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

[email protected]

Udgum Khadka

[email protected]

 

(Both writers work at King’s College and conduct workshops for teachers through Empowerment Academy)

 

 

Also read

19 things teachers can do in 2019