Tag Archives: reinforcement

If We Want Students to Study, We Must Teach Them How

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“I need to study for my test”, I would say to myself.  With self-discipline I sat at the card table that was my desk at home in my high school years, textbook and class notes in front of me, and engaged in the mystery of studying.  Mystery, I say now almost 60-years after high school graduation, because the act and art of studying was so elusive, I might as well have been told to flap my arms and fly.  With little understanding of what it meant to study, I waddled through years of school tests relying on what I heard and observed in class and my reading of the assigned texts.  And so it goes still.  Last week I heard and saw a high school student in our high school library, as I prepared for a school board meeting, say to friends, “I need to study for my test.  I wish I knew what to do!”. 

I ask my readers to consider this article through the eyes and ears of a student in school.  Too many students throw up their hands in defeat repeating the last sentence in the first paragraph.  All students need us to teach them how to be successful in school.  Teaching them what will be on a test is important; teaching them how to study for a test is just as important.

The quick answer to “How should I study?” is that we need to teach all students to

  • Listen and pay attention in class
  • Build short-term memory through repetition
  • Read aloud
  • Focus on key words and ideas
  • Master automaticity of key facts
  • Understand what the problem wants you to do
  • Speak your solutions out loud
  • Study frequently

Listen and Pay attention

School, study and learning have gone hand-in-hand forever.  In the first instance, children are told to pay attention to what their teachers says and does daily.  Listen and watch, listen and watch – these two aspects of paying attention are a child’s first pass at learning.  Remarkably, children learn a lot just from listening and watching.  I was told as a student, “If you just pay attention in class, listen to your teacher, with a special focus on what the teacher writes on the board (now digital screen), you can pass every class”.  I also learned that the bar for passing classes was not very high – just attend school and pay attention.

In the second instance, if a student wants better than passing grades, a student must do more.  If being present and listening to and watching what a teacher says and does can result in a D grade or better, what does a student need to do be earn even better grades?  Study.  Here we go.

What to do:  When you tell students to pay attention, mean it.  Get their attention.  Don’t proceed until you have it.  Too often we say “Now, pay attention” and then proceed without getting their attention.

What to do:  When you tell students to “add this to your notes” check their notes.  If they wrote down the wrong things, they will study the wrong things.  If it is important enough to tell them to write it down, ensure that they wrote it down.

Short-term Memory

Short-term memory counts because most tests assess short periods of learning.  Quizzes assess the smallest amount learning.  Chapter or unit tests, think four weeks of learning, are the most common school assessments.  Semester and end-of-year tests by their nature assess the most important ideas and skills learned in 18 and 36 weeks.  Annual state tests cover learning over multiple years, usually going back at least two years.  Knowing this, short-term memory is the first key to studying for most tests.

Short-term memory is all about repetition.  Repetitive practice does not make perfect, as people want to believe, but it does make what is repeated permanent.  The brain needs reinforcement if we want it to remember something and the more often, we say or do the same thing, the more likely the brain will remember it.  When a child listens and watches the teacher, the brain gets an initial introduction to information, but it is not enough if we want the brain to remember that information for very long.

As a rule, when you think short-term memory think 5 to 7 repetitions.  Re-read the assigned information multiple times.  A chapter in a text or a book the class is reading or the handouts or a screen shot that was shown since a last chapter or monthly test is what will be on the next chapter or monthly test.  This information is what a student needs to re-read and re-look at multiple times.  If it helps, make chicken scratches on a bookmark for every time you read re-read this information.  Get to at least 5 preferably 7 scratch marks.  If your brain has 5 to 7 repetitions of the same material, your brain will be prepared to answer questions about this material on an assessment.

What to do:  Use class time to practice short-term memory.  “We are going to take five minutes for you to read that paragraph (word list, vocabulary definitions…) at least five times to yourself.  Start now.”  If you want students to know information, show them how and give them time, your time, to know it.

Re-read Aloud

One more step – read it aloud.  It is too easy to just skim over the pages when you read it silently.  Your eyes move but your brain does not engage.  Reading aloud means the brain must see and you must say every word.  Too many of us say, “I already read it.  I don’t need to waste time reading it again”.  However, reading once is not enough to create adequate short-term memory.  Read it again and read it aloud.

