line. Some teachers use this strategy to have students teach one piece of content to their fellow students, making it less of a discussion strategy and more of a peer teaching format. In fact, many of these protocols could be used for peer teaching as well.

Basic Structure: Another great idea from Sarah Brown Wessling, this is a small-group discussion strategy that gives students exposure to more of their peers' ideas and prevents the stagnation that can happen when a group doesn't happen to have the right chemistry. Students are placed into a few groups of 4-6 students each and are given a discussion question to talk about. After sufficient time has passed for the discussion to develop, one or two students from each group rotate to a different group, while the other group members remain where they are. Once in their new group, they will discuss a different, but related question, and they may also share some of the key points from their last group's conversation. For the next rotation, students who have not rotated before may be chosen to move, resulting in groups that are continually evolving.

Basic Structure: Two students sit facing each other in the center of the room; the remaining students sit in a circle around them. The two central students have a conversation based on a pre-determined topic and often using specific skills the class is practicing (such as asking follow-up questions, paraphrasing, or elaborating on another person's point). Students on the outside observe, take notes, or perform some other discussion-related task assigned by the teacher.

Variations: One variation of this strategy allows students in the outer circle to trade places with those in the fishbowl, doing kind of a relay-style discussion, or they may periodically "coach" the fishbowl talkers from the sidelines. Teachers may also opt to have students in the outside circle grade the participants' conversation with a rubric, then give feedback on what they saw in a debriefing afterward, as mentioned in the featured video.

Basic Structure: One student assumes the role of a book character, significant figure in history, or concept (such as a tornado, an animal, or the Titanic). Sitting in front of the rest of the class, the student responds to classmates' questions while staying in character in that role.

Variations: Give more students the opportunity to be in the hot seat while increasing everyone's participation by having students do hot seat discussions in small groups, where one person per group acts as the "character" and three or four others ask them questions. In another variation, several students could form a panel of different characters, taking questions from the class all together and interacting with one another like guests on a TV talk show.
a.k.a. Pyramid Discussion
Basic Structure: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question only with a single partner. After each person has had a chance to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they just joined. Next, groups of four join together to form groups of eight, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one large discussion.

Variations: This structure could simply be used to share ideas on a topic, or students could be required to reach consensus every time they join up with a new group.

Whereas the other formats in this list have a distinct shape-specific activities you do with students-the strategies in this section are more like plug-ins, working discussion into other instructional activities and improving the quality and reach of existing conversations.

One of the limitations of discussion is that rich, face-to-face conversations can only happen when all parties are available, so we're limited to the time we have in class. With a tool like Voxer, those limitations disappear. Like a private voice mailbox that you set up with just one person or a group (but SOOOO much easier), Voxer allows users to have conversations at whatever time is most convenient for each participant. So a group of four students can "discuss" a topic from 3pm until bedtime-asynchronously-each member contributing whenever they have a moment, and if the teacher makes herself part of the group, she can listen in, offer feedback, or contribute her own discussion points. Voxer is also invaluable for collaborating on projects and for having one-on-one discussions with students, parents, and your own colleagues. Like many other educators, Peter DeWitt took a while to really understand the potential of Voxer, but in this EdWeek piece, he explains what turned him around.

A backchannel is a conversation that happens right alongside another activity. The first time I saw a backchannel in action was at my first unconference: While those of us in the audience listened to presenters and watched a few short video clips, a separate screen was up beside the main screen, projecting something called TodaysMeet (update: TodaysMeet has shut down. Use YoTeach! instead.) It looked a lot like those chat rooms from back in the day, basically a blank screen where people would contribute a few lines of text, the lines stacking up one after the other, no other bells or whistles. Anyone in the room could participate in this conversation on their phone, laptop, or tablet, asking questions, offering commentary, and sharing links to related resources without ever interrupting the flow of the presentations. This kind of tool allows for a completely silent discussion, one that doesn't have to move at a super-fast pace, and it gives students who may be reluctant to speak up or who process their thoughts more slowly a chance to fully contribute. For a deeper discussion of how this kind of tool can be used, read this thoughtful overview of using backchannel discussions in the classroom by Edutopia's Beth Holland.
a.k.a. Accountable Talk
Talk moves are sentence frames we supply to our students that help them express ideas and interact with one another in respectful, academically appropriate ways. From kindergarten all the way through college, students can benefit from explicit instruction in the skills of summarizing another person's argument before presenting an alternate view, asking clarifying questions, and expressing agreement or partial agreement with the stance of another participant. Talk moves can be incorporated into any of the other discussion formats listed here.

