When the Lecture's Over, the Learning Begins

“How do you react when your students don’t grasp a concept or skill the first time you teach it?”

Bell, Kasey. Shake Up Learning: Practical Ideas to Move Learning from Static to Dynamic (Kindle Location 780). Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

If you listen to the talk in educational chats today, you will hear phrases like “fail forward” and “FAIL = First Attempt In Learning”. The general idea is that we don’t expect success the first time we try something. So, we shouldn’t expect students to master a concept or skill the first time they try it. Teachers and students need to be ok with this fact. There is a lot of debate in my school around applying this idea to summative assessments, not just formative. I have a very strong opinion on this topic, but this is not the post for that. (But, I imagine you may already know where I stand on telling a student it’s time to stop learning.)   For the sake of this post, let’s look at pre-summative assessment learning.

If we all adopt this idea of providing multiple attempts to learn/master content and skills, that is fantastic! I think the majority of us already do.  But, that means that we should provide secondary chances to learn that do not look like the first opportunity. There are both low tech and high tech solutions for this.  But we need to realize one option for learning may not work for all learners. The real power of this model is allowing learners to try different strategies and reflect on which ones work for them. While it’s great for them to master the course material, the bigger win is letting them understand how they learn best.

The strategies below are ones that I’ve seen work in action and ones suggested by my learners.

No or Low Technology Based

Bullpen

Two of my favorite people in the world are Kate Sommerville and Angela Patterson. I met them when they were team teachers at the elementary level in my district. They’ve since moved on, but I had the amazing opportunity to see them in action. The “bullpen” strategy comes from their math workshop model. You can find more info here, but I’ve taken an excerpt to explain this model of 2nd attempts at learning.

Bullpen is an intensive reteaching based on the previous day's formative assessment. It is often teacher directed, although many students ask to join Bullpen and come on their own. It is another opportunity for students to revisit the work done throughout the current unit, and receive extra teacher support.

Kate in the Bullpen

This table is covered in whiteboard paint! 

Bullpen is face to face time. For many learners, this extra face-to-face focused instruction is just what they need to move forward.

Solving Problems

Opportunities for learning can be about application rather than instruction. This application allows learners to deepen the seed of understanding they may have grasped from the initial instruction and let it grow. Depending on the content, practice problems may be appropriate.  The key to practice problems are that they are not simply rote algorithmic application. There is no need for students to simply do the same thing over and over again. Practice is about thinking through the process not simply applying a trick or shortcut to learning. In the bullpen model, the teacher leads the process. But, practice problems can take a variety of formats. Students can work individually or with peers. My students love being able to work through problems with peers.  It forces them to verbalize their thinking of the process. If this is to be a learning process, there must be a way for them to check their work. So, I’ll make answer keys available for students to check their work and see my thinking process. From my experience, having students turn in practice work and waiting for it to be corrected creates a break in the learning process that isn’t helpful to the learning process. Problems don’t have to be worksheets, they can go beyond to maker or design challenges.

Diagrams

Many times in lecture, visual representations may be presented.  But if they are only available on the projected screen for a few moments, the visual may be lost on a majority of the audience. Having visual representations of concepts or processes available to learners to pursue and walk through at their own pace is so important. So many textbooks have great diagrams.  I remember when I was assigned to read long passages, I’d tend to gloss over the visuals in favor of “getting done”. Have you ever thought of assigning reading of diagram rather than a reading pages of written text?

Manipulatives

Hands-on activities don’t necessarily need to be an authentic task. When we were balancing reactions in chemistry class, some students were unable to “see” the process of balancing the reaction using pencil and paper. That’s when my co-teacher Andelee Espinosa brought up the idea of using manipulatives. Specifically, we ordered a set of chem chips.

This manipulative is a low tech tool to help visualize the process of balancing a chemical reaction. I even remember having cut-out cards in elementary school to help me build sentences. The ability to physically manipulate can help overcome barriers for those having difficulties mentally manipulating ideas.

Annotating class notes

When I put forth the question of how they practice, many of them told me that they review their notes. This could be following Cornell Notes format or simply noting key concepts and areas for clarification. They key to this is that it is not simply re-reading the notes. There has to be an intentional processing step or dialogue with the notes.

Technology Based

Pear Deck Takeaways

Building on the concept of looking back at your notes, is this feature from Pear Deck. Pear Deck is the interactive presentation tool I use in my classroom. When asked about how they work to learn content, several of my students mentioned their Pear Deck takeaways.  A Pear Deck Takeaway is a Google Doc that is shared with a student after completing a Pear Deck session. It contains all of the slides from the presentation in addition to any responses the students made during the presentation. Click the following link to get an idea of what a blank one would look like.

Simulations

Technology is a great tool for creation. But, it is an equally powerful tool to see the unseen. I’ve spoken about my love for simulations before. But, my students have reiterated the love. I’m always surprised to find more and more simulations and hubs for simulations out there when I do a simple Google search. Although I sometimes go to pains to write a question sheets to guide students through a simulation and answer questions, I have found that is the worst way to go. It takes away the sense of true exploration and prevents them from being able to truly explore and discover.  It’s almost better to let them summarize what they discovered using the key vocabulary.

Videos

I am not a great teacher in terms of being a storyteller or explainer of information at the classroom level. But, there are great instructors who have been recorded discussing a concept. Many of my students find these videos as a great supplement when they didn’t really get what we were talking about in lecture or just want a quick review. Sources like Khan Academy or Crash Course are great resources. Khan academy tends to be very thorough and more dry. The ability to pause and rewind goes a long way to see the intricacies of problem solving. Crash Course may be less detailed but it is much more engaging visually and provides strong connections to application without sacrificing rigor.

Google It

I am always amazed at how few students will Google a question. Part of this may come down to having more confidence in the ability to ask a friend. Also, many students haven’t been properly taught how to Google. Simple things like doing unit conversions (just type it in the address bar and voila) or finding statistics (fastest table tennis serve?) are easy to find if you type in the right words in the right places or use the right keywords. Once students have found a few trusted and reliable sources for a content area, they know where they can go back to.

Quiz Games

My students love Kahoot! I do, too. It is a fast paced game show style quiz game. For a while, it seemed like it was going to be a fad. But, adding variety to the questions with images can go a long way to making every Kahoot! a novel learning experience. But for some learners it is not a good experience. They see the time allotted for a question and realize they won’t be able to process it in time and just guess. That’s why I was excited when I tried Kahoot! Challenge Mode. It allows learners to answer questions at their own pace if the teacher sets the time to the maximum. In addition, it can be done outside of that high pressure environment. There is still the point system and leaderboard. But, students can have the time to process without the fear of time running out.

I haven’t had the chance to do much with Quizlet.  But based on my student feedback, they really like it. Several students reported that they use it to create flashcards for themselves. It then uses those flashcards to provide a host of different review games. In addition, Pear Deck Vocabulary flash cards can be exported to Quizlet. So, looks like I’ve got a new tool to dig into.

So how would I react if students didn’t master something after the first time I teach it? I would be relieved. I know that every learner is different and has different needs to help process new information. If they all mastered it after the first try, I’d know it wasn’t challenging enough or they already knew it. Providing those second, third, fourth, and beyond opportunities to master content and skills are where teaching stops and learning happens. They key to the process is not just having multiple attempts for learning but multiple modes of learning. I’ve found that having a place to curate online resources (web sites, simulations, and videos) let’s students sample these different modes to see which works best for them. But remember, these solutions don’t have to be technology focused. They need to be learner focused. It’s not about new tools. It’s about tools that work.

I would love to hear about the tools and strategies you provide for learners to learn beyond the lecture.