What to do:  Once again, do it in class.  Students can read aloud with soft voices.  Spread them out around the room and use all your square footage.  Then, listen to students as they read aloud.  Nod, smile, and reinforce.

Focus on What the Teacher Focuses On

Teachers give students clues about what is MOST important in the lessons they teach.   Most teachers tell their classes, “Write this down” or “Add this to your notes”.  Then they write or display the most important words or ideas in the current lesson on the board or screen.  If a teacher writes it, a student should also write it.  And write it exactly as the teacher writes it.  Treat these words and ideas like a giant billboard with flashing lights that tell you “Know this because it will be on the test”.

If a student’s notes only show what a teacher writes on the board or screen, that student has a start in preparing for the next test.  Build understanding from these key words and ideas.  If it is a word, define it – know what the word means.  If it is an idea, write several sentences about how the idea was explain in class.  For example, if the word is “germinate”, define it.  If the idea is “growing season”, write down an example of a growing season and what happens over time.

Then, build these definitions and examples into short-term memory with 5 to 7 repetitions. 

Listen and pay attention, copying key words and ideas, re-reading aloud and doing these things 5 to 7 times builds good short-term memory in language arts, social studies, most of science, second languages,

What to do:  Interview students.  Simply ask each student to “Tell me what you know about…”.  Formative assessments are not always quizzes.  A quick oral interview of a cross section of students will tell you if instruction has been successful in causing learning.

What to do:  Teach students to self-interview.  “What do I know about…?”, is a question a student can use as a studying check-up.

Math is Different

There is only so much that short-term memory can achieve in arithmetic and math.  In the primary grades, teachers work to create automaticity of facts.  Consider the tables students memorize and the urgency for knowing these facts on demand.  The clearest example is a multiplication table.  Repetition and short-term memory allow a student to quickly call out 63 when asked to multiply 7 times 9.  All students need to achieve automaticity mastery of math facts. 

This is not short-term memory but long-term memory work.  To build long-term memory students need 17-20 repetitions and then frequent repetitions over time.  What does this mean?  Teachers and students hammer the drill and practice with intensity.  Repeatedly until short-term memory cannot help but answer 63 to the 7 x 9 question.  AND, then repeated practice frequently but not intensely over time.  That means next week and next month.

What to do:  On demand and without fanfare ask a student to tell you their addition or multiplication or division tables.  Make the telling oral so that it quick fire.  Do this over time with all students to reinforce long-term memory.

Know the Language of Math by Writing Math Sentences

Once math facts are secure, math learning is all about understanding the language of a math problem.  What does the math language of the problem tell you to do?  Without fail, some students read the text of a math story problem or look at the numerics of a math problem and do not know what the language of the problem is telling them to do.  The have not learned to read the language of math; math is Greek to too many children.  Because students can read text, we assume they can read math, and this is not a leap we should make.

As always, demonstrate and over-demonstrate the skills of interpreting English sentences into math sentences by visibly interpreting the words or numbers into “math sentences”.  Do this each time a new math concept is taught.  “This is how you read the math problem and we will write each step of the problem into a math sentence.”  Once students learn to do this, the mystery of story problems is resolved.

What to do:  Each time you make a math assignment, demonstrate how to interpret the language of the problem into math sentences.  Say it aloud and write it on the board/screen.

What to do:  When circulating around the class while students do their assignment, don’t look for right answers/current solutions.  Ask students to tell you their math sentences.  This is the skill that gets them to the right answers.

The Template for Short Answers and Essays

Most quizzes and tests use multiple choice, true-false, and fill in the information questions.  These are easier to correct.  They also are easier to turn into the data of learning as the number of correct answers seems to equate to learning.  Given the factual nature of most multiple questions, m-c is a test of memory.

Many students frown when the test or quiz requires short answers or essays.  In multiple choices and fill in type questions, a correct answer or information leading to a correct answer is displayed in the problem stem.  This is not always true in short answers or essays.

