19 things teachers can do in 2019, Part II
Dear teachers,
In this second part of our article-series, we share three more research-based ideas that can significantly increase our teaching efficacy and eventually help students improve their learning. Please reflect on them and think about how you can adapt these ideas to your context.
Practice the eight-second rule of silence
Will you be surprised if we say that teachers, on average, reply to their own questions within one second of asking them? We realized this after listening to an episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.
This is what teachers usually do in the classroom.
Step 1: They ask a question.
Step 2: Students don’t/can’t answer it right away.
Step 3: They answer the question within one second.
That can’t be true, we thought. So the next day, we tried to see if it’s real. One of us stayed as an observer and checked the pattern of classroom interaction. Apparently, teachers can’t keep their mouths shut.
We expect students to raise their hands right away, but when they don’t respond, the silence fills our mind with doubts. Maybe I didn’t teach them effectively and therefore they can’t answer even simple questions. Maybe these students are stupid. With longer silence, that doubt grows and we start questioning our teaching efficacy. Maybe I couldn’t make them understand.
Here’s one way to embrace silence.
- Throw a question at the students and stop speaking.
- Wait for at least eight seconds. Or even 15 seconds sometimes.
- Hold that urge to open your mouth (and hope at least one student will respond).
And, when a student starts to respond, just listen. Don’t interrupt. After the student is done, regardless of the answer, acknowledge his/her attempt right away.
This way, when they see you allowing them time—letting them make mistakes and validating their attempt—they will trust you.
Observe—be observed
Have you ever asked your colleague, “Hey, can I come and observe your class?” If you have, you might have given him/her a minor heart attack. For two reasons.
First, most teachers have been working in isolation, probably because everyone’s overburdened with extra classes and duties beyond the class.
Second, observation has got a bad reputation because it is usually seen and used as a punitive measure against non-performing teachers.
But what if teachers could manage time to observe, share feedback, and learn from each other? Why? Because, teacher-observation is one of the most effective ways of professional development and it can have an immediate result. (We’re citing John Hattie’s Visible Learning, again.)
Here’s how teachers can implement this:
- Start with a teacher whom the students admire.
- Ask him/her that you want to observe and learn.
- Develop a system for documenting the process. Video, audio, or plain old note-taking.
- Have a pre-class discussion on what you want to focus on, and a post-class reflection on what you observed.
- Build on it.
Or ask someone to observe your class. Tell him/her that you want to improve, for example, your delivery skills and thus would love to get constructive feedback. (People love giving feedback, so finding an observer for your class could be easier.)
Even Bill Gates is a proponent of this idea. He says, “We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve”. Watch his Ted Talk titled Teachers Need Real Feedback.
Retrieve, not review
“Alright students, here’s what we did in the last class. We did this, we did that. Today, we’re going to build on that concept.”
“Alright students, we learnt a new concept in the last class. Now, without going through your notes or books, please write down three things you remember about this new concept. And today, we’ll build more on the concept.”
There’s a small but significant difference in these two opening methods.
Of course, the first one allows students to recap the previous lesson. But not the negative side. As you must have noticed, the teacher is the one doing the recap, not the students.
The second method assigns the responsibility to the students. It demands that the students jolt their memory and pull the things out. It gives the students a chance to assess their learning and break their “fluency-illusion”, to borrow a phrase from Benedict Carey (How We Learn).
In theory, the second method allows the students to perform retrieval-practice, a simple method of taking the information out from their memory once the learning has been completed.
In the last few years, there has been a lot of work on retrieval-practice and how it helps students learn better in the long run. We can incorporate this idea in many ways—a short quiz to start the class, giving low-stake multiple-choice questions in between lessons, asking students to share what they learnt two weeks back, etc.
Please check out the work of Robert Bjork. His theory of ‘Input less, Output more’ has changed the way we look at teaching and learning. And, visit the website www.retrievalpractice.org for numerous practical ways to incorporate this idea in your teaching methods.
Umes Shrestha
Udgum Khadka
(Both writers work at King’s College and conduct workshops for teachers through Empowerment Academy)
Also read
19 things teachers can do in 2019
Dear teachers, The new year 2019 does not align perfectly with our academic year. But we can still make a few new year resolutions on how to improve our teaching. Because, what better time than now!
In this article series, we’ll be sharing teaching tips and ideas that we’ve been implementing in our own classes. We’ve borrowed these ideas from books, articles, YouTube videos, conversations, and many trials and errors in our classes and workshops we conduct. Please reflect on them and come up with your own theories on how to implement or adapt them to suit your needs.
Give space to try, fail and rise
We’ve all heard this Nepali proverb “Hidne maanchhe ladchha”. Perhaps, we can put this proverb in practice, and let our learners “fall” and learn from their “falls”.
We know making a mistake and consciously reflecting on the mistake is an extremely effective way to learn. Such learning also endures for years.
Teachers can help students embrace mistakes by explaining the subtle but important difference between ‘failure’ and ‘failing’. Failing sounds like it has hope attached to it. Failure sounds like you are doomed.
But simply telling students, “Hey, make mistakes and learn from your mistakes” is not enough. Telling usually doesn’t work. What might work is developing a positive learning culture where students receive non-judgmental feedback on their learning process rather than on the outcome. A culture where students not just hear about but internalize the usefulness of failing is an integral part of learning.
Also, wouldn’t it be amazing if students could see the teachers themselves trying, failing, and learning in front of their students!
Check out A.J. Juliani’s excellent article entitled “The Big Difference between Fail-ing and Fail-ure” available online.
Give meaningful feedback
John Hattie, the author of Visible Learning, says effective feedback has to answer three questions.
a. What is the goal?
b. What is the progress made toward the goal?
c. What actions need to be taken to make better progress?
Therefore, when students are trying and failing, we need to remind them of their goal, how they are doing, and what they can do better to achieve it.
For instance, if a student is struggling to write better, more persuasive essays, you could give them a list of things they’ve done wrong, and tell them to correct them all. Or, you could focus on one aspect of the essay (e.g. lacks proper evidence to back their points), and guide him on how to look for such evidence and incorporate it into their essay.
Remember, generalized feedback usually doesn’t help. Saying “Good job” or “Terrible work” or “Nice” doesn’t help students get to their goals.
For more, read this phenomenal research article.
Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research. Vol. 77. 1.
Don’t give 4
If you haven’t watched this Ted Talk “The Clues to a Great Story” by Andrew Stanton, the main guy from Pixar, an American computer animation film studio, watch it first. Because, he unpacks some intriguing clues to great teaching.
He says great stories get the audience involved in the storytelling process. How? Here we paraphrase Stanton.
Don’t give everything to the audience easily.
Challenge them to predict.
Don’t give them “4” right away.
Make them work for it.
Give them “2” first, and then allow them to imagine their own “2”.
He calls this the “Unifying Theory of 2+2”. It’s a very powerful idea from a pedagogical perspective.
As teachers, we give it all away rather soon. We assume, “Our job is to give the correct answers. That’s what teachers are supposed to do, right?”
Partly yes, but mostly no.
A teacher’s job, apparently, is to make students work to get that answer.
Let us re-write that again.
A teacher’s job is to make students care about what they do, engage them in the process, and then guide them just enough so that they are able to figure out answers their own way.
Don’t give them 4. Give them 2+2.
We’ll share more in our next piece. We want to leave you with a quote from our friend Ulma-maija Seppanen: “Every feedback is a gift.” We too expect feedback from you.
Umes Shrestha
Udgum Khadka
(Both writers work at King’s College and conduct workshops for teachers through Empowerment Academy.)