Whole Brain Teaching is a set of teaching and classroom management methods that has grown in popularity over the past 10 years. One of WBT's foundational techniques is Teach-OK, a peer teaching strategy that begins with the teacher spending a few minutes introducing a concept to the class. Next, the teacher says Teach!, the class responds with Okay!, and pairs of students take turns re-teaching the concept to each other. It's a bit like think-pair-share, but it's faster-paced, it focuses more on re-teaching than general sharing, and students are encouraged to use gestures to animate their discussion. Although WBT is most popular in elementary schools, this featured video shows the creator of WBT, Chris Biffle, using it quite successfully with college students. I have also used Teach-OK with college students, and most of my students said they were happy for a change from the sit-and-listen they were used to in college classrooms.

An oldie but a goodie, think-pair-share can be used any time you want to plug interactivity into a lesson: Simply have students think about their response to a question, form a pair with another person, discuss their response, then share it with the larger group. Because I feel this strategy has so many uses and can be way more powerful than we give it credit for, I devoted a whole post to think-pair-share; everything you need to know about it is right there.

TWO MORE YOU'LL LOVE

Since writing this post, I have learned about two more discussion strategies that teachers are finding to be incredibly effective and powerful for getting students to talk, especially about books and other texts:

This protocol has students come up with their own Thoughts, lingering Questions, and Epiphanies from an assigned reading. Teachers who have used this method say it has generated some of the richest conversations they have ever heard from students!

This strategy places students into one-on-one conversations, getting them to learn each others' names better and create a track record of what they talked about. Excellent for classes where you want to assess for discussion and help students get more comfortable with each other.

So what else do you have? I would like to think this is a pretty complete list, but I'm sure more strategies are out there. If you use a discussion strategy that's not mentioned here, please share it below.

Come back for more.
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The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies

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Here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging.

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The Highly Engaged Classroom

Students' perceptions of acceptance is the third determiner of how they feel about themselves and the classroom environment.

Stated differently, if students sense that they are not welcome, accepted, or supported in the classroom, it is unlikely that they will engage in classroom activities. Certainly, the relationship teachers have with students is one of the most powerful determiners of how a student answers the question "How do I feel?" Carol Goodenow (1993) found teacher support was consistently the strongest predictor of motivation among students in sixth through eighth grades (p. 6).

A number of classroom activities have the potential to capture and hold students' attention.

Game like activities help trigger situational interest and provide a foundation for maintained situational interest because they tap into the psychological principle of clozentropy (see Broadhurst & Darnell, 1965; Darnell, 1970, 1972; Taylor, 1953; Weiner, 1967). Basically, the theory of clozentropy states that the human mind will naturally attend to situations that have missing details. Hermann Ebbinghaus (1987) addressed this point, noting that human beings tend to fill in the blanks when presented with incomplete information. (p. 9).

Effective questioning strategies can trigger situational interest and help foster maintained situational interest.

Specifically, it makes intuitive sense that when a student is answering a question, his or her working memory is fully attentive to the task at hand. Students' attention to questions is most likely due to the fact that a question, by definition, presents missing information. To this extent, questions are like games. Indeed, many games rely on questions. In the context of the classroom, questions can generate mild pressure that helps stimulate attention (pp. 11-12).

When given choice by teachers, students perceive classroom activities as more important.

Research has shown that providing choices to students of all age levels often increases their intrinsic motivation. Choice in the classroom has also been linked to increases in student effort, task performance, and subsequent learning. However, to reap these benefits, a teacher should create choices that are robust enough for students to feel that their decision has an impact on their learning. In order to incorporate choice into the classroom, we recommend teachers provide choice to students in four ways: (1) choice of tasks, (2) choice of reporting formats, (3) choice of learning goals, and (4) choice of behaviors (pp. 14, 101).

Providing students academic choices increases engagement.

Choices of task, reporting format, or learning goal allow students to take control of their learning and make decisions that ensure personal interest in their assignments. To provide a choice of task to students, a teacher can provide multiple task options on an assessment and ask students to respond to the one that interests them most. Similarly, a teacher can provide students with the option to choose their own reporting format. The two most common reporting formats are written and oral reports, as they can be used with most subjects. However, students may also choose to present information through debates, video reports, demonstrations, or dramatic presentations. To give students a particularly powerful choice, a teacher can ask students to create their own learning goals. When giving students the option to design their own learning goals, a teacher should hold students accountable for both their self-identified learning goal as well as teacher-identified learning goals for that unit (pp. 101-104).

Teachers can build choice into the process of designing standards for expected classroom behaviors.

Creating a classroom constitution at the beginning of the school year can provide students a chance to determine how the classroom functions as a unit. To infuse choice into this process, a teacher can ask small groups of students to describe their ideal classroom environments and isolate desirable and undesirable behaviors and attitudes. Groups can then give presentations on their lists of ideal behaviors and attitudes. Afterward, the class can come together and articulate specific behaviors and attitudes into concrete principles, eventually compromising as a class to decide which principles to incorporate into a set of classroom behavior standards. By following this process, individual students gain voices within the classroom and are less likely to feel that arbitrary rules are being imposed on them (pp. 104-105).