Once again we teach students to write short answers and essays by teaching them how with frequent demonstrations.  How often has a student heard a teacher say, “You should have learned how to write an essay back in grade xxx”.  If the teacher has to say this, she already knows that a student did not learn how to write an essay back then.  We need to fill this gap in learning.

Additionally, an essay written in fifth grade will not satisfy the requirements for an essay in 8th or 11th grade.  We expect more sophisticated thinking in essay answers as students get older.  We need to teach students what “more sophisticated” looks like by providing models, requiring short answer and essay writing in daily and chapter work, and, here it is, providing ungraded, critical feedback to students about their writing.  Ungraded and critical feedback takes the pressure off students for on-demand writing and incrementally develops writing strength.

The starting point is for each student to understand a five-part essay template:  introduction sentence, three supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence.  Just like math facts and vocabulary definitions, students need an immediate response to an essay assignment.  They immediately begin an outline of five parts.

What to do:  Have faculty agreement in a five-part essay template.  Remove the mystery of how to write an essay or short answer.

What to do:  Write essays frequently.  Remove the on-demand paralysis by making writing essays a general practice.

What to do:  Essay practice should be like basketball practice; we don’t keep score in practice sessions.  Instead, give critical feedback on how the clarity of each part of the essay, the strength of the supporting information, and the interpretation of the conclusion.  Build essay muscle.

Cramming is Guilt Studying

Lastly, keep students from doing what what I did.  Cramming for tests is a student’s attempt to resolve guilt for not doing the daily and weekly practices that build readiness for school tests.  If we teach and build study habit practices into usual teaching and learning, there is no need for cramming.  All the above is designed for daily, weekly and repeated practice.  

What to do:  If it is important that students learn to study, teach them how to study.

The Big Duh!

There should be no surprises in school tests.  All information and skills should be clearly taught and practiced so that a test is a natural wrap-up to what has been taught and learned.

Equally, there should be no mystery in how to study.  Every student should be taught independent study skills just as they are taught their A, B, Cs.  When we accept that study habits are not innate but are learned practices we teach students, then we are the right track of causing every student to become a strong learner. 

Feedback: Recalibrating the superlative

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Say what you mean and mean what you say.  Words matter and the selection of words used as educational feedback to children matters greatly.  As teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors, we provide thousands of feedback words to children every day.  How calibrated are your words so that you are saying exactly what you should say?

I observe that feedback to children over time becomes gratuitous and conversational.  Listen to the feedback you hear around you.  We typically say what the listener expects and wants to hear and we say it without specific learning context.  We make our feedback pleasing, non-critical, and uninformative – easy feedback is easy to give.  As we launch the 22-23 school year, the words we choose as feedback should be recalibrated so that we are saying not only what we mean to say but what children need to hear as we to cause them to learn.

Apply the term “authentic” to the distribution of feedback.  But, know what authentic means.  Merriam-Webster tells us authentic means “being actually and exactly what is claimed”.  Authentic is a clear and precise razor to apply to feedback.  Sharpen your vocabulary so that your feedback to a child explicitly describes the learning the child demonstrates and provides the necessary description, praise/criticism, reinforcement/correction, self-building, and direction that the child needs to hear.

The bell-shaped curve of statistical distribution can be applied to giving feedback.  Picture the bell in your mind’s eye and apply it graphically to the student work and work effort you observe.  The greatest amount of work from children daily meets our general expectations; it is the great space under the dome of the bell, especially when we apply the rule of 80 – 80% of children should successfully learn 80% of what we teach through initial instruction 80% of the time.  Statistically, we expect 66% of student work to be in this zone – the rule of 80 expands this zone that we think of as statistically average.  The margins of difference under this dome on either side of the true mean are small enough that minimal corrections through adjusted teaching move children to improved performances of learning.    

Sadly, we have maligned the word average – no one wants to be labeled average – but authentically, average describes the quality of learning children show us when they actually and exactly learn what they were taught.  Average is “on the target”.  As a better descriptor, use “expected” instead of average.

“That is exactly and clearly what I expected you to do.  Good work” is the qualitative feedback that should describe 80% of student work in school under the rule of 80.  How often do we hear these words?  Not very.

Our contemporary world values esteem over productivity and has difficulty with the word good.  Inspirational speakers at educational conventions and conferences tell us that good is not good enough.  Jim Collins told us how to Get From Good to Great and good has never been good enough since.  “Great” and its synonyms became the new gold standard driving feedback.  If good is average, then we must strive to be better than good and feedback on what we are told to expect has never been the same.

Blink twice every time you hear these words in your school today: excellent, fantastic, outstanding, superb, tremendous, terrific, wonderful, exceptional, splendid, phenomenal.  These are both synonyms for great and the most frequently used words to describe student work.  That is a lot of blinking.  Is all that we claim to be great really great or is great how we now label what we expect?  This is not what we mean, I think.

Recalibration of feedback means

  • understanding what is expected and describe it in actual and exact terms.  Don’t inflate to deflate, just describe what you observe against what you expect.

“You sounded out and pronounced those words exactly as they are spelled.”

“Your practice is paying off – you played that piece exactly as the music is written.”

“Your use of color and shading are very good and show you are paying attention to our demonstrations.”

“The corners in the box you built are exactly 90 degrees to each other.  Good job.”

“You all are keeping pace with each other as we walk to the cafeteria.  Thank you.”

  • using comparatives to describe things that are more than you expected.  Comparatives work because they describe more than you expected but keep you clear of over-exaggeration.

”Your mathematical reasoning is getting better.  You went beyond the numbers and gave an example of how we use rectangular shaped fields in athletics.”

“You are improving in listening to spoken Spanish and hearing it as Spanish not translated English.”

“You show a growing understanding of the scope of the universe beyond the stars we see at night”.

  • using superlatives to describe things that are well beyond what is expected and are so exemplary that they are unusual in frequency.  Superlatives add -est to your descriptors.

”That was exceptional – the best I have seen in years.”

“Outstanding.  You performed that as well as a person who has been playing for many years.”

“Your explanation was superb – college-like in your understanding of the concepts and how they work.”

“Perfect.  I could not have done better myself.”

“You get the blue ribbon.  That is the best lab work I have seen in years.”

Keep the model of what you expect students to say, do, perform, behave, and be in mind as you give them your feedback.  Then make your feedback exactly and actually descriptive of what you see and hear and feel about their work.

Lastly, keep a second thought in mind.  Children know honesty and sincerity when they hear and read it.  Your smile and a nod of approval may be all the honestly and sincerity a child needs to understand that they are meeting your expectations.  And, that after all, is what most children in school want to do – meet the expectations of their teachers.

“Tell Me” and “Show Me” If You Want To Be Understood

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I can hear Robert Shaw’s voice. “Do ya folla’?”, Quint, the shark-hunting captain of the Orca, asked Martin Brody (Roy Schneider) and Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) in Jaws. “Do ya folla’?” was Quint’s way of checking if the Sheriff and oceanographer thoroughly understood what he was asking them to do.  The dangers of hunting a great white shark necessitated that Brody and Hooper followed Quint’s directions to the letter. Without exaggeration, the consequences to the future when we are teaching children can be just as serious as those in Jaws. Instead of being consumed by a shark, children may be consumed by errors of misunderstanding resulting for their failure to learn from you.

What is your checking query? As a classroom teacher or principal or curriculum director or facilities manager, how do you check to verify that those you are instructing or directing or mentoring or leading have a successful understanding of what you expect them to do? A checking query is essential. Not to have one is to be a pitcher throwing nine innings of a baseball game without ever hearing the umpire call “strike” or “ball.” Just like the pitcher watching for the umpire’s call, a teacher who models solutions to a math problem needs to know what each student heard, saw and understands regarding each possible solution. Without this feedback, the teacher should stop and not say another word. No feedback – no going forward.

In educationalese, “do you follow” can easily become one of two requests. Tell me. Show me. If you ask these two questions consistently, you will know if your students, teachers, and custodians are clear in their understanding of your expectations of their future performance. Those who study pedagogy, will recognize “Tell me/Show me” as application of Madeline Hunter’s “checking for understanding,” a timeless lesson design strategy.