The most general influence on a student's emotional engagement is a teacher's positive demeanor.

A teacher can communicate a positive demeanor through demonstrating enthusiasm and intensity, both of which have been associated with student engagement and achievement. Clearly, relationships students have with the teacher have a profound effect on their perceptions of being welcomed, accepted, and supported, which helps establish an affective tone that promotes student encouragement (pp. 5-7).

To foster student engagement, classroom instruction decisions are based on four emblematic questions.

The first two questions focus on the attention of the student, while the last two questions gauge the engagement of the students' interest in the topic. The attention questions deal with whether information from the outside world gets into working memory. If the information presented is not considered interesting, the working memory will not process it. Engagement is defined by importance; if the information is not deemed important, the working memory will not maintain it for long. If students do not believe they can perform the tasks, the brain will eventually reject it (pp. 8-19).

Pacing is a basic teaching tool, but often an overlooked aspect of keeping students' energy levels high.

If pacing is too slow, energy in the classroom drops and attention wanes; however, if the pacing is too fast, students can be confused and frustrated. To help achieve a balance, focus on pacing when handling administrative tasks, transitions, assigning seatwork, and presenting new content (p. 21).

Wait time is one effective way to increase student response rate.

Waiting to call on students allows them to process the question and encourages them to think through their answers instead of impulsively responding. A teacher can use less wait time after asking a straightforward question with one correct response and more wait time after asking a complex or open-ended question that requires interpretation (p. 71).

The use of positive information can help grow communication with students.

One simple way to communicate respect and acceptance is to find something positive about students and then use that information to both plan instruction that addresses students'' interest and communicates concern for specific students. This is particularly true for students who may have discipline issues or who appear alienated from the rest of the class or teacher (p. 40).

Motivation can create a hierarchy of goals.

Students are always behaving in such a way as to accomplish one goal or another. For example, at the basic level, students (as well as everyone else) are always working to ensure that basic subsistence goals such as safety, food, and shelter are being met. Perhaps at the highest level are goals that address life ambitions. These goals typically deal with accomplishments that people perceive as defining their future lives. Fundamentally, classroom activities that make connections to the real world will help generate a positive response (p. 87).

Movement can be used to lift energy by associating it with rehearsal.

Rehearsal refers to repeating important information in a way that helps students remember it. For example, a teacher who has noticed his or her students are having difficulty recalling units of measurement might ask them to represent the largest of the units by standing straight up, the smaller measurements by bending over, and the smallest measurements by kneeling down (p. 25).

Teacher-student relationships are key to ensuring that students feel good about being in class and can respond positively to the question, "How do I feel?"

One of the most interesting aspects of powerful teacher-student relationships is that they are forged by behavior and words as opposed to thoughts and feelings. Stated differently, it is not what a teacher thinks and feels about a particular student that forges a positive relationship with the student. Rather, it is how the teacher speaks to and behaves with the student that communicates respect and acceptance (p. 36).

One simple way to invite simultaneous individual response is to use hand signals.

It is important to note that when hand signals are used, questions must employ a selected-response format, such as multiple choice or true/false. If four responses are provided in a multiple-choice item, students can signal the correct answer by holding up one finger for the first option, two for the second option, and so on. Using simultaneous individual response is one way to increase engagement and help them respond positively to the question, "Am I interested?" (p. 74).

Teachers can use stories from literature and history as examples of people whose lives have demonstrated the power of self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is quite possibly the most important factor affecting engagement. Even if students feel good, are interested in what is occurring, and believe it to be important, they will probably not fully engage if they believe the task is impossible. Clips from movies such as Rudy, Oliver Twist, and Apollo 13 can be used to helps students discern common traits among those who accomplish great things even in the face of significant obstacles (pp. 117, 128-129).

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Stated differently, if students sense that they are not welcome, accepted, or supported in the classroom, it is unlikely that they will engage in classroom activities. Certainly, the relationship teachers have with students is one of the most powerful determiners of how a student answers the question "How do I feel?"

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Strategies to Awaken the Learner

By: Robert J. Marzano, Darrell Scott, Tina H. Boogren, Ming Lee Newcomb

Discover a results-driven framework-based on a six-level hierarchy of student needs and goals-that you can use to provide engaging instruction to students.

Motivating and Inspiring Students

Bringing motivation and inspiration to the classroom is not easy. With this practical resource, you'll discover a results-driven framework-based on a six-level hierarchy of student needs and goals-that you can use to provide engaging instruction to students. The authors share comprehensive understandings of the nature of motivation and inspiration and detail-specific strategies to connect with your students.

Gain specific chapter-ending guidance on how to use the book's strategies.

Consider scenarios that portray how the book's suggestions might play out in the classroom.