What does “tell me” sound like?

You are an art teacher. You have demonstrated how to mount a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel. With students gathered around, you demonstrated the “a, b, c’s” of centering an amount of fresh clay on the center of the wheel, how to use the heels of your palms and your thumbs to work and shape the clay, and how to use finger pressure to draw the clay vertically into the beginnings of a small bowl.  In a perfect world, every child now is ready to throw a bowl from a lump of clay.

Common practice is for the teacher to look at the faces of surrounding children and ask “Any questions?” And, with no children bold enough to show they did not see exactly what the teacher said or did, the teacher sends them to their wheels where more than half sit looking at the lump of clay wondering “What do I do now?”

“Tell me” is an easy question. No one has to straddle the potter’s bench to say “First, you …”. “Tell me” is verbal – just repeat back what I just said to you. The “tell” does not have to be word perfect. Just get the sequence right. Just describe how your hands should work on the clay.  Describe how the turning speed of the wheel does the work of moving the clay.  Describe in words that demonstrate that you have a mental imaging of what you are supposed to do when you sit at your wheel.

If enough students participate in oral feedback, you can generalize that they understand “well enough” what to do. The key is that a majority of the students participated in the “tell me” and those who did not gave adequate visible agreement in what was told.

If the “tell me” does not meet the teacher’s level of confidence, then re-teaching is in order. Re-teaching involves the same key words in a different story line. Re-teaching involves the correction of any parts of the “tell” that were clearly wrong. Re-teaching is aimed at causing all students to be able to contribute to the next “tell me.”

Then do the “tell me” again. And, again, if the second “tell” does not meet your confidence level. Subsequent re-teachings cannot be repeats of the first or even second. They must directly clarify the sequence of steps and correct the mistakes in the “tell”.

You are a principal discussing the school’s practices in using standards-based grading. “Tell me” should achieve the same feedback loop as the “tell me” of the art teacher. And, if you are a curriculum director leading an in-service on the use of formative assessments, your “tell me” will sound like the art teacher and principal’s “tell me.” The same is true for the facilities supervisor who is showing a new custodian how to use a floor scrubbing machine. The supervisor wants to hear an accurate verbal description of what the supervisor demonstrated.

“Tell me” is one of the simplest yet most often ignored or misused strategies for getting instructional feedback. Many leaders will use it once or twice and then believe that if their students and subordinates got it right once or twice, they will get it right each time new instruction is given in the future. Wrong! This may be true if the future instruction is a repeat of past instruction, but if it is new instruction, especially new and without transfer from other past instruction, “tell me” is essential.

You are half-way in confidently believing that students and subordinates understand your instruction or direction. Now, “show me.”

“Show me” is more strategic. A teacher or principal or director or supervisor does not have time to view a “show me” by every student and subordinate. So, pick one or two students to straddle the potters wheel and begin to throw a bowl or go to the SmartBoard to write out a solution to a math problem or construct a grading template for a given middle school writing standard or demonstrate how to set the height adjustments on a riding lawn mower and mow a field in a way that does not require subsequent raking.

“Show me’s” must be objective and subjective. The “show” of the persons selected may not be as perfect as the demonstration. Objectively, does the “show” meet minimum requirements? And, subjectively, the person evaluating the “show” must suspend everything else known about the person showing and observe only the demonstration of the “show”. Being objectively and subjectively fair often is hard in a “show me” but it is essential.

If you pick a representative student and rotate your picking so that all students and subordinates over time will be called upon to “show me”, you can use these selected shows to reinforce your confidence that your students and subordinates know what to do and also know how to do it.

“Tell me and show me” also conserve time. The minutes that it takes to ask students and subordinates to tell and show you what they have heard and observed you say and do is significantly less than the time and effort it would take to go forward with their unchecked work only to find later that their thinking and skills are all wrong. Reteaching after incorrect information has been practiced and reinforced takes a lot of time and very specific instruction to unlearn the incorrect and learn the correct. “Tell me and show me” is an efficient and effective way to assure readiness for independent practice of new learning.

So, now I ask you in my Quint voice, “Do ya follow?” Tell me.  Show me.