Review mindsets, dispositions, and behaviors that result in negative, unhelpful thinking and in positive, productive thinking.

Study step-by-step processes that ensure students' needs get met in individual classrooms.

Use the Awaken the Learner Snapshot Student Survey to assess students' levels of engagement, attention, motivation, and inspiration in school.

"This book takes the reader from research to application, providing information to help create an environment where students can connect to something beyond just self and be inspired. Using this book, you can change the learning environment in schools to be more fruitful and sustaining."

Gail Pletnick, superintendent of Dysart Unified School District, and AASA president-elect, Arizona

"You may have heard it said that the fastest way to find out who the best teachers are in a school is to ask the students. The problem with this method of discovery is that the reasons why some teachers are able to reach the minds and hearts of students while others miss the mark is not as easily articulated. Marzano, Scott, Boogren, and Newcomb go beyond Maslow's hierarchy of needs in Motivating and Inspiring Students. This new work addresses the role of long-neglected concepts such as altruism, empathy, forgiveness, gratitude, and mindfulness (to name a few). Beginning with understanding every person's need to make connections with something greater than self, this book provides theory supported with activities and worksheets that make Motivating and Inspiring Students a must for every teacher and administrator who wishes to reach the heart of our students. Together with the inspiring work done by Darrell Scott through Rachel's Challenge, this book provides every educator with the 'why' and 'how' to implement the most critical elements of motivation and inspiration for learners in our care. Our students become lifelong learners when skilled educators make the right connections with them. Motivating and Inspiring Students helps you get there."

Arturo Delgado, former county superintendent of Los Angeles Schools, California

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Bringing motivation and inspiration to the classroom is not easy. With this practical resource, you'll discover a results-driven framework-based on a six-level hierarchy of student needs and goals-that you can use to provide engaging instruction to students. The authors share comprehensive understandings of the nature of motivation and inspiration and detail-specific strategies to connect with your students.

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One investment to support long-term school improvement-Learn more

This practical handbook will guide you through implementing competency-based education that improves student learning outcomes and academic achievement. Better understand and utilize the research-based instructional strategies and teaching methods of the Marzano framework in your classroom, school, or district.
Benefits

Learn the history of Robert J. Marzano's framework of teaching methods first laid out in his best-selling The Art and Science of Teaching.

Thoroughly examine the updated The New Art and Science of Teaching framework for competency-based education.

Explore numerous instructional strategies that correspond to each of the 43 elements of The New Art and Science of Teaching.

Acquire examples that will assist in the realization of the instructional strategies discussed throughout the book.

Discover strategies that will improve both the mental and physical environment of the classroom to better support student success.

Reimagine how to develop relationships with students and generate student engagement.

Access free reproducibles that will assist in implementing The New Art and Science of Teaching framework in classrooms.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I: Feedback
Chapter 1: Providing and Communicating Clear Learning Goals
Chapter 2: Using Assessments

Part II: Content
Chapter 3: Conducting Direct Instruction Lessons
Chapter 4: Conducting Practicing and Deepening Lessons
Chapter 5: Conducting Knowledge Application Lessons
Chapter 6: Using Strategies That Appear in All Types of Lessons

Part III: Context
Chapter 7: Using Engagement Strategies
Chapter 8: Implementing Rules and Procedures
Chapter 9: Building Relationships
Chapter 10: Communicating High Expectations

Appendix: Reproducibles

STUDY GUIDE

PRINTABLE REPRODUCIBLES

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Appendix

SUGGESTED RESOURCES

BOOKS

Carleton, L., & Marzano, R. J. (2010). Vocabulary Games for the Classroom. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research.

Marzano, R. J. (2010). Formative Assessment and Standards-Based Grading. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research.

Marzano, R. J. (2017). The New Art and Science of Teaching. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Marzano, R. J., & Heflebower, T. (2012). Teaching & Assessing 21st Century Skills. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research.

Marzano, R. J., & Marzano, J. S. (2015). Managing the Inner World of Teaching: Emotions, Interpretations, and Actions. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research.

Marzano, R. J., & Simms, J. A. (2014). Questioning Sequences in the Classroom. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research.

Marzano Research. (2016). Marzano Compendium of Instructional Strategies. Centennial, CO: Author.

Scott, D., & Marzano, R. J. (2014). Awaken the Learner: Finding the Source of Effective Education. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research.

WEBSITES

Chapter 2

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

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The Handbook for the New Art and Science of Teaching

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How powerful is your unconscious mind? Do you think that your unconscious expectations can influence the performance of the people around you?

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Metacognition Problem. of Practice Grades K-2 

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Grades 3-5 Metacognition Problem. of Practice 

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Secondary Social Studies Problem of Practice

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Secondary Social Studies Problem of Practice

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Secondary World Language Problem of Practice

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Secondary World Language Problem of Practice